3 ms·

> the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does. Bin

by gyomu 1y ago

> the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does. Bingo. I found the breakdown in terms of the owner/renter/maintainer classes [0] very useful. When the owner/renter/maintainer of a business/service/etc are the same person/community, incentives are aligned and quality tends to ensue. When those 3 roles are clearly delineated and separated, no one gives a shit and owners care about maximizing their profit, maintainers care about getting the job done asap regardless of whether the maintenance will hold in the long term or not, and renters are left out to dry. [0]: I first encountered it here, not sure if he got it from somewhere else. https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mode https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mod...

SoftTalker 1y ago
That varies widely. The worst hardware store in town is a little locally owned one where the owner is often not only in the store but working the checkout. They really push the locally owned angle, the place is neatly kept and folksey, but just try to return anything and they'll give you the third degree. And if you've lost the receipt absolutely forget it. Who doesn't hassle customers about returning stuff? Lowes.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
This is amusingly the main argument at the cornerstone of most leftist theory. Capitalism works great as an improvement from feudalism and mercantilism however it starts to majorly break down as a system once the capital owning class cements itself as only needing to invest their capital and manage assets to maintain perpetual dominance. From there they slowly accrue capital and the rift between the working classes and the capital owning classes spreads further and further until the two are effectively completely divorced with the working classes providing 100% of the labor and the capital owning classes consuming 100% of the profits. And the sign that this decay has reached the point of no return without major social upheaval is the death of the petit bourgeois/petite bourgeoisie, i.e. the end of the self employed shop owners and family businesses. This is one thing people famously get wrong about Marx. His view was that under capitalism the petite bourgeoisie will always eventually be cannibalised by the haute and grande bourgeoisie despite generally siding with them politically (ergo acting against their long term interests). This of course contrasts with the view popular with the state socialists (who misguidedly view the petite bourgeoisie as a threat to and toxic element of capitalism). And so now we stand at the precipice with the widespread death of the canary in the coal mine that is the small business owner and the question that remains is where do we go from here?
- somenameforme 1y ago
  But this divide is farcical. People like Musk/Bezos/etc don't make their money from literal profits, but from the stock price going up, which is driven by speculation. In particular the total valuation of the stock market is worth more than literally all money in existence. And neither Amazon nor Tesla pay dividends, so you can't even go that route. And the owners rarely just sit around letting the money come in, but quite often are obsessive work-a-holics. I'm very antagonistic towards people like the Waltons who, themselves, have mostly contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever to society and are just coasting off daddy's success - being born to tens of billions of dollars and then dying with your biggest accomplishment being born to tens of billions of dollars is just so many degrees of pathetic. They fit quite closely to what you're describing (and WalMart does pay dividends), but they're a vanishingly small percent of the ultra-wealthy.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    Here's a steelman for some brand of leftism (I don't ascribe to any label, though I'm an alleged market socialist) You can buy votes, even if it's banned, by buying up and controlling the media. Therefore money and political power can be exchanged. The existence of billionaires - People who have as much money (and therefore, as much political power) as ten hundred millionaires - Therefore represents a dangerous accumulation of power. When we look at the market and capitalism, we aren't seeing a fun little game where some speedrunner gets a high score and there are no consequences. We are seeing an incentive landscape trying to reform the aristocracy. We are seeing kings arise from first principles. This should be stopped. One nonviolent way to stop this is to fund just massive welfare programs, close all tax loopholes, all offshore tax havens, and give poor people money, which is the most American franchisement you can have. Implementation is left as a simple exercise for the reader
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      This is true is all systems. People will never be equal in society, because the things that need to be done vary radically in difficulty and the number of people realistically capable of doing them - and those close to the top will always be 'more equal' than those who are doing basic labor. I'm also sidestepping the issue that's probably inescapable in practice - hierarchy. And historically social economic systems have created systems where it's even more difficult to transition between top and bottom, than it is in capitalist systems. I do not think your solutions are viable. Giving people money is going to simply drive mass inflation, because you end up massively increasing the amount of money in circulation, but keep the same amount of products. Okay, so then the typical response is well then we just add price controls. And now you end up in a scenario where you have empty shelves because supply no longer meets demand, but also you likely have declining production because the things producers are producing become worth less in real terms, often to the point of them being unable to continue profitably producing them. I offered some solutions that I think are more viable here. [1] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45059980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45059980
binary132 1y ago
Distributism is not a bad idea

by gyomu 1y ago

SoftTalker 1y ago

That varies widely. The worst hardware store in town is a little locally owned one where the owner is often not only in the store but working the checkout. They really push the locally owned angle, the place is neatly kept and folksey, but just try to return anything and they'll give you the third degree. And if you've lost the receipt absolutely forget it. Who doesn't hassle customers about returning stuff? Lowes.

OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago

This is amusingly the main argument at the cornerstone of most leftist theory. Capitalism works great as an improvement from feudalism and mercantilism however it starts to majorly break down as a system once the capital owning class cements itself as only needing to invest their capital and manage assets to maintain perpetual dominance. From there they slowly accrue capital and the rift between the working classes and the capital owning classes spreads further and further until the two are effectively completely divorced with the working classes providing 100% of the labor and the capital owning classes consuming 100% of the profits. And the sign that this decay has reached the point of no return without major social upheaval is the death of the petit bourgeois/petite bourgeoisie, i.e. the end of the self employed shop owners and family businesses. This is one thing people famously get wrong about Marx. His view was that under capitalism the petite bourgeoisie will always eventually be cannibalised by the haute and grande bourgeoisie despite generally siding with them politically (ergo acting against their long term interests). This of course contrasts with the view popular with the state socialists (who misguidedly view the petite bourgeoisie as a threat to and toxic element of capitalism). And so now we stand at the precipice with the widespread death of the canary in the coal mine that is the small business owner and the question that remains is where do we go from here?

somenameforme 1y ago
But this divide is farcical. People like Musk/Bezos/etc don't make their money from literal profits, but from the stock price going up, which is driven by speculation. In particular the total valuation of the stock market is worth more than literally all money in existence. And neither Amazon nor Tesla pay dividends, so you can't even go that route. And the owners rarely just sit around letting the money come in, but quite often are obsessive work-a-holics. I'm very antagonistic towards people like the Waltons who, themselves, have mostly contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever to society and are just coasting off daddy's success - being born to tens of billions of dollars and then dying with your biggest accomplishment being born to tens of billions of dollars is just so many degrees of pathetic. They fit quite closely to what you're describing (and WalMart does pay dividends), but they're a vanishingly small percent of the ultra-wealthy.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  Here's a steelman for some brand of leftism (I don't ascribe to any label, though I'm an alleged market socialist) You can buy votes, even if it's banned, by buying up and controlling the media. Therefore money and political power can be exchanged. The existence of billionaires - People who have as much money (and therefore, as much political power) as ten hundred millionaires - Therefore represents a dangerous accumulation of power. When we look at the market and capitalism, we aren't seeing a fun little game where some speedrunner gets a high score and there are no consequences. We are seeing an incentive landscape trying to reform the aristocracy. We are seeing kings arise from first principles. This should be stopped. One nonviolent way to stop this is to fund just massive welfare programs, close all tax loopholes, all offshore tax havens, and give poor people money, which is the most American franchisement you can have. Implementation is left as a simple exercise for the reader
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    This is true is all systems. People will never be equal in society, because the things that need to be done vary radically in difficulty and the number of people realistically capable of doing them - and those close to the top will always be 'more equal' than those who are doing basic labor. I'm also sidestepping the issue that's probably inescapable in practice - hierarchy. And historically social economic systems have created systems where it's even more difficult to transition between top and bottom, than it is in capitalist systems. I do not think your solutions are viable. Giving people money is going to simply drive mass inflation, because you end up massively increasing the amount of money in circulation, but keep the same amount of products. Okay, so then the typical response is well then we just add price controls. And now you end up in a scenario where you have empty shelves because supply no longer meets demand, but also you likely have declining production because the things producers are producing become worth less in real terms, often to the point of them being unable to continue profitably producing them. I offered some solutions that I think are more viable here. [1] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45059980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45059980

binary132 1y ago

Distributism is not a bad idea