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Is my advice too mercenary?

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Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#311

Post by spacemanmatt »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #298
danaris wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trading one person who has no accountability to you in particular or the populace in general with a group of people who have at least some meaningful accountability. That's not an even trade.

Accountability? Who the hell wanted either trump or biden in the last election? There is simply no choice because the political elites offered us this and we need to vote our guy not to let the other guy win. The game is rigged and your vote is not worth much. When you're buying a product instead you're effecting real change and telling society you want more of that. If only we could control law making in the same wa…

> Who the hell wanted either trump or biden

Let's just dismiss the millions of votes cast in 2020, then?

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#312

Post by spacemanmatt »

alexashka wrote: post #292
kbenson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said there's a right answer forever? The whole point of what I said is to make sure you use your own power as a citizen to pass laws and elect those people you think will serve your interests best at the current time, and as soon as that's not the case, try to get rid of them. That's the point of democracy and a representative democracy, the power to keep interests aligned with the people. Often that means puttin…

Our difference lies in the axioms. Your axiom is democracy and what sounds like dozens of other conditions. My axiom is highly intelligent, capable, compassionate people in power. That's it. My position is trivially superior, for many reasons, if only because your exact position is just one of many possibilities that highly intelligent, capable, compassionate people in power can choose to implement.

> My position is trivially superior

That is just your unsupported claim. I don't agree.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#313

Post by spacemanmatt »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #265
nerpderp82 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NAFTA really destroyed the middle class and middle america.

I argue that there is a larger effect: Bill Clinton making the decision that the Democratic Party turn its back on blue collar workers and the middle of the country because just having Wall Street support would be sufficient to win elections. He was not wrong, but it has had a bad effect because the republicans also started to ignore the working class in favor of the financial class. Nationalism, something to be avoi…

Bill Clinton did not give Republicans the idea to ignore blue collar workers. He got it from them.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#314

Post by sharken »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #296
lovich wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It isn't like people were relying on business then business owners got greedy. Do you actually believe that? That all these business owners were running their factories out of the goodness of their hearts and that they only stopped because the government took all the money they had to give out as charity? If that is the case why do we see ultra profitable businesses returning to this form instead of trying to carve…

Being charitable / good to employees is good for business and for retaining workforce in a world where employees don't have anyone else to care for them. If I need to give 40% of my profits (and your salary) to the government and there is an avenue for getting some of that money back when you're in trouble, then go and ask for the government for help. The mistake is in allowing the government to gather more resources…

Being good to employees is in my experience not that clearcut.

Yes, companies spend money on social events to make the employees feel good about the company.

But they won't spend any significant amount of money to keep valued employees, which of course makes said employees look elsewhere.

As an employee you are nearly always better off switching jobs every 18 months, as staying in the same job loses you money.

I wish companies would be more focused on this.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#316

Post by roenxi »

lovich wrote: post #274
ravitation wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this contemporary absurd narrative that businesses, business owners, and/or corporations only recently became greedy, and that this development (of greed), not the system itself, is the root of essentially all the problems with the modern economic system. I think it is quite possible that you were more likely to find a benevolent feudal lord (partially because incentives were more directly, and forcibly, ali…

I’m frankly boggled that this thought is even entertained. We have literal centuries of evidence of corporations oppressing their workers and other peoples in the pursuit of profits, down to actual armies killing striking workers. I agree with you that you’d be more likely to find a benevolent feudal lord as they at least viewed their serfs as theirs and not some sort of cogs to be thrown away once they were worn out…

I'm not sure you are being clear in your argument. If we have literal centuries of evidence of corporations oppressing their workers [up to and including] actual armies killing striking workers ... how do you think it is possible that they've become more greedy recently?

Business greed has capped out since approximately the first 48 hours after the establishment of the first business back in Mesopotamia or wherever.

Possibly you haven't taken a literal enough read of what is being said here, but businesses don't ever get "more greedy". The greed capped out centuries ago. It cannot increase. It is impossible for it to get worse. It is at the human limit, and has been basically forever.

It is like the madness of people who think inflation is because businessesmen suddenly got extra greedy. If they could raise prices to that level they'd have done it in 22AD, not 2022AD. Prices are always as high as businesses can charge, if they go up something that isn't greed has to have changed. We can argue about what.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#317

Post by rglullis »

kbenson wrote: post #126
rmason wrote: post #91

There was a time in America a generation or two ago when you could give your all to a company. Here in Michigan there were a number of small towns where a single employer would dominate. If the town needed something, like a baseball park the owner would simply write a check. If a loyal employee had a health crisis that insurance didn't cover the company owner would write a check. When there were tough economic times…

How is that any different than some fiefdom ruled over by some noble? The whole point of democracy and elective government is that you can't rely on a system like that to be consistently good, whether it's the Duke's son squandering all the wealth and not listening to the people or a shift in management at the company. Just because sometimes there were benevolent companies that decided to contribute to their communit…

You are talking past (way past!) the point of OP.

The point of OP is about a time where local communities mattered more than global output. When those in power were close enough to the common folk to the point where they could face consequences of their abuse. A time where societies had much higher levels of trust.

OP is not talking about "relinquishing the responsibilities to others". Quite the opposite. It's much easier to effectively exercise your rights and responsibilities on a smaller sphere of influence and power.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#318

Post by pjmlp »

Ambolia wrote: post #184
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a time in America a generation or two ago when you could give your all to a company. The problem with these advice columns is that they aren't saying "don't give your all to a company". They end up saying "your company is the enemy ". The original article that this blog refers to was titled "Exit interviews are a trap", which many pointed out was a gross exaggeration. It assumes that every company perform…

I think the message is more "you shouldn't form loyalty ties with your company, because your company won't form them with you". Loyalty ties are still important, but not something you will find in most employer-employee relationships. Better to have a more "extractive" vision of companies and build loyalty ties somewhere else.

Very true indeed, build loyalty ties with team members, you might find them again at other places.

The company, not really. Beyond startup size, every employee is just a number on some spreadsheet.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#319

Post by SamuelAdams »

hnaccount141 wrote: post #256
mcguire wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ...you could give your all to a company. " I believe the phrasing should be "had to give your all to a company." This is the time period when you would retire from the same company you started at, right? And if you had more than a few jobs on your resume (or the infamous missing time), you would have a hard time being hired because you were unreliable. You have a very rose-tinted view of the historical business wor…

> You have a very rose-tinted view of the historical business world. Indeed. We're only a few generations removed from a time when we had companies enlisting private armed security forces and militias to violently break strikes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...

Also in the early 1900’s it was still legal in some states to use child labor. That was only 3-4 generations ago.

Re: Is my advice too mercenary?

#320

Post by q-big »

sharken wrote: post #314
jokethrowaway wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being charitable / good to employees is good for business and for retaining workforce in a world where employees don't have anyone else to care for them. If I need to give 40% of my profits (and your salary) to the government and there is an avenue for getting some of that money back when you're in trouble, then go and ask for the government for help. The mistake is in allowing the government to gather more resources…

Being good to employees is in my experience not that clearcut. Yes, companies spend money on social events to make the employees feel good about the company. But they won't spend any significant amount of money to keep valued employees, which of course makes said employees look elsewhere. As an employee you are nearly always better off switching jobs every 18 months, as staying in the same job loses you money. I wish…

> But they won't spend any significant amount of money to keep valued employees, which of course makes said employees look elsewhere.

Isn't it rather the other way round: you should be very careful to invest too much money into employees who are willing to quit?

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