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The United States is the way it is because this is the only way to survive within the framework of competitive capitalism. European attempts at cultural protect

by tedks 11y ago

The United States is the way it is because this is the only way to survive within the framework of competitive capitalism. European attempts at cultural protectionism will fail as market pressures force them to adopt American customs and habits. This is just basic economics. American companies ruthlessly optimize for profit. Any attempt to optimize for anything else will take away from the potential for profit. In a global economy this means that profitable companies will beat out nice companies, and eventually "nice" company shareholders will force restructuring according to American ideals. I would also say that based on existing trends the United States is quite rapidly succeeding at bringing its way of life to the rest of the world. There are no more competing ideologies left, and the next few years will lead to more trade agreements that will mop up the remains of protectionism. Soon, English will be mandated as a first language in most of the world, and we'll have a truly globalized culture.

MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
That is a very simplistic world view. Have you ever been to Europe? Central and northern Europe are very successful economically. I know several people that once worked for an american firm, and won't ever do so again. I have never heard that about swiss, swedish or german firms. You might want to check out these GDP stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Current_world_economic_league_table_of_largest_economies_in_the_world_by_GDP_and_share_of_global_economic_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Current_world_ec... The US and Europe are pretty close. The PIGS states have issues, but eastern Europe still has huge growth rates.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  That's because you haven't heard from former Rocket Internet employees.
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    Oh I have. They usually will never again work for Rocket Internet, but still work for other german firms.
    - rorykoehler 11y ago
      Good point.. I misread your post. Also I couldn't resist a sly dig haha
- ams6110 11y ago
  It's very individual, and not unique to the USA at all. I have worked in the USA for over 20 years and am thankful that I have never had what I would consider an uncivil boss or supervisor. Demanding at times, yes, playing politics to advance themselves, yes ... but never just overtly rude or mean. Europe does not avoid this phenomenon. Human nature is human nature. There are bullies and assholes everywhere.
4lejandrito 11y ago
I think like you, but I am not based on specific evidence, just feelings. Could you suggest some literature that goes deeper into this topic?
- tedks 11y ago
  With respect, I think that it's best for people to find these things on their own. The crimethought comes to you naturally at that point, without your being able to distinguish it as crimethink until it's too late.
encoderer 11y ago
Employee happiness is absolutely relevant to P&L. Happy employees are more productive and have less turnover. Companies already know this. It becomes a game of "how little must we do" but it's far from the sweatshop imagery I saw while reading your comment. I grew up middle class in middle America and it's not just the SF tech scene I've made my career in; I grew up in a world of company picnics and "4 10s" work weeks. Also, layoffs and plant closures. I'm not naive to the nature of American business, I just have inclusive opinions about how companies can be run profitably. And doubly so in tech.
- rowdybully 11y ago
  Employee happiness is relevant to profit/loss, unless it isn't. Look at Walmart: Profits are fine, and employees are noticeably unhappy. Don't delude yourself with idealism. Capitalism is the way it is and it's not right or wrong any more than a beaver building a dam.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    "Capitalism is the way it is and it's not right or wrong any more than a beaver building a dam." I disagree. Capitalism being the way it is doesn't mean that should be the end goal of society.
  - quanticle 11y ago
    Yes, let's look at Walmart. Walmart is increasing wages and staffing across the board because it's getting its clock cleaned by Target, CostCo and other retailers that are willing to pay more and grant better benefits, and therefore get employees who are willing to do more than just the bare minimum.
    - rowdybully 11y ago
      You don't know your ass from your head. Before you go spouting off untruths you know zero about, go read the respective companies 10-Ks, moron.
- zhte415 11y ago
static_noise 11y ago
You're telling it like it is. But does it have to be this way and does it have to stay this way? Once the competition is eliminated the wheels of capitalism start to lose ground. I'm not really sure if our cargo cult of "work work work" at all costs can be upkept for very long, especially when resources per capita start tightening.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  The question is why? What is the purpose of "work work work" at all costs?
  - tedks 11y ago
    Why do you think there's a purpose? The real world is not a narrative. It doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end; there is no rising or falling action; there are no stunning third act reveals; there are no happily ever afters. This is just the behavior that emerges (seemingly inevitably) from the ruleset of capitalism. It's like evolution -- the winners keep winning and the losers drop out. Eventually people adopt the winning strategies. If you're asking on an individual level, the "why" is, from the lowest worker to the CEO, "if I don't do my job well I'll be fired, and my family will starve."
    - PavlovsCat 11y ago
      "The real world" is also in large part a set of habits and decisions, just like capitalism is simply decisions people make each day, instead of making different decisions. As would be any other mode of relating to one another. > the "why" is, from the lowest worker to the CEO, "if I don't do my job well I'll be fired, and my family will starve." That reminded me of two things: a senior nurse responding to her boss saying "you have to X" with "I have to die some day, that's all I have to do" (she was very good at her job too, she just insisted on that being her choice), but also this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ While it is about machines mostly, this "inevitability" of a supposedly "external" system you seem to be already describing, and I'm not sure I see a meaningful difference between "work/profit for the sake of work/profit" and this: Everything the human race has worked for – all of our technology, all of our civilization, all the hopes we invested in our future – might be accidentally handed over to some kind of unfathomable blind idiot alien god that discards all of them, and consciousness itself, in order to participate in some weird fundamental-level mass-energy economy that leads to it disassembling Earth and everything on it for its component atoms. To me capitalism is far from being "last man standing".. just consider all the PR blurb by corporations and politicians. Sure, there's a lot of appeals to egotism or pure numbers as well, but also to all sorts of fuzzy things that apparently do matter enough to enough people that even the most depraved have to pay at least lip service to them. > It's like evolution -- the winners keep winning and the losers drop out. Eventually people adopt the winning strategies. I'm thinking it's also a bit like narcissism and other personality disorders; abuse leads to more abuse. And it becomes a cycle: in a constant state of warfare of all against all, becoming more ruthless is indeed "winning" -- but from another perspective, it might be getting stuck in a very low local optimum. My point being that we have a basically infititely big universe around us, that is infinitely hostile to life and also infinitely loaded with resources and adventures -- an infinite enemy to compete with, if you will, instead of severely crippling our ability as a "team" (and I don't just mean humans) to do so by sniping each other. Imagine a PvE game with friendly fire turned on -- if a bunch of people decided that it's a Free-For-All deathmatch game and start ganging up and spawn killing, then that's what it'll effectively be. Even in an infinite world, they'd never get far from spawn, or discover the more interesting and refined game mechanics. And then the free beta ends, the servers get shut down -- "thanks for playing, I hope you made the best of it" -- the people who had the biggest pile of loot and skulls in this Lord of the Flies scenario would still think they "won". Yeah, they were vastly richer than most others, but compared to what they missed out on, they are infinitely poor. While I'm rambling, I would say evolution would not stop even in the most utopian of hippie societies, simply because there are infinite of hostile places to "conquer"... and in the long run, there are no "winning" strategies anyway, everything dies. But if there is no joy along the way, what's the point? Just because there is no "ever after" doesn't mean there can be no "happily". It somehow being preferable to die with the most toys, or being the last one to turn out the light, the very idea of winners and loosers is ALSO a made up story, a narrative, IMHO. We are stuck with giving life meaning anyway, might as well give it meaning that fulfills us in the here and now AND allows us to reach higher heights, instead living in an endless, aimless race where nobody ever feels happy, until they inevitably get knocked out of it, by others or by the heat death of the universe. Evolution lead among other things to our cognition, to empathy, to cooperation, to joy. These are higher-level functions rather than basic ones. I don't mean to say that makes them "better", because evolution doesn't care either way, but I personally like them lots. And while children for example also test their boundaries, they generally don't seem to "intend" to compete with or exploit their parents or others, they want to learn and be happy and make others happy. That's my impression, which might be worthless, but my impression it is. Some get neglected, some get broken, and those inevitably cannot see more than what they can see, they think everybody else is also empty or hurting inside, and just seeking to exploit others to get ahead - but I would claim (or wishfully think? I grant it may be the latter) that this is rather unhealthy narcissism than "perfectly natural", and rather the result of a limitation or trauma, while conversely having empathy and compassion don't preclude having elbows if need be.. it just means having more options than just elbows.
rorykoehler 11y ago
I mostly agree however the American ideology and it's hunger for profit and domination is resulting in it cannibalizing itself. The trade agreements are a case in point as they are (from what I have read as I know their contents are still largely secret) by very definition protectionist. That said it is a very different type of protectionism to European protectionism. In Europe the protectionism was for social purposes (protecting local jobs etc) while in the US it is to give US corporations unencumbered access to the global economy (ie protecting the interests of unfettered corporatism). Looking a bit further down the road we can see that Marx was amazingly right, just way too before his time. Capitalism's ruthless march toward ever greater efficiency means it will end up undermining itself. There is no other possible outcome.
- tedks 11y ago
  This is a very wrong-headed view. There are a variety of other outcomes. For example, we could develop fusion power and perfect generalized manufacturing (3d printing), and have a massive die-off where only the top 1% of wealth holders survive as they disconnect themselves from labor classes and enjoy a post-scarcity economy where they trade influence by creating and playing ever-more-indirect markets. Or they could just de facto enslave labor classes rather than letting them die off. There are plenty of outcomes other than "capitalism undermines itself." It's possible to have faith without being religious, and Marx is a great example.
- douche 11y ago
  The American capitalist system is modeled on the European ideal. Before there were the Koch Bros. there was Krupp, Armstrong, Vickers, and I.G. Farben.
millstone 11y ago
Who says that being nice is a competitive disadvantage? Being mean or stingy to employees makes them less motivated, increases turnover, and ensures you only get the people that nobody else wants to hire. Costco is an example of a retailer that treats its employees well, and enjoys turnover rates a fraction of the industry norm. That means greater productivity, and lower hiring and training costs. The problem is not optimizing for profit, but optimizing for quarterly profit. Short-term thinking for short-term profit but long-term costs.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Economic protectionism has been an integral part of U.S. policy since the 1850s or so. Politicians were pretty big on tariffs and land law acts for nearly a century, though they have since declined in favor of gunboat diplomacy.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  It's also how every single one of the Asian tigers built themselves up from 3rd world countries to 1st world countries. There's a reason why Thailand and South Korea started off in the same place and South Korea developed. That reason will profoundly irritate anybody who pledges allegiance to the holy altar of free markets, though.
- fsloth 11y ago
  This this this. Freemarket aficionados often conveniently forget that for e.g. South Korea the basis for it's current economic status was forged by strict government controls and not just by "letting markets do it". The point is, there is very little value in evaluating economic strategies just through textbook orthodoxy.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>This is just basic economics. "Basic economics" as some people call it, is a religion, not a science. Basic neoliberalism, as taught in econ 101, is just as much a shallow pretext for maintaining existing power structures as Stalinism/Marxism was in the Soviet Union, and its predictive power is close to non-existent. Guess why, for example, David Koch donated to Florida State University and then demanded the right to determine their economics syllabus? So he gets to dictate what counts as "basic economics".
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  According to [0], the Koch foundation made funding of Florida State University conditional on keeping Bruce Benson, a self-described "libertarian anarchist" as department chair. But anyone who calls themselves a libertarian anarchist or teaches Austrian economics is on the fringe of academic economics. In fact it is so non-mainstream that there is an article[1] written for potential PhD students to help find PhD programs that do focus on Austrian economics. [0] http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/12/15495/koch-foundation-proposal-college-teach-our-curriculum-get-millions http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/12/15495/koch-foundat... [1] http://superscholar.org/rankings/economics/top-austrian-free-market-programs/ http://superscholar.org/rankings/economics/top-austrian-free...

by tedks 11y ago

MrBuddyCasino 11y ago

That is a very simplistic world view. Have you ever been to Europe? Central and northern Europe are very successful economically. I know several people that once worked for an american firm, and won't ever do so again. I have never heard that about swiss, swedish or german firms. You might want to check out these GDP stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Current_world_economic_league_table_of_largest_economies_in_the_world_by_GDP_and_share_of_global_economic_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Current_world_ec... The US and Europe are pretty close. The PIGS states have issues, but eastern Europe still has huge growth rates.

rorykoehler 11y ago
That's because you haven't heard from former Rocket Internet employees.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  Oh I have. They usually will never again work for Rocket Internet, but still work for other german firms.
  - rorykoehler 11y ago
    Good point.. I misread your post. Also I couldn't resist a sly dig haha
ams6110 11y ago
It's very individual, and not unique to the USA at all. I have worked in the USA for over 20 years and am thankful that I have never had what I would consider an uncivil boss or supervisor. Demanding at times, yes, playing politics to advance themselves, yes ... but never just overtly rude or mean. Europe does not avoid this phenomenon. Human nature is human nature. There are bullies and assholes everywhere.

4lejandrito 11y ago

I think like you, but I am not based on specific evidence, just feelings. Could you suggest some literature that goes deeper into this topic?

tedks 11y ago
With respect, I think that it's best for people to find these things on their own. The crimethought comes to you naturally at that point, without your being able to distinguish it as crimethink until it's too late.

encoderer 11y ago

Employee happiness is absolutely relevant to P&L. Happy employees are more productive and have less turnover. Companies already know this. It becomes a game of "how little must we do" but it's far from the sweatshop imagery I saw while reading your comment. I grew up middle class in middle America and it's not just the SF tech scene I've made my career in; I grew up in a world of company picnics and "4 10s" work weeks. Also, layoffs and plant closures. I'm not naive to the nature of American business, I just have inclusive opinions about how companies can be run profitably. And doubly so in tech.

rowdybully 11y ago
Employee happiness is relevant to profit/loss, unless it isn't. Look at Walmart: Profits are fine, and employees are noticeably unhappy. Don't delude yourself with idealism. Capitalism is the way it is and it's not right or wrong any more than a beaver building a dam.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  "Capitalism is the way it is and it's not right or wrong any more than a beaver building a dam." I disagree. Capitalism being the way it is doesn't mean that should be the end goal of society.
- quanticle 11y ago
  Yes, let's look at Walmart. Walmart is increasing wages and staffing across the board because it's getting its clock cleaned by Target, CostCo and other retailers that are willing to pay more and grant better benefits, and therefore get employees who are willing to do more than just the bare minimum.
  - rowdybully 11y ago
    You don't know your ass from your head. Before you go spouting off untruths you know zero about, go read the respective companies 10-Ks, moron.
zhte415 11y ago

static_noise 11y ago

You're telling it like it is. But does it have to be this way and does it have to stay this way? Once the competition is eliminated the wheels of capitalism start to lose ground. I'm not really sure if our cargo cult of "work work work" at all costs can be upkept for very long, especially when resources per capita start tightening.

rorykoehler 11y ago
The question is why? What is the purpose of "work work work" at all costs?
- tedks 11y ago
  Why do you think there's a purpose? The real world is not a narrative. It doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end; there is no rising or falling action; there are no stunning third act reveals; there are no happily ever afters. This is just the behavior that emerges (seemingly inevitably) from the ruleset of capitalism. It's like evolution -- the winners keep winning and the losers drop out. Eventually people adopt the winning strategies. If you're asking on an individual level, the "why" is, from the lowest worker to the CEO, "if I don't do my job well I'll be fired, and my family will starve."
  - PavlovsCat 11y ago
    "The real world" is also in large part a set of habits and decisions, just like capitalism is simply decisions people make each day, instead of making different decisions. As would be any other mode of relating to one another. > the "why" is, from the lowest worker to the CEO, "if I don't do my job well I'll be fired, and my family will starve." That reminded me of two things: a senior nurse responding to her boss saying "you have to X" with "I have to die some day, that's all I have to do" (she was very good at her job too, she just insisted on that being her choice), but also this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ While it is about machines mostly, this "inevitability" of a supposedly "external" system you seem to be already describing, and I'm not sure I see a meaningful difference between "work/profit for the sake of work/profit" and this: Everything the human race has worked for – all of our technology, all of our civilization, all the hopes we invested in our future – might be accidentally handed over to some kind of unfathomable blind idiot alien god that discards all of them, and consciousness itself, in order to participate in some weird fundamental-level mass-energy economy that leads to it disassembling Earth and everything on it for its component atoms. To me capitalism is far from being "last man standing".. just consider all the PR blurb by corporations and politicians. Sure, there's a lot of appeals to egotism or pure numbers as well, but also to all sorts of fuzzy things that apparently do matter enough to enough people that even the most depraved have to pay at least lip service to them. > It's like evolution -- the winners keep winning and the losers drop out. Eventually people adopt the winning strategies. I'm thinking it's also a bit like narcissism and other personality disorders; abuse leads to more abuse. And it becomes a cycle: in a constant state of warfare of all against all, becoming more ruthless is indeed "winning" -- but from another perspective, it might be getting stuck in a very low local optimum. My point being that we have a basically infititely big universe around us, that is infinitely hostile to life and also infinitely loaded with resources and adventures -- an infinite enemy to compete with, if you will, instead of severely crippling our ability as a "team" (and I don't just mean humans) to do so by sniping each other. Imagine a PvE game with friendly fire turned on -- if a bunch of people decided that it's a Free-For-All deathmatch game and start ganging up and spawn killing, then that's what it'll effectively be. Even in an infinite world, they'd never get far from spawn, or discover the more interesting and refined game mechanics. And then the free beta ends, the servers get shut down -- "thanks for playing, I hope you made the best of it" -- the people who had the biggest pile of loot and skulls in this Lord of the Flies scenario would still think they "won". Yeah, they were vastly richer than most others, but compared to what they missed out on, they are infinitely poor. While I'm rambling, I would say evolution would not stop even in the most utopian of hippie societies, simply because there are infinite of hostile places to "conquer"... and in the long run, there are no "winning" strategies anyway, everything dies. But if there is no joy along the way, what's the point? Just because there is no "ever after" doesn't mean there can be no "happily". It somehow being preferable to die with the most toys, or being the last one to turn out the light, the very idea of winners and loosers is ALSO a made up story, a narrative, IMHO. We are stuck with giving life meaning anyway, might as well give it meaning that fulfills us in the here and now AND allows us to reach higher heights, instead living in an endless, aimless race where nobody ever feels happy, until they inevitably get knocked out of it, by others or by the heat death of the universe. Evolution lead among other things to our cognition, to empathy, to cooperation, to joy. These are higher-level functions rather than basic ones. I don't mean to say that makes them "better", because evolution doesn't care either way, but I personally like them lots. And while children for example also test their boundaries, they generally don't seem to "intend" to compete with or exploit their parents or others, they want to learn and be happy and make others happy. That's my impression, which might be worthless, but my impression it is. Some get neglected, some get broken, and those inevitably cannot see more than what they can see, they think everybody else is also empty or hurting inside, and just seeking to exploit others to get ahead - but I would claim (or wishfully think? I grant it may be the latter) that this is rather unhealthy narcissism than "perfectly natural", and rather the result of a limitation or trauma, while conversely having empathy and compassion don't preclude having elbows if need be.. it just means having more options than just elbows.

rorykoehler 11y ago

I mostly agree however the American ideology and it's hunger for profit and domination is resulting in it cannibalizing itself. The trade agreements are a case in point as they are (from what I have read as I know their contents are still largely secret) by very definition protectionist. That said it is a very different type of protectionism to European protectionism. In Europe the protectionism was for social purposes (protecting local jobs etc) while in the US it is to give US corporations unencumbered access to the global economy (ie protecting the interests of unfettered corporatism). Looking a bit further down the road we can see that Marx was amazingly right, just way too before his time. Capitalism's ruthless march toward ever greater efficiency means it will end up undermining itself. There is no other possible outcome.

tedks 11y ago
This is a very wrong-headed view. There are a variety of other outcomes. For example, we could develop fusion power and perfect generalized manufacturing (3d printing), and have a massive die-off where only the top 1% of wealth holders survive as they disconnect themselves from labor classes and enjoy a post-scarcity economy where they trade influence by creating and playing ever-more-indirect markets. Or they could just de facto enslave labor classes rather than letting them die off. There are plenty of outcomes other than "capitalism undermines itself." It's possible to have faith without being religious, and Marx is a great example.
douche 11y ago
The American capitalist system is modeled on the European ideal. Before there were the Koch Bros. there was Krupp, Armstrong, Vickers, and I.G. Farben.

millstone 11y ago

Who says that being nice is a competitive disadvantage? Being mean or stingy to employees makes them less motivated, increases turnover, and ensures you only get the people that nobody else wants to hire. Costco is an example of a retailer that treats its employees well, and enjoys turnover rates a fraction of the industry norm. That means greater productivity, and lower hiring and training costs. The problem is not optimizing for profit, but optimizing for quarterly profit. Short-term thinking for short-term profit but long-term costs.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Economic protectionism has been an integral part of U.S. policy since the 1850s or so. Politicians were pretty big on tariffs and land law acts for nearly a century, though they have since declined in favor of gunboat diplomacy.

crdoconnor 11y ago
It's also how every single one of the Asian tigers built themselves up from 3rd world countries to 1st world countries. There's a reason why Thailand and South Korea started off in the same place and South Korea developed. That reason will profoundly irritate anybody who pledges allegiance to the holy altar of free markets, though.
fsloth 11y ago
This this this. Freemarket aficionados often conveniently forget that for e.g. South Korea the basis for it's current economic status was forged by strict government controls and not just by "letting markets do it". The point is, there is very little value in evaluating economic strategies just through textbook orthodoxy.

crdoconnor 11y ago

>This is just basic economics. "Basic economics" as some people call it, is a religion, not a science. Basic neoliberalism, as taught in econ 101, is just as much a shallow pretext for maintaining existing power structures as Stalinism/Marxism was in the Soviet Union, and its predictive power is close to non-existent. Guess why, for example, David Koch donated to Florida State University and then demanded the right to determine their economics syllabus? So he gets to dictate what counts as "basic economics".

JesperRavn 11y ago
According to [0], the Koch foundation made funding of Florida State University conditional on keeping Bruce Benson, a self-described "libertarian anarchist" as department chair. But anyone who calls themselves a libertarian anarchist or teaches Austrian economics is on the fringe of academic economics. In fact it is so non-mainstream that there is an article[1] written for potential PhD students to help find PhD programs that do focus on Austrian economics. [0] http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/12/15495/koch-foundation-proposal-college-teach-our-curriculum-get-millions http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/12/15495/koch-foundat... [1] http://superscholar.org/rankings/economics/top-austrian-free-market-programs/ http://superscholar.org/rankings/economics/top-austrian-free...