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What social contract? Companies have always been for shareholders. Do you people have some kind of contract with Tesla that I don't know about? This entire dis

by Herring 11mo ago

What social contract? Companies have always been for shareholders. Do you people have some kind of contract with Tesla that I don't know about? This entire discussion sounds crazy to me. If you want socialism, vote for socialism. If you want raw unfiltered capitalism, vote for the billionaire. You can't vote for the billionaire and expect safety nets. That's madness.

Octoth0rpe 11mo ago
It is not socialism to note that in the past, some companies have believed that their optimal relationship with their employees required recognizing their value and awarding them accordingly, thusly allowing them to attract/retain the best employees as well as maximizing the quality of the output from those employees. There has always been such a spectrum, that's not socialism. The trend to notice is that the spectrum is so strongly weighted towards the merciless, cutthroat end of things that may actually not be optimal for long term survivability of those companies whilst also as I noted, be breaking the social contract that workers have assumed for decades, which is also not socialism. Socialism has a specific meaning, it's not just a label we get to put on behaviors that we - or rather, specifically you in this case - don't like.
- Herring 11mo ago
  There's never been any such contract. You guys must not have studied the Great Depression at school. Or more to the point, productivity has consistently outpaced pay for most of the US workforce since the mid-1970s. That's ~50 years that companies have been ripping you off. It's only now you notice, because rent/mortgage/school/medical have finally become so much larger than pay. Well now you get to live through the Great Depression and study it up close.
  - antisthenes 11mo ago
    > That's ~50 years that companies have been ripping you off. It's only now you notice, because rent/mortgage/school/medical have finally become so much larger than pay. The alternate way of looking at it is that the 50s to mid 70s era saw a period of unprecedented prosperity and now we are just seeing a reversion to the mean.
    - Herring 11mo ago
      What do you mean "we"? The rich are much much richer than they've ever been. The stock market is soaring. Companies are seeing record profits. GDP is through the roof. http://web.archive.org/web/20200428221848/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/opinion/coronavirus-us-economy-inequality.html http://web.archive.org/web/20200428221848/https://www.nytime...
snovymgodym 11mo ago
When billionaires own the media companies that influence public opinion and have legal avenues to essentially bribe elected officials, does the public have a meaningful avenue to vote anti-billionaire?
- Herring 11mo ago
  I might sympathize, but reality doesn't care. At the end of the day it doesn't matter why they voted for something. They did and it's here.
QuercusMax 11mo ago
Henry Ford for all his faults (and there were MANY) at least understood that you gotta have a customer base for your products, and that paying workers well helps everybody out.
- Herring 11mo ago
  Ok so that's 1 guy 100 years ago. How many golden parachutes and layoffs have there been since then? Cmon people put 2+2 together, it's not that hard.
  - Apocryphon 11mo ago
    The behavior you’re describing really got big in the 80s with Jack Welch at GE. Which, admittedly, is nearly half a century ago.
    - QuercusMax 11mo ago
      Many of our current society's problems can be directly traced back to Reagan-era policies. Anyone who seriously believes in trickle-down Reaganomics is a fool or a liar.
      - Herring 11mo ago
        Those economic policies were a backlash to the 1970s Civil Rights pushes. You can always count on racists to destroy themselves rather than to stop abusing others.
        johnnyanmac 11mo ago
        That LBJ quote rings true more and more with each passing year. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
        11mo ago
moregrist 11mo ago
Socialism is when the state (ie: the government) _owns_ industries. A social contract is an implicit agreement that everyone more or less accepts without anything being necessarily legally binding. For example, the courtesy of two weeks notice in the US is a social contract: there’s nothing legally requiring it, but there are _social_ consequences (ie: your reference might be less positive) if you don’t follow it. Everything that’s kind of in an employee’s favor is not socialism. You don’t have to like the idea of “work hard, help the company do well, get rewarded,” but that isn’t socialism. It’s just a thing you don’t like.
- Herring 11mo ago
  It's not that I don't like it. It's more that I think you're being lied to. Inequality has been going up in the US for a very long time, which means a lot of people are not being rewarded as much as they should. But they still buy into the system that is impoverishing them. The top 10% of income earners in the US account for 50% of consumer spending. LMK if you think that's part of the contract. https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/24/higher-income-americans-drive-bigger-share-of-consumer-spending https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/24/higher-income-a...
  - jeremyjh 11mo ago
    Inequality going up means the situation is changing and that is what people are complaining about. There definitely has been a culture shift as MBAs took over executive leadership and their compensation packages skyrocketed. Companies were always for the share holders but there used to be more consideration of the longer-term value for the company that amounted to appreciation of and fairer treatment for both employees and customers. I also think though that individual experiences of this kind are more about specific companies maturing than a widespread culture shift. A lot of people on these forums worked in tech companies that are relatively young and have changed a lot over the past two decades.
  - alvah 11mo ago
    "Inequality has been going up in the US for a very long time, which means a lot of people are not being rewarded as much as they should." The second part of your sentence is not necessarily true. It might be true in some or even many cases, but it's certainly not something you can just assert & move on, as if it's a physical law.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Atomic_Torrfisk 11mo ago
> What social contract? Companies have always been for shareholders. You are not wrong, but the contract is/was metaphorical. For a long time people were able to make a living for themselves by studying hard (usually STEM) and end up with a career which payed off. That was the invisible "contract". Hell I went to university for things which seem like academic navel gazing, but I still got a good tech job on the other side. That's not the reality for a lot of graduates nowdays who take more practical degrees at masters and phd levels. Again even if the literal statement is clearly false, it is the sentiment which matters, and this sentiment does not just apply to graduates. I think many just feel like working hard does not work anymore, especially in the face of housing, cost of living, job competition and social media flaunting the wealth of others. I get the idea from my younger siblings, "Why try if you are already a looser."
- alephnerd 11mo ago
  > For a long time people were able to make a living for themselves by studying hard (usually STEM) and end up with a career which payed off Recessions like the GFC, the Dot Bomb, the early 90s, the Asian Financial Crisis, the early 80s, Stagflation, and others show otherwise. The extended bull run that SWEs had from the early 2010s to 2022 was an outlier, and the whiplash being felt today is comparable to what law and finance grads faced in the 2010s, accounting majors in the 2000s, and Aerospace/MechE majors in the 1990s.
johnnyanmac 11mo ago
>Companies have always been for shareholders. well we can trace that back to the 1920's, for one example. >Do you people have some kind of contract with Tesla that I don't know about? Are you aware of what a "social contract" is? There's nothing wrong with seeking to fill in gaps of knowledge. >This entire discussion sounds crazy to me. If you want socialism, vote for socialism. I'd be down for it, but this is almost orthogonal to the main point of the discussion. Social contracts exist in all forms of governing. Even rampant capitism has the bare bones social contract of "don't make your customers TOO angry so you can maximize extraction".

by Herring 11mo ago

Octoth0rpe 11mo ago

It is not socialism to note that in the past, some companies have believed that their optimal relationship with their employees required recognizing their value and awarding them accordingly, thusly allowing them to attract/retain the best employees as well as maximizing the quality of the output from those employees. There has always been such a spectrum, that's not socialism. The trend to notice is that the spectrum is so strongly weighted towards the merciless, cutthroat end of things that may actually not be optimal for long term survivability of those companies whilst also as I noted, be breaking the social contract that workers have assumed for decades, which is also not socialism. Socialism has a specific meaning, it's not just a label we get to put on behaviors that we - or rather, specifically you in this case - don't like.

Herring 11mo ago
There's never been any such contract. You guys must not have studied the Great Depression at school. Or more to the point, productivity has consistently outpaced pay for most of the US workforce since the mid-1970s. That's ~50 years that companies have been ripping you off. It's only now you notice, because rent/mortgage/school/medical have finally become so much larger than pay. Well now you get to live through the Great Depression and study it up close.
- antisthenes 11mo ago
  > That's ~50 years that companies have been ripping you off. It's only now you notice, because rent/mortgage/school/medical have finally become so much larger than pay. The alternate way of looking at it is that the 50s to mid 70s era saw a period of unprecedented prosperity and now we are just seeing a reversion to the mean.
  - Herring 11mo ago
    What do you mean "we"? The rich are much much richer than they've ever been. The stock market is soaring. Companies are seeing record profits. GDP is through the roof. http://web.archive.org/web/20200428221848/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/opinion/coronavirus-us-economy-inequality.html http://web.archive.org/web/20200428221848/https://www.nytime...

snovymgodym 11mo ago

When billionaires own the media companies that influence public opinion and have legal avenues to essentially bribe elected officials, does the public have a meaningful avenue to vote anti-billionaire?

Herring 11mo ago
I might sympathize, but reality doesn't care. At the end of the day it doesn't matter why they voted for something. They did and it's here.

QuercusMax 11mo ago

Henry Ford for all his faults (and there were MANY) at least understood that you gotta have a customer base for your products, and that paying workers well helps everybody out.

Herring 11mo ago
Ok so that's 1 guy 100 years ago. How many golden parachutes and layoffs have there been since then? Cmon people put 2+2 together, it's not that hard.
- Apocryphon 11mo ago
  The behavior you’re describing really got big in the 80s with Jack Welch at GE. Which, admittedly, is nearly half a century ago.
  - QuercusMax 11mo ago
    Many of our current society's problems can be directly traced back to Reagan-era policies. Anyone who seriously believes in trickle-down Reaganomics is a fool or a liar.
    - Herring 11mo ago
      Those economic policies were a backlash to the 1970s Civil Rights pushes. You can always count on racists to destroy themselves rather than to stop abusing others.
      - johnnyanmac 11mo ago
        That LBJ quote rings true more and more with each passing year. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
        11mo ago

moregrist 11mo ago

Socialism is when the state (ie: the government) _owns_ industries. A social contract is an implicit agreement that everyone more or less accepts without anything being necessarily legally binding. For example, the courtesy of two weeks notice in the US is a social contract: there’s nothing legally requiring it, but there are _social_ consequences (ie: your reference might be less positive) if you don’t follow it. Everything that’s kind of in an employee’s favor is not socialism. You don’t have to like the idea of “work hard, help the company do well, get rewarded,” but that isn’t socialism. It’s just a thing you don’t like.

Herring 11mo ago
It's not that I don't like it. It's more that I think you're being lied to. Inequality has been going up in the US for a very long time, which means a lot of people are not being rewarded as much as they should. But they still buy into the system that is impoverishing them. The top 10% of income earners in the US account for 50% of consumer spending. LMK if you think that's part of the contract. https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/24/higher-income-americans-drive-bigger-share-of-consumer-spending https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/02/24/higher-income-a...
- jeremyjh 11mo ago
  Inequality going up means the situation is changing and that is what people are complaining about. There definitely has been a culture shift as MBAs took over executive leadership and their compensation packages skyrocketed. Companies were always for the share holders but there used to be more consideration of the longer-term value for the company that amounted to appreciation of and fairer treatment for both employees and customers. I also think though that individual experiences of this kind are more about specific companies maturing than a widespread culture shift. A lot of people on these forums worked in tech companies that are relatively young and have changed a lot over the past two decades.
- alvah 11mo ago
  "Inequality has been going up in the US for a very long time, which means a lot of people are not being rewarded as much as they should." The second part of your sentence is not necessarily true. It might be true in some or even many cases, but it's certainly not something you can just assert & move on, as if it's a physical law.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

Atomic_Torrfisk 11mo ago

> What social contract? Companies have always been for shareholders. You are not wrong, but the contract is/was metaphorical. For a long time people were able to make a living for themselves by studying hard (usually STEM) and end up with a career which payed off. That was the invisible "contract". Hell I went to university for things which seem like academic navel gazing, but I still got a good tech job on the other side. That's not the reality for a lot of graduates nowdays who take more practical degrees at masters and phd levels. Again even if the literal statement is clearly false, it is the sentiment which matters, and this sentiment does not just apply to graduates. I think many just feel like working hard does not work anymore, especially in the face of housing, cost of living, job competition and social media flaunting the wealth of others. I get the idea from my younger siblings, "Why try if you are already a looser."

alephnerd 11mo ago
> For a long time people were able to make a living for themselves by studying hard (usually STEM) and end up with a career which payed off Recessions like the GFC, the Dot Bomb, the early 90s, the Asian Financial Crisis, the early 80s, Stagflation, and others show otherwise. The extended bull run that SWEs had from the early 2010s to 2022 was an outlier, and the whiplash being felt today is comparable to what law and finance grads faced in the 2010s, accounting majors in the 2000s, and Aerospace/MechE majors in the 1990s.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago

>Companies have always been for shareholders. well we can trace that back to the 1920's, for one example. >Do you people have some kind of contract with Tesla that I don't know about? Are you aware of what a "social contract" is? There's nothing wrong with seeking to fill in gaps of knowledge. >This entire discussion sounds crazy to me. If you want socialism, vote for socialism. I'd be down for it, but this is almost orthogonal to the main point of the discussion. Social contracts exist in all forms of governing. Even rampant capitism has the bare bones social contract of "don't make your customers TOO angry so you can maximize extraction".