[mchaynes]

The profit motive corrupts all. We need to kill capitalism in its current form for these companies to stop being terrible and evil.

There are constant articles on HN about why <insert big company> is doing <terrible monopolistic thing>, and we inevitably talk about how these companies are doing horrible things, while others then go on to say “well look at all the value they’re bringing”. As if both can’t be true at once. It’s an embarrassingly reductive back and forth.

These companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize the stock price. This inevitably leads to this behavior.

Of course, everyone on this site secretly wants to build the “next big thing” so they can get famous and incredibly wealthy. You can only become that rich under the current system, so instead of just understanding the fundamental reasons why we see this behavior again and again and again, we bicker about the finer points of governance of these corporations. It’s like arguing about what size bandaid to put over a gaping chest wound.

This site is full of smart people, but our collective greed makes us seem pretty damn stupid

[manquer]

It was not like Apple was a good considerate benevolent dictator before power got to their head. They have always been like this.

Apple won't have had the resources to develop something the Apple Silicon or most other products, if they aren't ruthless about their profit.

Is it worth the cost for society ? Depends on the POV, it sucks to be the handicraft producer when a big factory opens up, but more people do get product and benefit from it.

[mchaynes]

We can build amazing products and not be terrible to other people/companies. Companies rely on public funding and public technologies and therefore are accountable to do right by the public. We always make this false dichotomy of “good products or good companies” and it’s just not true

[manquer]

Yet i don't see that happening, what public funding does Apple product has really depended on ?

R&D is only part of taking a product to users. There is a lot of steps in between , marketing , support , distribution , manufacturing, packaging a new tech into viable a value proposition and so on.

Research is important , but purely research or even better tech alone is insufficient, there are plenty of examples of companies who have great R&D but failed to make useful products used by real people at scale (aka commericalize) .

[politician]

Can you suggest something less drastic than eliminate capitalism? For example, “enforce existing anti—trust regulation”. Tossing out a system that basically works in the hopes that a complete rewrite will solve all of our problems never works.

[neolefty]

I agree that throwing out what we have is a recipe for disaster and reconstitution in the same or worse form. But I think we can build anew from within, constructively.

I like the Baha'i view that breaks it down into 3 components: the individual, community, and institutions, and then works on gradually reforming each of them, and recognizing their interactions. Here's my summary; there are undoubtedly better summaries out there too:

* Individual: Empower people to act on ethics first, and material benefit second — by emphasizing the inherent value of ethics, based on the view of humans as intellectual/spiritual as well as physical. Educate them to be good electors (see Institutions, below).

* Community: This is the one I understand least, but I think it's about the emergent behaviors of groups of people who interact informally. Like a neighborhood or interest group.

* Institutions: Reform their selection process & functioning. There are plenty of people who would make great public servants, but they are precisely the people who avoid our current electoral processes which are so poisonous and dumb. So have elections that focus on the qualities that are good for office — caring for the well-being of the whole, wisdom, appropriate skills & abilities — and prohibit all campaigning or discussion of individuals. You'd think it's impossible, but the Baha'i electoral process actually works in practice and people love it.

All of these need reform. A good place to look at current Baha'i thinking is the "Baha'i International Community" website: https://www.bic.org/ which is kind of a public policy outreach site.

[kchameleon1234]

> Tossing out a system that basically works in the hopes that a complete rewrite will solve all of our problems never works

Does it "basically work" though? You are, for example, aware that profit motives have driven things like:

- the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;

- the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its allies in the early 2000s;

- the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;

- the instance by airlines to continue flying completely empty planes all over the EU "to keep takeoff and landing times";

- the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);

- the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while still reaping massive profits off those sales);

- etc, etc, etc.

I don't disagree that we need some intermediate solution like enforcing existing anti-trust legislation, repealing anti-union restrictions that outlaw effective labor organizing techniques, actually enacting harsh and swift consequences on companies that continue to destroy the environment (and the people who live in it).

But those are only short term solutions to immediate harms being perpetuated by a system that has for well over a century brought death and destruction to the earth and its people... not to mention what capitalism's ancestors did in the never-ending, blood-thirsty western colonial expansion throughout the globe.

So yes, let's enforce anti-trust laws... but let's not do that and think that alone will solve the myriad problems that have been thrust upon the peoples of the earth by a small number of extremely rich, profit driven people. And let's definitely not claim that the system that props up and perpetuates that behavior "basically works" when for most of the people of the world it patently does not "basically work".

I don't know what the ideal system is. I have my own utopian visions but I acknowledge they'll likely never come to pass. But we _have_ to try something different than what we're doing now. The current global economic trajectory is a deathwish that most people have not consented to.

(Edited to fix list formatting)

[gowld]

> the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;

This was government not putting the effort in, not capitalism.

> the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its allies in the early 2000s;

Does the Communist invasion of Eastern Europe and Afghanistan count?

> the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;

They are doing that because people want to eat steak.

> - the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);

Your idea is that without getting paid, people will just provide public health work for free, because they .... ?

> the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while still reaping massive profits off those sales);

OK at this point it's clear that your problem is with material consumption , not capitalism.

[mchaynes]

> Your idea is that without getting paid, people will just provide public health work for free, because they .... ?

Because it’s the right thing to do, and people like helping each other and doing the right thing. There are other motivating factors for most people over money. Human beings are generally good and generally do the right thing.

[johnthewise]

People are many things at the same time. You can't just count on one aspect and hope things go well all the time. It's like bitcoin network never put in the proof of work and relied on people's word to verify transactions. Any system that is to endure should be resilient and relying on peoples good intentions is not just good foundations. Ideal system should assume people have bad motives and intentions(worst case), then set up incentives for them to produce good outcomes. I'm also certain we mortals can't come up with such an ideal system or anything close to it, look how long it took to come up with rules and incentives to prevent digital double-spend. Best we can hope to do is iterate our way through that direction, otherwise we can't possibly wrap our heads around such a complex and dynamic system and predict its outcomes.

[buscoquadnary]

If we talk at that level though there are lots of other terrible things at that level of crime. The alternative to capitalism, meaning private ownership of capital, is collective or state control of capital.

If we start talking about terrible things done by collectively or state owner endeavors we find things just as terrible like the holomdor, the 5 Year Leap. I mean don't get me wrong Apple is doing some seriously terrible things with their power grabs and monopolies, but I don't know if equates to 5 million dead of famine in 5 years, and although Google is violating my privacy and sucking up everyone's data I would prefer that over being loaded on a train to a concentration camp.

My point isn't to exonerate capitalism, because Nestle is a truly despicable company and have committed crimes of close to the same magnitude, but to believe that just changing the system is going to magically make everything better is in my opinion naive, because no matter how great you try and make your system if you fill it entirely with bad people it will result in bad outcomes.

Additionally we often find that during times of large scale change in "systems" it is more often than not the most ruthless, sociopathic, despotic individuals rise to the top because they are most willing to do whatever it takes to retain power. In contrast it seems like the activist investors that amass capital and attempt to force changes in company through monetary means is much less disruptive for the vast majority of people's lives.

EDIT: For some line breaks and missing word.

[mchaynes]

I don’t disagree, but fundamentally we need to remove the concept of complete “private ownership” in order to truly transfer power from the ultra powerful to the common people. If Mark Zuckerberg can still influence billions of people on a whim, then we haven’t fixed the fundamental problem. I don’t see a way to keep our system going and also give the people back the power they deserve. If there is a way, then sure let’s do it.

Those other governments had high concentrations of power at the top. They also stifled freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Too much power concentrated in one place is what causes horrible stuff. Serfs and Kings, Bureaucrats and common people, 1%’ers and poor people, etc.

It all comes down to concentrations of power.