I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

Thanks for the pointer. I’ll check it out.

Excited to read the book! Ordering mine today…

I have the seeds of a theory that might explain this: this is the inevitable outcome of technological progress.

Like the American democratic system, Capitalism works best when all major parties involved in the system have comparable power and can keep the other in check. The major parties here are the capital class and the labor class, because Capitalism was conceptualized in an era when value creation could not happen without human labor. As such there was some measure of power available to workers, the logical extreme of which were such distasteful words like "unions" and "strikes". Nevertheless, earlier there was some balance and everyone benefitted (after that messy little Gilded Age affair was sorted out.)

However, technology, in the form of automation, has essentially been a force of labor displacement. Yes, we got amazing improvements in quality of life, but every advance also chipped away at the influence and power held by workers.

On the other side, the capital class have not been idle. Money attracts money... and power and influence. Capitalists have been using those levers to ensure most of the gains of technology accrue to themselves. Lobbying is of course the most obvious example, influence campaigns is another. But relevant to your post, another way this surfaces is the "so-called best practices" you mentioned. There is no "collusion" to suppress wages, just "best practices" of amorphous origins. Which somehow always benefit the shareholders. Funny that.

As you said this has been going on for a long time. But technology is amongst other things, an accelerant, and these trends have simply been amplified to become more noticeable.

And now there's GenAI, which is the ultimate accelerant.

Contrary to most media and HN, however, I think GenAI is not just the ultimate win for capitalists. If you think about it, by the same token(s) that GenAI disintermediates labor, it also disintermediates capital! (Who needs VCs when 1 - 2 motivated folks can launch ambititious projects with GenAI and public clouds?

GenAI is a unique opportunity to restore balance, and could actually be the thing that ushers in the post-Capitalism age... whatever that looks like.

Was it "financial gravity" that made the decision at Google to cheat at the ad exchange?

Was it "financial gravity" that made the decision at DuPont to dump toxic sludge in the environment and make unsafe products?

Or perhaps was it just a group of immoral people chasing more personal gain and wealth?

Humans are too weak and too easily corrupted by wealth, power and shiny things and our political and economic systems place way too much power in the hands of fallible individuals. I expect it to be our downfall.

In all seriousness, yes, individual leadership at the top has to be willing to steelman controversial issues and potential changes of direction, as well engage in unapologetic gatekeeping. At this point we've seen this over and over in tech when observing corporate successes and failures.

For example, we bought a company, and over the next year or so doubled wages in that company. Our "social responsibility" in that case was to spend shareholder money so that workers had a living wage. That doesn't seem to be the story I hear about say Amazon.

Yes, we've also spent money outside of those 3 groups. We contribute to charity. We spend money encouraging staff (and customers) to get cancer screenings etc. We spend (I guess shareholder money) on lots of things that are adjacent to our actual business.

Frankly, in the long run, I think it ultimately helps the business. It makes us "human" and reminds us that we control money, the money does not control us. This permeates through employee relationships, it permeates customer relationships. Ultimately that makes for a stronger company, built to last.

We've had acquisition offers. The shareholders have resisted them so far (despite easy riches) because we've seen what happens to other companies our size when they get acquired. Shareholder interest flows up. Staff (and by extension society) interest goes down. Ultimately most everyone leaves.