[shimman]

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society.

This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare this to America where there is maybe one or two players in the entire nation.

Quite pathetic, but we live in a pathetic world so it tracks.

[hcurtiss]

You think Chinese businesses aren’t in it for the profits?

[xbmcuser]

While these private companies exist and are in it for the profits, they don't control the government, meaning any potential price gouging is strictly regulated. The Chinese government actively prevents private companies from becoming too powerful or dominating an industry in the public eye. Instead, they foster competition by promoting and building up alternative companies.

A great example of this is how they handled digital payments. While Visa and Mastercard maintain a monopoly in the West, China faced a similar situation when private mobile payment systems began dominating the market. In response, the government stepped in and forced the ecosystem to open up to competitors.

[chbbbbbbbbj]

I wouldn't characterize it as forcing to "open up". It's true they put an end to some of the most egregious anti-competitive practices, but the Chinese tech ecosyatem, including payments, is still notoriously non-interoperable. For example, there's no way to transfer money between WeChat Pay and Alipay.

The relationship between Tencent/Bytedance/Alibaba is what happens when there are no monopoly laws or they are ineffective: every company fighting tooth and nail to corner every market with a single "super-app". No specialization at all and many races to the bottom, like the recent war between Alibaba, JD and Meituan over instant delivery that made every company involved lose a lot of money.

[handle584]

I don’t get the example, any payment in China is basically a duopoly between WeChat and Alipay, meanwhile in US there are visa, mastercard, American Express and discover counting credit card payment only.

[xbmcuser]

In the US, Visa and Mastercard control the backend infrastructure, giving them the power to decide who can use their services. This is why we see them blocking legal platforms or creators simply because a corporate board disagrees with what they are selling.

In China, this kind of corporate driven censorship doesn't happen. Tech corporations like WeChat and Alipay don't control the payment routing that is run by the state's central network. A merchant just needs a bank account and a QR code, and any customer can use it to pay them. The private apps cannot arbitrarily decide to block a legal merchant based on corporate politics or moral stances.

[handle584]

Exactly as the other comment pointed out, in China you would not run such a business to begin with, let alone to be blocked later by payment processors.

By legal platforms or creators I suppose you mean the dispute between card processors and platforms like steam, pixiv, dslite, etc about nsfw contents like anime child porn? Those stuff are already banned in China long time ago.

To give a real example of how China bans stuff, take ByteDance as an example. It used to run a joke sharing app roughly translates into Subtle Jokes that is on par with TikTok in terms of popularity. Then one day CCP decided it did not like it, then poof it's gone overnight. The founder issued a public apology and promised to almost double their censorship department in the future. Comparing to the TikTok case in the US, we got what? The funny-yet-pathetic legal tic-tac-toeing of Singaporean-not-Chinese nonsense. There is just fundamental difference in the scale and efficiency of censorship.

[f33d5173]

Instead, the government does it themselves based on regular politics and moral stances.

[sroussey]

But not open up to competitors like Visa.

[ceejayoz]

Credit card processors are, as a natural aspect of their purpose, a deeply useful surveillance network.

[handle584]

In the opposite direction unionpay works at major US retailers directly or at least through a partnership with discover, even Alipay is available at CVS, while us processors presence in China is next to zero.

[slaw]

Alipay is available only through Discover. Chinese processors have no presence in the US. In the same way in China you can use Visa and Mastercard through WeChat.

[cwillu]

Correct. A level playing field for all companies regardless of other factors is explicitly a non-goal.

[shimman]

They are but the difference is that China doesn't want to encourage monopolies and have zero qualms in jailing or executing bad business leaders.

[hcurtiss]

There absolutely are monopolies. There are, in fact, many state run enterprises. Where do you get these ideas?

[wmf]

My understanding is that the Chinese government prefers to have multiple successful companies in each field and they don't like it when one company becomes too powerful.

[tick_tock_tick]

They pivoted away from that quite a while ago now they just disappear people for a week or two and randomly completely crush a business here and there to make sure they understand their place.

[hcurtiss]

So also does the US. Trump had prominent cases against Google and Meta. Biden against Apple and Amazon. Prominent efforts on airlines and grocery stores. Honestly, I'm pretty sure the US and Chinese antitrust laws are pretty similar (theirs largely crafted after ours).

[coldtea]

State run is better than a private for profit monopoly or few-o-poly which is what we get.

People all over the world have often revolted to get some enterprises state run (nationalizing) and were often punished or even bombed for it.

[nickpp]

State run (or heavily regulated) services around here in Eastern Europe: health care, education and housing. All incredibly bad and expensive, I pay huge chunks of my monthly salary for them and I try to avoid them at all costs. They get worse and more expensive with time too.

All the other services and products I use in my life, from the car I drive to the clothes on my back, the food I eat and the device I write this on are provided by private enterprise and they have become much better and cheaper in my life time.

[yuriks]

Health care, education and housing have been getting worse and more expensive in the US over the decade also. Must be all that nationalization.

[coldtea]

State-run all those things used to be way cheaper and better here than after privatization. So much more, it's not even funny.

[ma2kx]

But those are mostly companies who provide a public service, or am I wrong?

[mjanx123]

In China the desire for profits serves the society. In the US the society serves the desire for profits.

[strangegecko]

Oh sure, Chinese investors and business people share their profits with everyone out of the goodness of their heart. Nice fairy tale.

[mr_toad]

> This is why China is eating the West.

Nothing to do with cheap labour.

[shimman]

Labor has very little to do with it and more about a political class that has to increase the material needs of a nation if they still want to stay in power.

What has the US government done for American's lately outside of forcing people to buy healthcare and providing monetary support for families for a small window during covid? All we have is a political class that wants to fuck Americans raw until they pump every cent out of us.

Also the US has one of the most weakened labor classes in the world, come the fuck on. Corporations convinced our governments to sell out labor at every opportunity. You're acting as if it was the 1930s where there was a national strike every month until the Wagner Act.

[libertine]

Why are you stating China competitiveness isn't related to labor, and then pivot to US labor?

Before you go there, you should answer: what has the Chinese government done for the Chinese lately? Is everything well in their society, labor and economy wise?

[coldtea]

No, nothing to do with that. Even Steve Jobs said so back 20+ years ago, about why Apple can't just get out of China manufacturing.

He said the labour cost is neghigible and not qualitatively different to the US. It's the availability of every part and tech you need in nearby supply centers and factories, the huge supply of appropriate resources, including the ability to have tens of thousands of expert workers on command for a fast new production run.

[handle584]

Of course you do not talk about cheap labor when you are exploiting it, from which all the speed, all the availability-at-any-time come from. The closest quote I can find is

The story is told of when Apple did a last minute design change on the Iphone. As soon as the parts came in, 8000 Chinese workers were immediately called in at midnight to start a 12 hour shift. An Apple executive is quoted as saying that the “speed and flexibility are breathtaking.”

Currently the reality on Chinese assembly lines is those expert workers are working 12 hour shifts for 1 day off every 14 days, and earns about $800-$1,000 a month.

It's a huge problem in China actually, those 996-esque working schedule is everywhere now, normal 955 or even 965 schedule is almost non-existent among domestic private employers. The sad thing is that sometimes some Act (like EU supply chain law) forces factories to 955 schedule but those line workers are not happy, because that means they don't get overtime and are making minimum wages like $300 a month, not even enough to live a life. Chinese got five day work week because of WTO, yet now many have lost it.

[libertine]

I'd buy that if you're talking about developing new products/new production lines, it's cheaper to have suppliers and know how hand - and it's great for margin optimization, because they have other production lines.

But that margin isn't funneled to pay wages and improve living standards.

To say wages don't play a role it's more of a corporate narrative to wash those decisions.

If wages aren't a factor, why don't they raise wages and living standards for those workers?

[autoexec]

We're also eagerly taking advantage of their cheap labour and we're taking advantage of plenty of people here at home, sometimes to the point of literal slavery (it's okay when they're prisoners or immigrants)

[dyauspitr]

No, we’re past the cheap labor. They’ve already taken the lead on 3-D printing, drones, robotics, are very close to making their own CPUs and GPUs, their lead on EV cars is pretty much unassailable, they’re in the process of building an electrostate with 100% redundancy and dirt cheap electricity, their bullet trains are on par with Japan’s, they are supplying the entire world with everything solar. I could go on and on. China has arrived and all our geriatric government cares about is creating a white ethnostate and propping up oil and gas companies.

[suddenlybananas]

Chinese labour isn't very cheap anymore.

[JuniperMesos]

I own FAANG stock because I own the S&P 500 in my retirement accounts, and so do managed pension funds. There's a lot more than billionaires who benefit from FAANG shares going up in value.

[ajb]

It's true that the current pension provision depends on this. But if pensions are mainly funded by companies which extract monopoly rent, then it would actually be more efficient and be less distortionary to the competitive market to fund them directly out of taxation - one big, simple rent instead of 100,000 different ones clogging everything up.

[twoodfin]

Are US retirement accounts largely growing on the back of “companies which extract monopoly rent”?

That seems outlandish. My iPhone isn’t “rent”, neither is an Nvidia GPU, or an Instagram ad.

[ajb]

The argument works at the margin as well, though. Suppose companies deliver value X and also extract rent Y, and defend Y on the basis that it would threaten the value of pensions to prevent it - this is rebutted in the same way.

[twoodfin]

I don’t get the point you’re trying to make.

What if X >> Y? Why should we think otherwise?

[technoloch]

I agree, the sentiment that billionaires are the only beneficiaries of share value increases is misinformed, but the mentality of profit chasing is a long term security risk not just to the nation, but to the continued rise in value of said shares. Once China has enough of a grip on their domestic attempts at semiconductor fabrication, these company's supply chains will be completely compromised, allowing China to practically swap out any of these FAANG companies for Chinese counterparts over time. As long as the US, UK, EU and FAANG continue to do next to nothing to develop domestic chip fabs and supply chains, it is only a matter of time.

[JuniperMesos]

This is a general argument in favor of protectionist tariffs and against free trade.

[frm88]

Aren't you worried about the circle-funding these companies indulge in when your pnsion depends on it? For example Nvidias's dubious deals with Huangs charity? If something goes sideways there, $5T are at stake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUbJDrL6ZfM

[shimman]

Congrats, what about the other 80% of Americans that can barely afford rent and pay for healthcare? Fuck them right? As long as your shares go up, people must die.

What a great economic system with great morals that create moral societies.

[JuniperMesos]

Increasing FAANG stock prices actually make it harder for me, personally, to afford housing - because I live in the bay area where all the FAANG companies have major offices and when people with lots of FAANG stock get richer, one of the things they spend it on is buying housing in the bay area, bidding up the price of that limited resource for everyone else. Building more housing in the bay area would help with this, but there's a lot of local political pressure not to do that; and this is a bay-area-specific problem because of the physical locations of (most of) the FAANG companies.

Anyway a lot more than 20% of Americans are beneficiaries of some kind of pension or 401k or other source of income that is ultimately funded by the US stock market. And shares of the US stock market going up do not kill people who aren't having part of their income funded primarily by the stock market. People who think this is true and that society is therefore immoral badly misunderstand what the actual problems with producing goods and services for people are, which is the thing that actually matters for human health and flourishing.

[prewett]

Society should care about people making profits because otherwise those people do something else instead of providing goods and services. What happened in Communism is instructive on this point. Now if you want to argue that the pursuit of maximum profit as an end is a problem, there's a case to be made. The US had something like a marginal tax rate of 90% around the 1940s/1950s, if I recall correctly, and it obviously didn't hurt innovation, but people got paid in perks and corner offices and status instead of just money.

I think people are misled by Marx and derivatives, and misdiagnose the problem. I don't think people are upset by the CEO making lots of money as much as they are by the HBS management style of using people as a tool, or even as interchangeable "resources". However, the philosophical materialism of Marx & Co. pretty much makes this inevitable. (The secular view is also materialism, so you get it on both sides.)

[egypturnash]

> I don't think people are upset by the CEO making lots of money as much as they are by the HBS management style of using people as a tool, or even as interchangeable "resources".

How about both? Both are pretty terrible for society IMHO. Some shithead's making 6000x of what average worker at their company because they're on top and they're treating everyone under them as interchangable tools with zero compassion. If they were limited to only making like 3x then they'd be on a much more equitable place with their underlings and might even be more likely to see them as fellow humans instead of disposable work units.

[eecc]

Perhaps it’s not capitalism that’s the problem but the unboundedness of the greed of a few, with respect to the other needs of humanity.

Also Adam Smith implied that unbounded avarice is irrational and disruptive to society.

The assumption is that morality survives grotesque wealth accumulation, we see many examples proving otherwise

[inglor_cz]

"unboundedness of the greed of a few"

Lots of people claim "greed", but the stereotypical Tech billionaire doesn't simply roll around in gold like Scrooge McDuck, doing nothing and demanding more. They invest and reinvest it into new enterprises.

Of all the ways of dealing with massive wealth, this is probably the second least disruptive one. (The first one would be just giving it to honorable causes.)

[fireflash38]

They claim greed because they always choose the path that makes them more money even if it has clear, evidence-based proof of societal harm.

Ya know, just like the Sacklers and pushing oxycontin.

[inglor_cz]

You don't know in advance what is going to make you money. Investments are risky.

In 2026, we know that SpaceX is a huge success. In 2002, it was just one of very many space startups, the vast majority of which ended up bankrupt, and before the last Falcon 1 flight, it was already on the brink of bankruptcy. They were incredibly lucky that the last rocket they had money for actually reached orbit.

During the same time, John Carmack invested into Armadillo Aerospace, and lost money.

Was he less "greedy" than Musk only because in retrospect we know that one didn't pan out and the other did? Or were they both simply risk takers in an uncertain field, motivated by a mix of incentives?

[fireflash38]

That is a complete distraction from Meta in particular selling social media hard to kids even knowing that their work explicitly caused mental harm.

This is not a I own stock am I culpable issue, it is a company knowing their product is dangerous and ignoring the issues because it doesn't make them more money.

Same shit as the tobacco industry. People do banally evil shit for money.

[vladms]

"Capitalism is the problem" by itself is like saying "unix operating systems are a problem". There are so many flavours, so many parameters (laws, tax, etc.) that I do not see value in generalizations.

I think morality is quite hard to define and any system should take into account unboundedness of some human attributes (being greed, stupidy or other) in some humans.

[nickpp]

Capitalism is the only known system that aligns natural, normal individual greed with the benefit and advancement of the society.

[shimman]

Call me crazy but society should care about giving people meaning, providing healthcare, and an education. You know the three things that lead to productive humans.

Notice in my comment I mention nothing about taxes? Maybe people are mislead about neoliberalism? All it has done was sell out American jobs, get civilians addicted to drugs, and manufactured a political class that cares about donations over material needs.

This is an economic system that isn't even 50 years old and you're already going with the Marx scare quotes as if US branded capitalism hasn't already killed 10s of millions of Americans in the pursuit of profit.

Let's not even peel back the founding of this nation, a colonial white slaver state with minority protections baked into the constitution to impede people's chances of progress with every life.

[simonh]

>Call me crazy but society should care about giving people meaning, providing healthcare, and an education. You know the three things that lead to productive humans.

Things that are paid for by economic surpluses. No profits, no investment, no taxes.

It's very much a matter of balance, you're not wrong that those services you mention are vital as are many others generally provided by governments. However it's all funded by a dynamic efficient economy.

The question of private wealth is the hardest, but private wealth by itself isn't a problem. The question there is, who should own and run productive economic activity. If it's not the state, it's private individuals. The wealth of billionaire industrialists doesn't consist of one big pile of money they wallow in, like Scrooge McDuck. It consists of their ownership and control of companies that do things in the economy.

Taking away that wealth means taking away those companies, and doing what with them? if you sell them to other private individuals, now they own and run those companies. If you can just take companies away from people like that, why would anyone build or buy them? If you take the companies into public ownership, now they're run by civil servants and politicians, but you'd have to pay for the companies, right? If you just seize assets, nobody is going to invest in anything that can be seized.

I do think inequality is a growing problem, but there are no easy answers.

[Aerroon]

You don't understand the point of capitalism. It's not about making rich people richer. Capitalism is about producing stuff. To create a large variety of (useful) products for society.

You need capital to make pretty much anything. Somebody has to come up with a large amount of resources (money) put upfront into the venture. Capitalism creates the incentive for that - if the gamble pays off, then the investors get more value back. If it doesn't work out, then investors lose money. Most businesses fail early and do not provide a return for the investment.

The point of capitalism is to keep this system running. As a result of it we have made an ungodly amount of technological and quality of life improvements. Some people have become filthy rich from this, but typically they also provided the world with goods or services that people like and use. Tesla made Elon filthy rich, but it also made electric vehicles popular.

[hackyhacky]

> You don't understand the point of capitalism. It's not about making rich people richer.

Making the rich richer isn't necessarily the point, but it is an unavoidable consequence.

> Capitalism is about producing stuff.

Humans have been producing stuff well before the concept of ownership was invented, and certainly well before the massive wealth accumulation that is the hallmark of capitalism.

[hcurtiss]

And almost for the entirety of that period, humans lived in abject poverty. The rise of capitalism perfectly correlates with the most spectacular increase in human flourishing and prosperity in the history of our species. Even in the last fifty years, liberalizing economies, private ownership, and contract law have lifted tens of millions out of poverty, mostly in SE Asia.

[hackyhacky]

And yet many in capitalist society lived and still live in abject poverty, despite the fact that there are enough resources so that no one should be left wanting. Nevertheless, you've somehow convinced yourself that those people either (a) don't matter, (b) deserve it, or (c) can't be helped.

If the goal is to reduce poverty, I fail to see how the existence of billionaires is a positive outcome, either now, in the form of Musk and his ilk; in the form of the robber barons of the late 18th century; or in the form of the noble lords of the feudal period to owned a lot but contributed nothing.

[hcurtiss]

It's not, but if the existence of billionaires correlates strongly with an increase in the median standard of living, I'm all for it. My politics are not driven by envy -- only what consistently produces the best outcome for the most.

Regarding the idea that we can design a system where "no one should be left wanting," that sounds nice. So does big rock candy mountain. There is no such system.

[hackyhacky]

> It's not, but if the existence of billionaires correlates strongly with an increase in the median standard of living, I'm all for it.

Great, but it doesn't. The gap between the poor and the wealthy has only grown in the US, especially since Reagan's "trickle down" economics.

https://www.statista.com/chart/35953/inequality-wealth-gap-u...

The accusations against the working poor of "envy" are a barbaric slur. People just want to get valued fairly.

[vladms]

But not all "capitalist" societies have the same percentage in "abject poverty". So that makes me think that capitalism by itself is not the only major determinant of some of the bad things that we see, but rather the lack of interest and of focus to fix actual issues. Many societies can learn from others and improve their situation. Note: and many, if not most actually do, check : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/the-share-and-number-of-p...

If the goal is to reduce poverty, the number of billionaire is actually irelevant. How you fund reducing poverty might influence the number of billionaires, but, for me it is more important what each society does for the poor, rather than counting how many are billionaires today.

[hackyhacky]

> If the goal is to reduce poverty, the number of billionaire is actually irelevant. How you fund reducing poverty might influence the number of billionaires, but, for me it is more important what each society does for the poor, rather than counting how many are billionaires today.

You're so close. The only missing connection is the realization that billionaires exercise outsize influence, and will affect government policy to help themselves, not the poor. The only way for the poor to not have their voice silenced by the rich is to reduce the rich.

[duskdozer]

Society shouldn't. But it's not society making that decision, it's the corporations and people with lots of wealth that want to get even more wealth.

[WalterBright]

> Why should society care about people making profits?

The people making profits are the ones providing food, shelter, and phones to you.

[kakacik]

Well I am still waiting for my google home and my meta steaks.

Reality is, those companies don't give anything back, just siphone all profits into tax havens so owners can take as much cash out of it as possible, in one form or another.

Their goal is to provide nothing back as much as they could. Look at their actions, not some empty PR statements.

[WalterBright]

> Reality is, those companies don't give anything back

California, Washington, and New York are about to find out what happens when they drive the wealthy businesses out of the state.

Massachusetts found out a few years ago. They decided they were going to heavily tax yachts that were built by the yacht industry in the state. What happened is the wealthy bought their yachts elsewhere, and the local yacht industry collapsed, and many thousands of skilled craftsmen lost their jobs.

The tax was rescinded.

[csomar]

No, the real people providing the food, shelter and electronics are the generally the lowest paid in society.

[roenxi]

But they are making a profit. Otherwise they'd have to stop providing stuff, because they'd be broke.

[hackyhacky]

> The people making profits are the ones providing food, shelter, and phones to you.

I'm not worried about the guy making my sandwich at the corner deli. He's entitled to my money because he provides a valuable service.

I am worried about the owner of FoodCo, who plays golf all day while his employees run the company. He provides literally no service to anyone at all, but makes more money than any employee. He then uses his profits to buy homes in the area, so his employees can pay back half of their paycheck to him in the form of rent.

[Aerroon]

Why doesn't a small village have a supermarket? If it's small enough then it won't have any store at all. Why? Because the business doesn't make enough money to justify it and the consequence of this is that none of the inhabitants of that village can "just go to the store to buy some milk". They either need to plan weeks or months worth of shopping in advance or have access to transport that can take them to a town that has a store.

The owner of FoodCo put in a lot of their money upfront to make the company happen in the first place. Your deli guy wouldn't have a job if the FoodCo guy hadn't done what he did.

I know that it's hard for people from rich (and high population) countries to understand, but the high variety of goods and services that exist are a consequence of people investing into businesses. Without them many of these businesses wouldn't exist, because most people are not rich enough to be able to fund a business on their own.

[everforward]

> The owner of FoodCo put in a lot of their money upfront to make the company happen in the first place. Your deli guy wouldn't have a job if the FoodCo guy hadn't done what he did.

This is blatantly untrue in the face of even a cursory thought. If the deli didn’t exist, that worker would have done any number of other jobs. Subsistence farming, doing deli stuff out of his house, maybe even community funding a coop grocery store.

That was how things worked at many points in human history. Instead of “private citizen makes $thing and collects rent” it was some variety of “municipality funds $thing for the community”. That just doesn’t extrapolate to a global economy well, for better or worse.

[hackyhacky]

Your argument amounts to billionaire apologism and has nothing to do with my comment.

If a supermarket cannot be profitable in a small village, an investor isn't going to change that. The investor will invest in businesses that can be profitable.

> Your deli guy wouldn't have a job if the FoodCo guy hadn't done what he did.

People have had jobs since before civilization, and certainly before massive accumulation of wealth became the norm.

[WalterBright]

In capitalist countries, accumulation of wealth comes alongside the prosperity of the rest of the country.

[hackyhacky]

Ah yes, the famous "trickle down" economy of Reaganomics. If only we had more billionaires, then I'm sure I'd be able to afford to get my car fixed.

Unfortunately, this economic model has been proven to be wrong. If it were true, then we would have seen a decreasing gap between the rich and the poor. We didn't.

https://www.statista.com/chart/35953/inequality-wealth-gap-u...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/09/why-is...

[WalterBright]

Name one CEO of a large company who fits your profile.

[hackyhacky]

Elon Musk is a great example. These days, he mostly writes racist tweets, pretends to play video games, consolidates his own businesses to increase his own apparent net worth, and undermines the federal government.

[WalterBright]

May I remind you of your post I was replying to:

> He provides literally no service to anyone at all, but makes more money than any employee. He then uses his profits to buy homes in the area, so his employees can pay back half of their paycheck to him in the form of rent.

[hackyhacky]

Thanks for the reminder. Are you implying that EM does not invest in real estate or are you just being contrary?

[coldtea]

Nope. They're the ones making those more expensive, via collusion, rent-seeking, monopoly capture, and lots of other ways.

[csomar]

It's a cycle. The zeitgeist moves from communism to capitalism and vice-versa every 30 years or so.

[simonh]

The zeitgeist yes, but in terms of actual politics socialism nowadays is really a vague aspiration rather than any actual policies. Certainly here in the UK our Labour governments since the 90s have confined themselves to just tweaking the settings on the economy Maggie built in the 80s. I'm just about old enough to remember what actual socialist economic policies looked like.

[Der_Einzige]

Corbyn tried to make Labour do something different but we saw how we got treated all because he wasn't willing to kowtow towards Israel.