261–270 of 353 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> does not materially benefit labor in the long run. If you ignore the wages (direct and indirect) paid, then sure. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you can argue that in good faith when the largest expense almost any corporation has is labour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it the driving force behind everything comfortable? If another system was in place are you saying that we would not have had progress towards human comfort? And it seems you are assuming that I wouldn't give up a comfortable life for a more fair and just system with less market externalities? If your measure for success is comfort, then you are the exact person I am trying to convince that we need something el…
Because capitalism is the only system which incentives continual innovation through market competition, removes non-competitive organisations which fail to meet consumer demand from the market, and empowers consumers to make choices which are in their self-determined best interest.
This is what largely I am arguing against. I think the benefits of capitalism have been proven, but the negatives are largely brushed aside. I think this form of capitalism is dangerous (and I should have been more explicit about that in my original comment). My original comment was to get rid of publicly traded companies and remove wall street altogether. Private companies can continue to exist and compete but the profit motive to solely deliver growth and profit to public shareholders has distorted the whole system into pro-forma income sheets at the best and to outright devastation and exploitation at the worst. Private companies would be largely in check because they wouldn't grow unchecked by raising capital they don't have by going public. In so doing, they wouldn't be "in debt" (overloaded non-technical sense of debt) to shareholders. This would lead to more sustainability and less growth over everything mindset. The knock on effects I mentioned would contribute to a more just and fair system.
That said, I am not an economist, but I would like to see this world exist for future generations. And this economic system isn't it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is the driving force behind everything you enjoy about your modern, comfortable life.
As much as I disagree with the OP, this is just as naive. What we enjoy about our modern lives in Western societies is a productive mixed-market economy. The "pure capitalism" argument is just as naive as to pretend it's failed with no redeeming features (which itself, is fallacious because the critics propose no alternative they care to describe - but pointing out a problem with the current system doesn't mean anyth…
I get a monthly magazine called Jacobin that is filled with bough criticisms and alternatives
Trying to find people who aren’t either fundamentally greedy or barely hanging on is nearly impossible so it’s just mostly people exploiting each other.
I am personally trying to build a cooperative that is mutually owned by employees, and it’s structurally really hard because the legal system doesn’t know anything about how to do that. The entire system is built on the assumption of profit maximization. You don’t go into a banking situation, without telling them the type of business, and the type of profit that you expect. so in every single aspect of attempting to do commerce in the United States, or worldwide today, the default functional system, which everybody uses, because there is no alternative system to use, makes it effectively impossible to do something else without totally building it yourself from scratch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this phase we have to talk both to the business and to developers. Only talking to developers isn’t savvy or smart. AWS etc do the same thing. We can have good APIs and make a compelling case to the business why they should pay for it. I agree that sometimes our engagement messaging isn’t quite right for developers. As a developer, I prefer more technical and matter of fact marketing of products. But interestingly…
"At this phase we have to talk both to the business and to developers." How can I send my wife a grocery list, with a twiml bin, and not register a business use-case and provide a US EIN for A2P 10DLC (along with example messages and opt-out mechanisms) ? Haha - just kidding. I know I can't do that. ... and as long as we have you here, what, pray tell, will Twilio do with the pages and pages of use-cases and howtos f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stock buybacks represent excess profits which otherwise could be used for employee bonuses or salary raises. There's a lot of room for argument here, because it's not clear if in the absence of stock buybacks, that excess profits wouldn't go more directly into the pockets of the owners via direct capital withdrawal. But it's not an entirely invalid viewpoint. There really is a lot of room for reasonable minds to disa…
[flagged]
Software development is a really interesting capital class, because the means of production are humans. So it’s not the same as owning a big loom machine and expecting a return on your capital investment, in software the loom is people, you don’t own them and they are directly linked to your value creation. This needs more thought than simple: worker vs owner dichotomy
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> does not materially benefit labor in the long run. If you ignore the wages (direct and indirect) paid, then sure. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you can argue that in good faith when the largest expense almost any corporation has is labour.
Well explained In my link
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some have more money than they can spend in a lifetime while others are homeless. This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth.
> Some have more money than they can spend in a lifetime while others are homeless. > This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth. Who are you blaming? If you're so virtuous, why don't you give away half of your money to a homeless person?
Sorry but I get really frustrated by this lazy kind of 'well why don't you do it?' response. It just feels like you're trying to convince yourself that you're right not to care (to be clear, I have no idea whether you do or not), and implying that anyone who does, and hopes for something better, is just a hypocrite.
Why can’t a company just be happy making several billion dollars a year in profits? Always about growth, growth, growth!
>Why can’t a company just be happy making several billion dollars a year in profits? Twilio doesn't make billions in profits. Twilio has been losing money for years. I'm not sure if Twilio was ever profitable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t think any CEO can be moral if your primary obligation is “shareholder value”. I am really glad I am starting to see a lot more posts here on HN with regard to this fact. Capitalism is literally destroying everything and has proven itself not to be a viable system for long term sustainability and a healthy society and ecosystem. Some of the smartest people on the internet aggregate on HN and some have still…
Capitalism is the driving force behind everything you enjoy about your modern, comfortable life.