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If a business, after unionizing, ultimately delivers more value per dollar to the end customer… then why would anyone even need to write essays arguing for it?
by MichaelZuo 1y ago
If a business, after unionizing, ultimately delivers more value per dollar to the end customer… then why would anyone even need to write essays arguing for it?
Customers will vote with their wallets, assuming there are any durable net advantage to the customer base, so the cumulative effect would be far more penetrating and enduring than millions of written arguments.
- Sharlin 1y agoWell, that’s the naivest thing I’ve read this week.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoCan you write out the argument for why?
- neuroelectron 1y agoActually, human flesh is delicious.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoIs this some kind of bot reply?
- aziaziazi 1y agoNeuroelectron comment is provocative. I think he wants to demonstrate the absurdity to let consumer choices resolves value delivered to customers. A bit the same the same as I did in a peer comment, but way more implicit.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoThat doesn’t follow… opinions aren’t automatically guaranteed to make coherent sense.
- nkrisc 1y agoIt’s almost as if there’s more to life than what’s good for business.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoAre you confused? What’s good for the end customers is almost certainly not the same as “what’s good for business”.
- aziaziazi 1y agoHow do you define customers and good ? Consider someone starts a slavery business that grab easily pickable children to raise them as perfect specialized workers then put the to the free sell/rent market. End users could choose for other "moral" alternative if they wish. One even could point out that already happen in some parts of the world and that helps happy customers to solve their needs. However most people prefer to contraint others wallet usage to enforce certain ethic rules. Where to place the line of ethics/constraint is very cultural dependent - to its wide definition. One way to handle that is to look profitability for citizen instead of customers, then what's profitable for Uber users should be balanced with what's profitable for Uber drivers. That is usually what people want from a gouvernements and laws (and I guess we both agree that is not the same as what is profitable for business).
- MichaelZuo 1y agoWho said there is an unambiguous definition? Given how much it’s been discussed over human history… it seems very likely that does not exist. And is yet another dispute that has to be decided via the political process in the first place.
- nine_k 1y agoIf all Nash equilibria were optimal, life would be much easier. Sadly, this is not so [1], so outcomes that are worse for most participants, or even for all participants, occur pretty often. I bet you've heard about "the prisoner's dilemma". So no, businesses may end up doing things that are not very beneficial to customers, and not that beneficial to the business, but be in a situation when changing their behavior results in significant losses, so they won't change. Same with customers: in some situations, they might get a better outcome, including a lower price, if they did not chase the lowest price outright. [1]: https://equilibriabook.com/toc/ https://equilibriabook.com/toc/
- MichaelZuo 1y agoIf the USA was the only country in the world that might indeed be a serious danger… but thankfully there are other countries that compete and it’s exceedingly unlikely they all fall into the exact same trap. But if that scenario were to occur, then all arguments ever written would be likewise literally worthless.
- nine_k 1y agoI have friends in many, many countries in the world. It appears that every country has its own upsides, but also downsides. They fall in various interesting traps.
- int_19h 1y agoIf free workers ultimately deliver more value per dollar to the end customer than slaves...
- npteljes 1y agoI believe this is due to local maximums, and people benefiting from the status quo not wanting to give up even a bit of status, at all. Personal development works the same. Even going far back in history, people concluded with certainty that cultivating one's body has many benefits for oneself. Yet, even now, in the supposed information age, people reach for promises of miracles to change their life. This all is to conclude: overall, people are not rational. And so, by extension, businesses ran by people aren't either. And even if they were, many valid rational decisions can be made, depending on the goals. Maximum value is not always the goal. There is also risk tolerance, and there can be simply a limit to realizing the effects of one's deeds, aka not giving a fuck.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoIf that’s the case… then how would arguments using logic, rationales, etc., convince them either?
- npteljes 1y agoDo arguments using logic, rationales etc convince people actually? Far from a 100% success in my experience. There is a myriad of non-rational behaviors that get in the way of rationality, for example, denial. I believe that people can be rational, to a degree, and at times. But I further believe that this is far from the complete human experience. The rational part, at most, is a significant subset of the human workings.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoSo then what is the actual argument? If so, then by definition the real world success rate is somewhere between 0% and 100% for both.
- npteljes 1y agoThe argument is: "people are not rational", by which I mean that in people, there are multiple forces at play, rationality being just one of them. Circling back to the original argument, I followed that because of this, businesses aren't perfectly rational either, because they are run by people. And so, businesses cannot be expected to optimize for rational goals. For at least two reasons actually: one, the business by itself isn't rational, and neither are their customers! And so, the market itself either. The Denmark vs US Big Mac is the go-to example here. People argue that businesses need to be free so that labor, and therefore Bic Mac can be cheap. But real-world examples show that labor protection and cheap goods can co-exist, such as the case of Denmark's Big Mac. I think this would be the same in our context, and unions. Unions would bring changes for a business for sure, but they would find that they can be profitable just the same, just doing things differently. But if left to their own devices, businesses don't have incentive to optimize for that. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-cost-denmark/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-cost-denmark/