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I will say that his pragmatism seemed to fall apart pretty quickly when the rubber met the road - unless I’m misinformed (which I may be). Berkshire was a key

• karaterobot 1y ago
  I'm not clear how this represents him not being pragmatic, could you say more?
  • jagged-chisel 1y ago
    Where did pragmatism enter this thread?
    • Rebelgecko 1y ago
      The comment above
  • arrosenberg 1y ago
    Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government. A pragmatist would have been more sympathetic for reasons beyond pure capitalist economics.
    • linotype 1y ago
      I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.
      • arrosenberg 1y ago
        Seems kind of silly to pretend it won’t happen though. Especially since we’ve chosen to base social status on wealth.
      • teaearlgraycold 1y ago
        Well it would be one thing if it were an inevitable natural conclusion. But working people are getting poorer because the owner class is hoarding wealth. It’s simply unjust. It’s the difference between losing your house to a hurricane and having someone burn it down.
      • nandomrumber 1y ago
        You say comparison is the theft of joy, and then ask us to compare to an irrelevant metric. If living standards are falling, grocery prices have increased, rents have gone up, wages have stagnated, what does the price of eggs in China have to do with my assessment of the local conditions.
        • linotype 1y ago
          Over what period of time have prices at grocery stores and rents not increased? Food and clothes are cheap by historical standards as a percentage of income. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/Charts/58367/food-prices_fig09.png https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/Charts/...
          • nandomrumber 1y ago
            What does the last two years of that graph indicate?
            • alex-korr 1y ago
              That Biden/Harris lost because they let inflation get out of control for a fairly short amount of time?
            • linotype 1y ago
    • pazimzadeh 1y ago
      Replying to @linotype, below your comment: > I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy. Define wealth. The cheapest option for many foods in other countries is often not only much cheaper, but also of much higher quality than the cheapest option for the same type of item in the US (bread, rice, etc..) in fact their cheap version could easily be pass for the US premium grocery version.
    • philipov 1y ago
      You are speaking as if there is a single objective agreement between people on what constitutes the most pragmatic answer. There is no such agreement. The foundation of liberalism is that we can not agree on first principles. An authoritarian crackdown is just as much an expression of pragmatism if the actor believes they can win.
    • dragonwriter 1y ago
      > Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government. No, they aren't. It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role, though that at least has the virtue of being a real condition and not a fantasy.
      • arrosenberg 1y ago
        If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears. The lack of good paying jobs and the knock on effects of expanding wealth disparity seems to be underlying most of the issues driving radicalism, left and right, up and down. In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
        • iepathos 1y ago
          I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the working class is “resorting to populism to reverse the trend.” If anything, the fact that so many working-class voters support a wealthy oligarchy—one that consistently advances policies benefiting the super-rich at the expense of ordinary people—suggests that a significant portion of the population is being swayed by misinformation and manipulation, not that they’re successfully advocating for their own interests. Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class. The real fallacy is equating the current wave of so-called “populism” with a genuine effort to improve conditions for workers. In practice, what’s being called “populism” is frequently just another vehicle for entrenched elites to consolidate power, not a movement to empower ordinary people.
          • lurk2 1y ago
            > Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class. Such as?
            • 1y ago
    • Der_Einzige 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • kmeisthax 1y ago
        What do you think is a driver of that male loneliness? The traditional heterosexual norms of courtship and marriage don't exactly work when your country has a huge swath of people in economic precarity. People put off dating, sex, and procreation because they can't afford it. Unless you plan to just... force people to fuck? And hope people don't notice their finances getting fucked? Seems like a recipe for drama[0]. > oh wait actually soon Marxist’s are going to do the anti-AI shit of claiming they’re sentient and thus deserve “rights” As someone who's never read Marx, this feels like a strawman at best? At the very least, "liberate the robots" is a pro-AI position, not an anti-AI one. [0] https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/
      • arrosenberg 1y ago
        This is pretty unhinged, so I’ll only respond to the one interesting thing - it’s pretty obvious that part of the male sexlessness problem is related to a lack of good paying, respectable jobs. Tough to get a good woman if you don’t have that going for you.
    • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government I don’t buy this anymore. The evidence is for a simpler hypothesis: 20 to 30% of Americans are stupid. They vote against their own economic interests, which doesn’t make sense if wealth is the problem. My personal hypothesis is lead exposure. But further empowering that segment with wealth strikes me as counterproductive.
      • arrosenberg 1y ago
        Doesn't explain it at all. The biggest swing from 2020 to 2024 was people under 45 voting for Trump at a much higher rate, mostly driven by men. Anyone under 45 was born at least 5 years after lead gas was banned in cars. They're mad because they don’t see a path to the future they were promised. Calling them stupid is patronizing and counterproductive, even if true.
        • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
          I’m not saying all Trump voters are stupid. Just that there is a stupid subset that are not rationally motivated. It’s productive to call this out, because I think it requires reworking our political system to deal with their threat. Fortunately, MAGA seems eager to set the precedents we’ll need in the future. (It’s also not patronising because I don’t care what they do as much as that they don’t cause problems for other people. That’s defensive more than patronising.)
          • tekknik 1y ago
            I propose another hypothesis, those that haven’t learned of the desire for real change instead of stagnant leadership will continue to make the same mistake each election cycle. Learn to read the signs instead of calling people stupid for not agreeing with you, and then following it up with an attempt to force their alignment.
            • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    • hhghkj 1y ago
      Bad education system and social media contribute too. Manipulating the masses has never been as easy and cheap as it is now. Russia in particular knows how to do it in scale.
• danielmarkbruce 1y ago
  The idea that companies should just agree to whatever proposal comes in from a union is preposterous.
  • postpawl 1y ago
    They were negotiating their way up from zero paid sick days per year.
    • ornornor 1y ago
      Crazy this is still a thing nowadays especially in so-called developed economies.
      • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Nothing crazy about that. It's mostly European countries that have mandatory paid sick leave by law for everyone, as they fought for that right in the post-war times when the economy was booming and the world outside the west less safe from outsourcing, and importing cheap labor less easy, so the perfect storm giving labor most power over employers, something that's not gonna repeat again in the globalized world of today. It was the temporal global exception, not the rule, as the worldwide norm was working people to death for most of history. Companies would gladly give their workers zero benefits if they could get away with it.
    • danielmarkbruce 1y ago
      Compensation packages are just that - a package. Complaining about one individual component in isolation is disingenuous. Unions sent a couple of the big car makers into bankruptcy. They've sent all kinds of companies into bankruptcy - the idea that anything they are suggesting is good by nature is about the same as suggesting communism is good by nature. Sounds pleasant, doesn't work.
      • hhghkj 1y ago
        Businesses that can't stay afloat without underpaying workers have a failing business model. Blaming unions for their eventual demise is foolish. Communism and Capitalism are actually quite similar in a sense. Neither of them works well in their purest form, both lead to formation of an oligarchy (party elite,billionaires). Most livable countries in the world mix them in form of free market social democracy.
• tim333 1y ago
  That link mentions a dispute between 12 unions and 6 rail companies one of which is amongst the dozens of companies owned by Berkshire, run by Buffett. I see no mention of Buffett personally getting involved?
  • Mbwagava 1y ago
    ...more personally involved than owning a large part of the company and directly running it? How much more personally involved can you get? Otherwise corporations would be above accountability. The whole system falls apart if executives and the board (and ideally, shareholders) can't be considered personally responsible.
    • palsecam 1y ago
      > and directly running it? How much more personally involved can you get? Ms. Farmer is the CEO of BNSF Railway[1], she is the one “directly running it”. Moreover, Berkshire/Buffet is notorious for _not_ micro-managing, for letting its subsidiaires enjoy greater autonomy than they would in an usual conglomerate. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Farmer
      • Mbwagava 1y ago
        Right, but what is the point of letting companies own other companies if this also doesn't imply transitive accountibility? It's hard to imagine we can't find reasons to imprison the board of blackrock, for instance. Such a massive company has disproportionately small social responsibility.
        • tekknik 1y ago
          We should extend this logic of accountability. If your kid does something wrong every living parent and grandparent should be held accountable. The world would instantly be better. Not sarcasm.