Comment on Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month agoAll companies are evil.
Disagree. Publicly traded companies are amoral, so whether they do something good or evil depends on what’s profitable.
Healthy competition tends to make “evil” actions unprofitable. Google doesn’t have healthy competition, hence the current situation.
These companies aren’t the bad guys in the same way that weeds in your garden aren’t “bad.” If you don’t want weeds to take over, make sure there’s sufficient competition and incentives so desirable plants crowd them out, and stay on top of the handful of weeds that take root. We’ve neglected the garden for decades and allowed some truly nasty weeds in, but that doesn’t make the weeds “evil,” that means we were poor gardeners.
kava@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To me, apathy and amorality when the consequences are harm towards others is evil. It’s sort of like if a driver was in a rush and ran over a protestor on his way to work.
Sure, he did not wish any harm on the protestor. He just simply needed to get past them and chose the most effective and efficient path.
It’s an amoral act but the act (and the driver) is still evil. Evil is not just a mustache twirling genocidal dictator or sadistic serial killers… In fact, the amoral does infinitely more harm than the malicious.
Competition helps. I agree that this negative aspect of capitalism is exponentially magnified when monopolies form.
The thing is, in capitalist the wealth tends to snowball. Wealth is power and wealth buys influence. Look at how Disney singlehandedly changed copyright law when Mickey Mouse was about to enter public domain. Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game. So it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.
This position we are in is the natural consequence of free market capitalism. I agree that free market is better. But this is the grown up version of free market. There was never going to be any other scenario but the one we are in.
We can debate on the ontology of the world evil. It really is an interesting debate. But for all practical purposes, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference? Whether they want to kill you indirectly through starvation or don’t want to kill you- you’re dead either way.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The issue with your driver analogy is that the driver has to make a conscious decision that their convenience is worth more than a human life. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the driver is evil.
Likewise for your Nazi example, the choice to arrest and deport people because of their religious, ethnic, or cultural affiliation is evil. That should absolutely go without saying, as should killing people for convenience or profit.
Corporations are rarely in that situation, and if they actively choose to kill people, the decision makers should join the driver and Nazis in prison.
As it should. And snowballs tend to burst on impact. Look at GE or Sears, they used to absolutely dominate, but they imploded because they couldn’t adapt to the competition.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, innovators profit massively from the value they create, and when they stop innovating, they fail.
The problem is that large businesses rarely fail and get bailed out. We should’ve had a ton of banks close in 2008, but instead their execs got golden parachutes and failing businesses just consolidated into even larger entities. The message that sends is that companies can get away with murder, as long as they are “too big to fail.” The problem there wasn’t the cheating (it was a problem, don’t get me wrong), but the lack of consequences. We should’ve seen execs being carted off to jail, having their assets confiscated to help make restitution for their crimes. But instead we rewarded them.
This isn’t a failure of capitalism, it’s corruption in government.
And that’s the problem. My point is: don’t hate the player, hate the game. Demand better representation, and real consequences for corruption.
I’m guessing if you looked into Google/Alphabet, you could find dozens if not hundreds of crimes committed that helped them get the market share they have, and most of those likely went unprosecuted or had ineffective penalties. Likewise for other large orgs like Microsoft and Amazon.
Yet everyone seems to blame the corporations and not the government. You blame Disney for our terrible copyright laws, yet Disney didn’t pass or sign that law, they merely lobbied for it. The problem isn’t Disney, the problem is Congress.
Weeds killing your crops is a symptom of the problem, which is the lack of maintenance of the garden. The weeds didn’t kill your family, your lack of preventative action did.
Likewise, corporations taking advantage of an ineffective government isn’t the problem, the ineffective government is. Fix ththe gardener and the garden will prosper. But a bad gardener is worse than no gardener, because nature at least finds a way for crops to survive without anyone plucking the weeds.
kava@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think one thing we need to get out of the way is that the political system and the economic system are intertwined. There is no way to have a democratic capitalist society without having one influence the other.
If we go back to Adam Smith- he’s seen as the father of economics. But he didn’t consider himself an economist. He considered a moral philosopher and a political economist. The political system and the economic system are one and the same.
You believe these large corporations gaining too much influence is because of poor maintenance. Because of a corrupt government. You believe it’s because we’re not enforcing our anti-trust laws and so on.
I disagree and say this was always inevitable. It is impossible to keep your garden free of weeds starting from a free market economy. Again- wealth snowballs and wealth buys influence.
It’s a simple cause and effect. As long as the profit incentive is the main motivator in our political economy, the political system will be shaped by those with the most money. And they have the incentive to remove those free-market systems in order to maximize their own profit.
It’s a deterministic cycle. Free market capitalism -> late stage capitalism -> fascism
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Sure, but that overlap should be as small as possible while still ensuring a competitive market.
Socialists and other related academics have been throwing this term around since WW2, and every couple decades they move the goalposts. It’s little more than a scary story they tell to convince people to go along with their authoritarian ideas. It’s really not that different from Hitler blaming Jews for all of society’s problems, just with a socialist flavor instead of a fascist one.
The truth is that wealthy people need the working class to buy their stuff, and buying their stuff increases the workers’ standard of living. Standard of living has been rising pretty consistently in developed countries, especially those with relatively free markets.
Yes, wealth inequality is growing (which is a problem), but that doesn’t mean the poor are getting poorer. Quite the opposite in fact, if you look at the data, people of all economic classes are better off year over year.
A lot of the problem is self inflicted IMO. The process goes something like this:
And then we have the corrupt two party system where most representatives don’t have much actual competition for their seat, as long as they have more funding (conveniently provided by helpful lobbies from 3). The longer a rep stays in office, the more they tend to listen to the big players.
It’s not impossible to fix the problems, we just need to stop trying to use government to solve everything. Government works best when it’s simple, special interests love complexity, so we should simplify the law so it’s easier for people to tell when they’re getting screwed.
For example, the IRA is an incredibly simple retirement program. You open an account at a brokerage or bank for free and then buy stuff, and taxes are either up front or upon withdrawal. Some brokerages are cheaper than others, so you can shop around for the features and costs you want. The 401k is incredibly complex, and because it’s negotiated by employers, a lot end up being expensive for customers (e.g. mine has a 0.10% asset fee on top of fund fees), all because financial institutions want a cut. The plan is selected by HR, and employees don’t get a choice other than participate or not. Taxes are complex because Turbo Tax wants to keep their customers. And so on.
Here’s a quote from the author of my favorite book:
The problem isn’t with corporations, they’re largely a constant. The problem is with government getting bloated and losing the plot because everyone tries to use it to solve their pet problem and the net winners are the lobbies.