[poof131]

The rampant cynicism regarding corporations is increasingly unhelpful. We’ve had forty years of hands off antitrust regulation and enforcement. We’ve had a bifurcating justice system that doesn’t hold white collar criminals accountable. It hasn’t always been this way and doesn’t have to stay this way. For those interested in the challenges we’re facing with monopolies and individuals trying to effect change, I recommend Matt Stoller’s substack [1].

1. https://mattstoller.substack.com/

[_jal]

I love Matt. But tell me I'm wrong.

Any proposed solution is going to have to explain how to change the very strong financial incentives that lead to people doing the same things over and over.

[javajosh]

It seems every individual has their own process of understanding power, and cynicism is a middle stage. It comes after the beginning stage, the one we learn as kids, that is idealized and fair. This stage is the most important because it defines how things should be. Then, when you start out in the real world, you find out how things really are, and its painful, and that's the value of cynicism: it prevents the pain of disenchantment by pre-disenchanting you about everything.

The third stage seems to be surprisingly rare, as most people either get stuck in stage 1, existing in a kind of shared delusion that all things are fine, despite the evidence that some aren't, or in stage 2, that all things are falling apart, despite evidence that some aren't.

Stage 3 reconciles the previous stages, first by zooming out and seeing how transient and precious life is, civilization is, and how in this perspective, power is itself rather silly. There have been great kingdoms, entire societies, that have arisen and died, even in our brief recorded history. Lowering the stakes like this lets us relax and remember: nothing is forever. No law lasts forever, almost everything we try is an experiment, and it may fail. Armed with a profound knowledge of the absurdity of our large-scale situation, now we can zoom in and do our judging, knowing properly how ignorant we are, how ignorant the actors are, the abuser and victim alike. And we can begin to see opportunities for change. Small scale stuff, firing that abusive person, or even lightweight activism where you change something about your behavior to change things, if only a little. You are not going to have the grand-slam insight that fixes everything, or anything. Such an insight doesn't exist - or maybe it can, but it cannot be transmitted without great care, which presupposes a society that supports transmitting delicate ideas, which is already a society that is functioning pretty well.

Essentially your comment is stage 3, because you remind the reader of the essential mutability of the system, and zoom out and show how its changed, and that there is every possibility of changing back to an earlier state where antitrust was actively enforced (read: successful antitrust enforcement gave political juice). If I could wish a thing into existence, it would be to engender a feeling of lightness to political discussion that comes from realizing this is all an experiment, nothing is written in stone, and we should feel free to try new things, knowing that they might not work, that real lives will be harmed when those experiments fail, but we also get good data about it for future decisions, so it comes out in the wash.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

I wouldn't call it cynicism, just being realistic. It is perfectly normal that a company, from the size to Amazon to sole proprietorship, tend to maximize profit - and one of the main ways is to minimize costs. I'm yet to see a single one that doesn't care about costs and survives.

Now, there are different people, with varying morals. When they advance to major positions in a company, they make various decisions. Unfortunately, our culture rewards the actions and attitude of people like Gates who deliberately made many grey-area decisions that we might call "egoistic" or just plain "evil" if they were aimed at individuals, or like Bezos, who treats human beings in his warehouses like cattle. So I'm sorry, we are not the ones being cynical here.

[caconym_]

Until we have a government willing and able to rein in the excesses of corporations, realism is going to look a lot like cynicism.

I'm not an anti-capitalist, and I don't expect such a government to just fall into my lap without a Herculean effort on the part of somebody, but I don't see any point in sugarcoating the current state of affairs. Corporations and other wealthy interests aren't just a symptom of our current malaise—they're a direct contributor to it.