> The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation. Providing the shareholders with a return on their investments is a requirement, not an objective. I love this quote. At first it sounds very critical, but thinking about it more it reveals something deeper: companies are a collection o…
Only maximizing happiness for the controlling workers. Fungible labor is going to be left out because moving on is no real threat from them.
Yes, because everyone at the level of employee is someone being exploited...
Those of us who actually grew up with nothing and suffered through minimum wage labor and were able to change our class and turn our lives around through labor look at you people like you're from another planet.
> The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation. Providing the shareholders with a return on their investments is a requirement, not an objective. I love this quote. At first it sounds very critical, but thinking about it more it reveals something deeper: companies are a collection o…
Yes. And also acknowledge that “happiness” can mean vastly different things to different groups of people. Thus the culture of one company may be very off-putting to some and highly attractive to others.
Don’t tell we need to adapt your standard culture (e.g. new work) because that’s what makes everyone happy.
Only maximizing happiness for the controlling workers. Fungible labor is going to be left out because moving on is no real threat from them.
Yes, because everyone at the level of employee is someone being exploited... Those of us who actually grew up with nothing and suffered through minimum wage labor and were able to change our class and turn our lives around through labor look at you people like you're from another planet.
Both following statements can be true at the same time:
1) It is possible for many to work their way through the labour ladder and find good life.
2) “The System” can incentivise corporations to maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep people from leaving.
Yes, because everyone at the level of employee is someone being exploited... Those of us who actually grew up with nothing and suffered through minimum wage labor and were able to change our class and turn our lives around through labor look at you people like you're from another planet.
Both following statements can be true at the same time: 1) It is possible for many to work their way through the labour ladder and find good life. 2) “The System” can incentivise corporations to maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep people from leaving.
> 2) “The System” can incentivise corporations to maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep people from leaving.
And they can do that without being exploitative. People go to their bosses and ask for more money. Some percentage of the time they get it.
If you were in business for yourself you would have to negotiate your own prices. Being employed isn't really different, just the risk is much less. You're trading something away for the security of a regular paycheck.
> The educational system is not dedicated to produce learning by students, but teaching by teachers—and teaching is a major obstruction to learning. Yes and no. Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt has a different take (one I agree with), which argues that the educational system is dedicated to producing political discipline. Yes, this serves the interest of the teachers, and no, the system is not designed to produce le…
I think the point here is on instructionism vs. constructionism - learning by experience (constructing things) seem to work better and in particular for long term assimilation than learning from instructors telling you. I think Epstein was putting it in Range as something along the lines of "you need to struggle to really learn". Constructionism can take many forms, from hands on projects and workshops, to frequent i…
Right. My point is that I'm not convinced that hands-on projects and workshops, when force-fed to students within the context of a course taken at an educational institution, is inherently more effective than any other teaching method. As someone whose career is in software engineering, and who never had much interest in any of the sciences outside software engineering, I certainly remember having to do hands-on projects in required chemistry, biology, and physics courses... not that I remember much, if any, of it at all. The vast majority of true academic learning is self-directed, and the value of experience is in making mistakes that you are forced to bear the consequences of. "Consequences" do not really exist in a classroom (almost by definition), and grades (particularly in an era of grade inflation that renders them largely meaningless) do not count.
> The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation. Providing the shareholders with a return on their investments is a requirement, not an objective. I love this quote. At first it sounds very critical, but thinking about it more it reveals something deeper: companies are a collection o…
The thing to remember is people are nearly always motivated by selfish impulses, not altruism. (Even the most dedicated communists in the USSR still participated in the black market.)
Any system that relies on people being selfless is doomed to failure.
(Even charity work is selfishly motivated - people like the status they get from donating to charity, praise from their social circle, and feeling good from doing it.)
> The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation. Providing the shareholders with a return on their investments is a requirement, not an objective. I love this quote. At first it sounds very critical, but thinking about it more it reveals something deeper: companies are a collection o…
> companies are a collection of people Peter Drucker was on top of this. It's so obvious yet so often forgotten (ignored?). An organization is a group of people. Jumping back to systems thinking. People can respond a number of ways in organizations. Enter 'policy refusal' (see Donella Meadows' systems literature for more). Executive wants A to happen. A is not in employees' best interest. Employees ignore, delay, obf…
What’s your favorite resource on Drucker? I love re-reading his book “The Effective Executive”.
Both following statements can be true at the same time: 1) It is possible for many to work their way through the labour ladder and find good life. 2) “The System” can incentivise corporations to maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep people from leaving.
> 2) “The System” can incentivise corporations to maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep people from leaving. And they can do that without being exploitative. People go to their bosses and ask for more money. Some percentage of the time they get it. If you were in business for yourself you would have to negotiate your own prices. Being empl…
Of course. Some people can do that and nobody I know of has ever said anything different. But what is also true is that some people can’t do it, sometimes people are trading their lives away for only basic sustenance and no job security.
Only maximizing happiness for the controlling workers. Fungible labor is going to be left out because moving on is no real threat from them.
Yes, because everyone at the level of employee is someone being exploited... Those of us who actually grew up with nothing and suffered through minimum wage labor and were able to change our class and turn our lives around through labor look at you people like you're from another planet.
No one is saying that every single employee at the bottom is being exploited - just that exploitation is rational for those in power, because there's no particular incentive for them to completely avoid it.
They shouldn't do it too much, or then society responds in various ways (unions, legislation, etc.), so in that sense it's much like shareholder value. The company owners cannot write themselves a bonus equal to the entire profits of the company, or the shareholders will get mad. But they can certainly write themselves generous bonuses nonetheless. They don't have to completely maximize shareholder value, or completely minimize exploitation; they just have to do enough.
> 2) “The System” can incentivise corporations to maximise transfer of wealth towards the top brass without incentivising it to raise wages any more than only to keep people from leaving. And they can do that without being exploitative. People go to their bosses and ask for more money. Some percentage of the time they get it. If you were in business for yourself you would have to negotiate your own prices. Being empl…
Of course. Some people can do that and nobody I know of has ever said anything different. But what is also true is that some people can’t do it, sometimes people are trading their lives away for only basic sustenance and no job security.
> sometimes people are trading their lives away for only basic sustenance and no job security.
And they're still not being exploited. You're describing people that cannot fend for themselves. Also not everyone you're describing is only receiving basic sustenance. A lot of people in this situation live reasonably middle class lives.