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Engineered Addictions

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Re: Engineered Addictions

#171

Post by j7ake »

potatolicious wrote: post #101
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, business operators have extremely, extremely broad latitude in how they interpret their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We actually need to combat this notion that somehow exclusive focus on short term returns is somehow legally, morally, or ethically required. It is actually antisocial and obviously destructive.

Yeah, I think it honestly lets founders off the hook too much. In 95% of cases, the founder isn't smashing moral barriers because the VCs and shareholders are making them, or lording the threat of legal action or any some such. In 95% of cases, the founder is smashing through moral barriers because their interests are aligned with the VCs: because they think what they are doing will lead to stupendous mega-wealth for…

It’s also survivorship bias. Given that a start up has explosive growth, it way more likely that they are amoral.

The ones who play the game with integrity and morals never have the type of growth that makes headlines. But I’m sure they exist.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#172

Post by kelseyfrog »

aianus wrote: post #161
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.

One of humans' needs is for status which is by definition zero sum. Same with mating. If anything those two are probably the most important needs so it's not possible to build such a system.

If one of human needs is status and status is zero-sum, then why does it matter what economic system is in place at all? We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care.

Besides why can't one of human needs also be an economic system that doesn't have the failure mode of poverty?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#173

Post by kelseyfrog »

carlosjobim wrote: post #162
kelseyfrog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to choose between common good and shareholder value all else being equal, I'd choose common good every time. We should be suspicious of games that favor shareholder value over common good and repair them. Of course this is harder than it sounds, but letting the person with the most money in a Monopoly game also set the rules is absurd and and obviously wrong. Wrong even without having a consensus reality on…

You're never going to be able to change the economic system for the entire population where you live. Better to vote with your feet and move to a country where all economic activity is arranged for "the common good". There are many, many such countries. You're not the first with that idea. That of course won't mean that you will have the privilege of deciding for everyone else what counts as "the common good". It's u…

One small question: how did those places manage to change the economic system for the entire population?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#174

Post by api »

alephnerd wrote: post #78
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that it's even simpler: The company is the product. When we have that mindset, we absolutely don't care about the thing that we call "our product." It's just food for the actual product, where we want to fatten it up, and sell it to the biggest slaughterhouse. That starts almost immediately. You can't even get an A round, without an "exit plan." I feel that the very existence of an exit plan, dooms the user. N…

> The company is the product. If you've ever dealt with Investor Relations at a public company, this becomes very apparent very quick. Core fundamentals as a business can be strong, but if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis (which does not have to be tangentially related with active initiatives) about your company, you will not succeed. Usually, the onus should fall on PM, EMs, and Sales Leadedship to drive cu…

Isn’t all this company is the product stuff an obvious side effect of wealth inequality?

There is way way more money up top looking for investments than there is in the hands of customers, so it’s far more profitable to chase that money and make the stock the product than it is to care about the actual product much.

It’s a special case of the more general big dumb money problem that happens whenever too much money ends up in too few hands, whether those hands are a government or a few private rich citizens. You end up with this giant piñata of big dumb money and everyone whacking it.

In the old USSR instead of the stock is the product it was the appearance in the eyes of other bureaucrats is the product, but it’s kind of the same phenomenon. The customer isn’t the customer.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#175

Post by neom »

j7ake wrote: post #168
carlosjobim wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're never going to be able to change the economic system for the entire population where you live. Better to vote with your feet and move to a country where all economic activity is arranged for "the common good". There are many, many such countries. You're not the first with that idea. That of course won't mean that you will have the privilege of deciding for everyone else what counts as "the common good". It's u…

Please name a few such places

Off the top of my head, Costa Rica, Bhutan, Canada, Norway/Sweden?

A good read: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/costa-rica-enli...

Re: Engineered Addictions

#176

Post by pstuart »

throwawayoldie wrote: post #33
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, business operators have extremely, extremely broad latitude in how they interpret their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We actually need to combat this notion that somehow exclusive focus on short term returns is somehow legally, morally, or ethically required. It is actually antisocial and obviously destructive.

I have a better idea: let's combat the notion that putting shareholder value ahead of the common good is moral.

The only way to make that happen is to have that common good be priced into the shareholder value, i.e., removing externalities that allow the privatization of profit and the public subsidies of the remediation of the damage done.

Easy peasy, no?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#177

Post by asdf6969 »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #169
asdf6969 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we continue to allow them to exist Who is “we”? I can’t do anything about it. No more than peasants “allow” the king to exist..

Sure you can. You can vote to get rid of corporations, and you'll get outvoted. Ergo: we. You don't understand how kings work if you think it's equivalent to your situation in a western democracy.

[flagged]

Re: Engineered Addictions

#178

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

klik99 wrote: post #20

> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…

I think the VC thing is indicative of the entire thing; the goal is profit and everything is subordinated to that. This is how the system works and how it is designed to work. When profit and some external thing like social responsibility are at odds, profit is going to win out every time. The mercenary mentality rules the scene.

In Magickal Faerieland, we have regulations to align those 2 things by incentivizing the "goodguy" path and/or disincentivizing the "cackling villain" path but we live in reality where money rules and regulatory capture is a thing. So a Facebook or other megacorp can get away with using neuroscience and psychology to engineer a virtual slot machine with a terrible payout and ExxonMobile et al can get away with being an architect of environmental degradation and the accompanying humanitarian disasters.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#179

Post by sorcerer-mar »

asdf6969 wrote: post #177
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can. You can vote to get rid of corporations, and you'll get outvoted. Ergo: we. You don't understand how kings work if you think it's equivalent to your situation in a western democracy.

[flagged]

Formatting issue?

"Voting obviously doesn't work." - Troll

Re: Engineered Addictions

#180

Post by lotsofpulp »

dimal wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then charging users $2/month to use it wouldn’t work? Commenters all across the internet will say they’d pay good money for a site that does something specific that sounds like a good idea. Then when the site is built, you will discover that they will not, in fact, pay any money for it at all. You will continue to add the features they request and the goalposts will continue to move. Social networks are even mo…

People pay for software all the time. Hell I pay $30/month for a fucking email client (Superhuman). But no one has tried it for a social network. I think the problem is that people think a social network is worthless unless you hit Twitter scale, but perhaps lots of smaller, focused social networks at $2/pop could work. People are now saying that Discord is being enshittified, right on schedule. Maybe there's an oppo…

There are comparatively no moderation expenses and public relations’ liability from random uploads with an email client.
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