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Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

theatlantic.com

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Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#71

Post by jpttsn »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #60
jpttsn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I say the responsibility of a corporation is to replant the rainforest, or to expand human wisdom, or to entertain the public with a compelling narrative of underdogs beating titans, then I'm clearly just expressing my opinion. The question of what a company "ought to do" is obviously a question of values, not fact. It's just tiresome to rebut opinions with "you can't prove that!" or "does the law say so?" Of cour…

>It's just tiresome to rebut opinions with "you can't prove that!" or "does the law say so?" My original comment is a rebutting of popular opinion with law, is it not?

I don't think so; you're rebutting a popular opinion with the absence of law as your argument.

Like arguing that "there's no law that says the main character in a movie should be relatable."

Technically, of course, you're right. Yet I suspect stressing that fact is a straw man argument.

Who really believes companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value?

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#72

Post by ue_ »

eldavido wrote: post #11

There is so much wrong with this article I hardly know where to begin. First, it presumes a 19th-century separation of "capital" and "labor" where "capital" is a bunch of greedy pigs trying their damndest to exploit labor, with little crossover between the two groups. The modern reality is way more complicated. Almost every member of "labor" has some form of pension, 401(k), IRA, or personal stock holding, and even i…

>First, it presumes a 19th-century separation of "capital" and "labor" where "capital" is a bunch of greedy pigs trying their damndest to exploit labor, with little crossover between the two groups.

If you're talking about Marxism, you're misunderstanding the division between bourgeoisie and proletarians; stocks, pensions, 401k, whatever, does not count as means of production; the division is between the proletarians, who almost always have nothing to sell but their labour-power and the bourgeoisie, i.e a class of people who own the means of production.

Further, you're using "exploit" as a prejorative, which it isn't necessarily; Marx's idea of exploitation is removed from what we think of as exploitation (in a negative sense); it's exploitation just as you'd exploit a car or something like that - you make use of it, use it up. Machines are also exploited in the same way. Nevertheless, the goal of the Marxists and indeed Communists in general is to abolish this exploitation.

Your simplification does not make the anti-capitalist plight any weaker, and in fact it just goes to show how much the ideas of the Communists are miscommunicated and misinterpreted. It could be said, with the shrinking of the number of people who are self-employed (actually, things like freelance programming forming an exception) that the model of proletarians and bourgeoisie is just as relevant if not moreso today than it was in the 19th century.

I advise you to read modern Marxist works, such as Spectres of Marx, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, and particularly almost all of Zizek's work (in particular The Sublime Object of Ideology), which I must recommend. Of particular note is The Culture Industry by Adorno, commonly associated with the Frankfurt School.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#73

Post by naravara »

joeyo wrote: post #44
dv_dt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pensions aren't portable - in the modern labor market where people are expected to have multiple emplyers and possibly even career arcs, that's a pretty limiting. Personally, I feel that too many pensions plans (private and state) are at financial risk and have seen too many companies go under (wiping out pensions), or severely cut back (changing their payouts and coverage). Really, I'd prefer something more portable…

> Pensions aren't portable - in the modern labor market > where people are expected to have multiple emplyers and > possibly even career arcs, that's a pretty limiting. Which is the cause and which is the effect? Do workers want to have multiple employers and career arcs?

Portability is nice. I’ve seen so many people in government just trying to ride it out until they qualify for the pension. They don’t really care about the job and are just trying to avoid having to do anything until it’s time to retire. Long-standing structural problems just get covered up and ignored for the next chump to deal with.

It also represents a huge tax on people who want to be able to change jobs. I would prefer a world where people feel more free to leave jobs that suck or aren’t good fits for them. Locking them down with pensions, options plans, or 401k matching programs that vest over time are all mechanisms for employers to recapture what would have been paid out as wages from employees who leave early (who often tend to be younger).

A UBI that puts you somewhere above the poverty line supplemented with a forced savings program seems like the best move. It gives you portability, simplifies the system and administrative burden, and offers a hedge against the vagaries of the market.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#74

Post by mwfunk »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #51
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #7

It's worth mentioning on a post like this that there is no legal (or historical) basis for the idea that maximizing shareholder value is the primary concern of a corporation. See these two sources: https://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism [pdf] http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

> there is no legal (or historical) basis for the idea that maximizing shareholder value is the primary concern of a corporation Please folks, stop posting comments if you don't have the slightest concept of how businesses work. OK, let me demonstrate how flawed this is by using a hypothetical scenario. A friend of yours has an idea for a business. She goes to you and two other friends. She needs $300K to launch the…

There's a pretty wide range of corporate behavior that lie in between "maximize shareholder value" taking priority over all other considerations, and shareholders getting ripped off by the company they invested in.

There are more than two mutually exclusive options for how a company should prioritize its resources.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#75

Post by robotresearcher »

luxuryballs wrote: post #69
robotresearcher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you think you can manage and allocate resources better than your government. This phrase gets used from time to time to give some moral or net efficiency argument for avoiding taxes. I don't think it's useful. A corporation and government have completely different responsibilities and constituencies. Of course Apple can allocate resources better for Apple than the government would choose to, because Apple has no…

The other side of the coin is that regardless of who is holding the money the government not being able to spend it could be considered a better allocation just because they are so damn wasteful. Just because the government SHOULD be correct doesn't mean it actually is, and just because a law says money shall be allocated for X doesn't mean any real value is coming out of X, and the work the money is doing by being k…

Again, that claim is easily refuted by considering the state of medical spending in the US.

Unless by 'government' you mean only the US government. Many other governments are daily demonstrating their ability to deliver more affordable and cost-effective healthcare than the US.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#77

Post by eldavido »

ue_ wrote: post #72
eldavido wrote: post #11

There is so much wrong with this article I hardly know where to begin. First, it presumes a 19th-century separation of "capital" and "labor" where "capital" is a bunch of greedy pigs trying their damndest to exploit labor, with little crossover between the two groups. The modern reality is way more complicated. Almost every member of "labor" has some form of pension, 401(k), IRA, or personal stock holding, and even i…

>First, it presumes a 19th-century separation of "capital" and "labor" where "capital" is a bunch of greedy pigs trying their damndest to exploit labor, with little crossover between the two groups. If you're talking about Marxism, you're misunderstanding the division between bourgeoisie and proletarians; stocks, pensions, 401k, whatever, does not count as means of production; the division is between the proletarians…

Thank you for this comment. I'm sorry it got downvoted and I disagree with much of what's written, but I appreciate the thoughtfulness and general tone.

I have actually read and thought about the Communist Manifesto quite a lot, but not the later works you cited. I'll add them to my reading list.

The biggest problem I have with classical Marxism is that it presupposes a sort of material capital that can be accumulated. While there are certain sectors in which "assets" in the traditional sense, whether physical ones like timber, rental real estate, etc. or the softer "intellectual property" play a dominant role, this doesn't seem to be what's driving the world forward today.

I think "reputationism", or maybe "Hollywood capitalism", is a better descriptor for how Hollywood or SV work today. Witness the sky-high compensation of CEOs, athletes, actors, real estate developers, financiers, and others whose reputations give them access to opportunities most traditional "labor" can only dream of. In fact, if you read Piketty, he makes the point that capital's share of income relative to labor has actually decreased in the past decades, even as very highly compensated labor's share has skyrocketed.

The real enemy, IMO, is "empty suits" with no skin in the game (borrowing from Taleb) - people like analysts, non-founding CEOs, private equity/VC managers who commit only 5% of the capital of their funds, and others in positions of "heads I win, tails you lose". I really admire people who stick to their beliefs and bet with their own money/credibility (like this http://longbets.org/362/) - I have much less respect for the guys blabbing on CNBC every day who just talk, talk, talk.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#78

Post by JCzynski »

williamstein wrote: post #14
jtraffic wrote: post #2

> they embody two alternative models of capitalism, and the one that wins out will shape the future of the economy. Even in such a vague form, this is a touch sensationalist. The impact of 'the one that wins' may be negligible. There also may be no winner.

Agreed. The article assumes that business/investment/etc. is a zero-sum game.

Not exactly. It says that "which strategy for growth is best?" has only one answer. Which is true.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#79

Post by JCzynski »

auserperson wrote: post #3

I don't respect any article about the future of economy that does not take into consideration climate change, sustainability and the anthropocene. Capitalism will have to change dramatically soon, our world is collapsing. But sure. let's talk about apple vs google. I am not a fan of capitalism, but I'm not even criticizing capitalism per se, only that all big companies nowadays are existing in a world and way of prod…

Capitalism won't change. It has no reason to; those changes don't affect the underlying processes of the economy, they just change the circumstances and incentives.

Re: Apple and Google embody two alternative models of capitalism

#80

Post by vilmosi »

krick wrote: post #46
skywhopper wrote: post #40

I'm disappointed that two other large pieces of the economic puzzle are left out: workers and government. Corporations have more cash than they know what to do with? That means that 1) wages are too low, and 2) taxes are too low. More specific to Apple's case, the hoarding of cash overseas to avoid paying US taxes on it is one of many poisonous symptoms of our international capitalism. The amount of tax Apple would p…

I guess this may be not popular opinion here, but I don't see anything wrong with legally avoiding taxes. It might be wrong that the whole system is convoluted enough that this would be very hard for your average honest citizen, but easy enough for resourceful corporation, if anything. But avoiding taxes seems only logical, if you think you can manage and allocate resources better than your government. And rest assur…

> I guess this may be not popular opinion here, but I don't see anything wrong with legally avoiding taxes

The problem is that you can legally avoid taxes. Are we so used to this concept that we don't see its own hypocrisy?

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