[iammisc]

Can you give an example of the rent-seeking?

> When someone wants to do something everyone knows is wrong, we don't let them.

Yes. that's called enforcing criminal law, and most people would agree with it. Although, I dunno, maybe not in the past two years, it seems more people are okay with letting criminals go.

EDIT: If your claim is that we don't put enough people in jail for breaking the law, I agree with you. I don't see the need to regulate businesses per se. For example, many complain about Amazon and Facebook and want to break it up. I can understand why. I sympathize.

However, Mark Zuckerberg ought to be in jail for conducting social experiments on people without their consent, selling our data, etc. WE don't need to regulate the activities of private enterprise and add more regulation. We just need to actually prosecute people who quite obviously have committed criminal activity.

Same with Jeff Bezos, who owns two businesses (Amazon and the Washington Post) that quite obviously form a conflict of interest. We need no new laws to prevent this kind of conduct.

[vinceguidry]

All of those things would be great. But if we, the most affluent people in the world and best positioned to make our voices heard, make excuses for Zuck, make excuses for Amazon, make excuses for all these businesses that extract wealth without supporting their communities, then we'll just keep building unholy unequal pyramids, where what's normal is completely, irreparably broken, replicating the teetering social structures of the Bronze Age. (I don't back up the points I make drawing from ancient history because HN comment section isn't a place to give history lessons)

We need to not leave it up to the Kalanicks of the world to change the social order, reinventing taxis for fun and profit.

It's more than a change in legal and ethical norms. We need to not fire people who speak their minds for the social good against the company, then further marginalize the already marginalized community they're speaking up for.

We need new social norms.

[iammisc]

> We need to not leave it up to the Kalanicks of the world to change the social order, reinventing taxis for fun and profit.

Why? Uber materially improved my access to taxis. Why does everyone diss on uber's business model (I understand the company itself is a bit meh), but the idea of hailing cab drivers with an app, and then encouraging people to drive (i.e., ridesharing) is a great one.

Ultimately, I'd rather leave it up to individuals to improve their and their community's conditions, then a bureaucrat.

> It's more than a change in legal and ethical norms. We need to not fire people who speak their minds for the social good against the company, then further marginalize the already marginalized community they're speaking up for.

Okay, so I assume you are against the firings of religious employees, standing up for their beliefs? How do you reconcile when a religious employee speaks out against spreading of gender dysphoria as social contagion on facebook, and then a trans employee speaks out against him?

Or is your economic system mainly meant to impose your beliefs on everyone else?

[vinceguidry]

> the idea of hailing cab drivers with an app, and then encouraging people to drive (i.e., ridesharing) is a great one.

I didn't think I'd have to explain this, I thought most here already understood it. But okay. Nothing about hailing cab drivers with an app changes the economics of transportation. What changed the economics was exploitation. Not that the cab industry was really all that much better. But what's wrong with Uber and the gig economy at large is that we're letting huge companies with big budgets get away with not respecting labor norms. And so they have changed those norms, for the worse.

It's a clear-cut example of the tech industry making things better for the well-off, and worse for those trying to scrape by.

[iammisc]

> Not that the cab industry was really all that much better. But what's wrong with Uber and the gig economy at large is that we're letting huge companies with big budgets get away with not respecting labor norms

Hold on hold on. You previously blamed our current corporate system for preventing workers from owning their means of production.

Uber exemplifies the vision you seek... where individual workers own their own means of production. There is no need for a worker coop for drivers. A driver uses one car -- their own. They do not need to own some large capital investment (it's not like the owners need a factory to work). Why should driver A and B share cars together? That's the very vision of shareholding that you deride.

Uber, the company, is obviously not a worker coop, but frankly, its model is the most viable way towards a vision of worker-owned businesses. If you truly desire worker coops, instead of large corporations, then the vision of uber and the system it seeks to achieve ought to be lauded, even if the specifics of uber's implementations should be scorned.

Unfortunately, all the progressive labor activists made such small worker coops illegal. A more sensible solution would have been add a corporate structure that lets drivers band together for certain collectively purchased services (like health insurance and other benefits), without all the reporting requirements of normal corporations. Instead, they basically banned small businesses.

[vinceguidry]

That's... pretty laughable. A worker-owned business would get together to determine what an acceptable and transparent comp scheme would be. Instead the drivers rebel all the time against corporate's intransigent and blatantly-exploitative shenanigans. Hint: it's not because the company sees its workforce as people. If you think there's a viable way to get from here to there, well, I think I can get Bezos to sell you a bridge, on Amazon of course. And we... mostly don't care because who cares about the people who run our cabs, and if they succeed it means ubers are more expensive for us.

Sigh, sometimes I regret being a liberal rather than a leftist, because I can see all the complaints they have about us. I think I'm really done now, I've heard enough. In a nutshell, it's easy to defend the existing order when we're the one's benefiting from it.

[iammisc]

> Instead the drivers rebel all the time against corporate's intransigent and blatantly-exploitative shenanigans. Hint: it's not because the company sees its workforce as people.

For what it's worth, it's not like co-ops are immune to this criticism. For example, Winco had a case a while ago where employees were claiming that they were being mistreated. In a worker co-op with sufficient numbers of members, no individual member is powerful enough to effect change.

> If you think there's a viable way to get from here to there, well, I think I can get Bezos to sell you a bridge, on Amazon of course.

Except there is. Now that Uber has pioneered the model, I've seen worker co-ops pop up in my own town. I imagine these models will grow, as more people feel emboldened to take on such professions now that the model is validated. I don't see why this is such a stretch. It seems to me you have reached a conclusion, and don't seem interested in listening to alternatives.

> Sigh, sometimes I regret being a liberal rather than a leftist, because I can see all the complaints they have about us. I think I'm really done now, I've heard enough. In a nutshell, it's easy to defend the existing order when we're the one's benefiting from it.

Alright man. My family immigrated to this country, my father was working as a slave for a while, and my parents started off with nothing when we were small kids. Trust me, I've not benefited a whole lot from this system. I've probably seen it worse than you. So sick of being gaslit by people who think I'm some privileged WASP kid, and that they know better. Maybe try listening?

[nindalf]

> Can you give an example of the rent-seeking?

I’m not that person but I’ve noticed this pattern in such people. Rent-seeking is anything they don’t like. So it could be landlords charging tenants rent, it could be Apple charging developers 30% “rent”, could be Google charging “rent” on the ad space next to search results, Microsoft charging for Windows even though an additional copy of Windows doesn’t cost them more to produce.

Basically it can be as broad as you want it to be. And these delusional folks say we can stop it by “not letting it happen”. Lol.

[iammisc]

Yeah... I understand the danger of rent-seeking, but I too have noticed this trend. Few can cite an actual example of rent-seeking that ought to be illegal in the general case. It's mostly just like.. company XYZ did something I don't like.

Look, I despise amazon and facebook as much as the next guy, but I don't see why their products or their services ought to be heavily regulated. That's a dangerous road. I just want the law applied fairly, so if the case is that facebook and amazon can kick people off their multi-billion dollar platforms due to their beliefs, then it seems only right that bakers don't have to bake cakes.

Currently, the main behavior I see is that corporations seem exempt from the very laws that individuals apparently have to follow. That seems wrong, and moreover it seems illegal (to be treated differently).