My family had a jolly laugh about that CEO. Several of them have worked with mental health patients and elders and hate the entire health insurance industry, my brother works for cooperate types and as a result has zero sympathy for corporate types and we share memes about it. Whatever other beliefs Luigi may have, he did us all a solid, so he’s ok in our book.
A society is only good as it's incentives. Because there will always be a segment of the population that will only act when incentivized. How they act is determined by what is incentivized and what is not. We're a society with a long list of really bad incentives. I agree with you that investment always prioritizes profit over ethical concern because we live under capitalism and that is what is expected and incentivized. The sad thing about capitalists is that they often argue against social programs because they think that people will always game the system, and it's true. But there is a name for those people, and that name is capitalist. When they say things like "capitalism is just human nature" and that it's natural to compete and try to gain the upper hand in all situations, they tell on themselves. It's not human nature, it's their nature, and they project themselves onto everyone else. I don't think that capitalists will ever truly go away, that's why we can't seem to have nice things. Any society we create will have some capitalists in it. Some people are just competitive. And capitalism is a way of keeping score. It's not true of all people, but it's true of some. Enough to cause trouble. Any advanced society we may one day have will need a sort of pressure valve for capitalists that will allow them to feel like they're gaining the upper hand over their fellow man. Without a way to indulge those impulses they will always undermine any collectivist society they find themselves in. They're just something that needs to be managed. Investment can be innocuous, or it can be evil, it is almost never good. In the rare case that good does come from investment it is short lived because capitalism is corrosive. The intent to win at capitalism will always determine the decisions capitalists make, so over time everything good they create will ultimately turn to shit.
I don't think a bunch of people pitching in to fund a company is in and of itself a bad thing, but there are several considerations that are extensions of that that stray into unethical territory. foremost is the matter of fiduciary responsibility. When a company is publicly traded they have a legal responsibility to put money in the investor's pockets, and that shapes the behavior of that company in ways that can be very harmful. Intent shapes action, and the imperative to provide profits to investors changes whatever intention that company may have had when it was founded. It means if the company has a choice between fulfilling that imperative or doing something to reduce harm to the world around them they will always make the decision that fulfills the intention. Where if your intention is just to be the best at something, or to provide a service, you would make a different set of decisions. The biggest example that's particularly central in public consciousness right now is the health industry. Health insurance companies have the ability to ensure that their customers are well taken care of and that healthcare is accessible, but providing healthcare isn't the point. Providing profit to their shareholders is the point, so in every situation where the profit, and the doing the right thing, conflict they will always choose the former because that's the whole reason they're doing it in the first place. Even if the CEO wanted to lead the company in a more ethical direction they couldn't do so without courting legal action, if the investors believe their decisions aren't maximizing profits. Multiply this by time and companies gradually become worse, even if they started out great. Enshitification isn't just for the internet. Often this leads to unethical ends, as in the health insurance example where it causes thousands of deaths each year.
A lot of it depends on whether the demand for something is fixed or elastic. Say you wanted to purchase a lot of something as an investment, if that thing is FunCo Pop figurines and you're hoarding them banking that they'll increase in value due to scarcity could be sold later at a markup. People can take or leave FunCo Pops, They can choose not to spend their money on your marked up collectibles. Hoarding them would be a dick move, but not necessarily unethical. If the thing you're buying up is water the landscape changes. People need water, every single person needs water. That demand is not elastic, people have to have it or they literally die. If you hoarded that resource so that you could sell it at a higher price, and that prices some people out of being able to access water, it's more than unethical. It's straight up wicked. Your intention isn't to provide water. It's to maximise your profits, and thus your decisions will always be guided by those priorities.
It's nuanced. But not very difficult to understand. The world could change for the better, but the profit margins are too slim to make it a worthwhile goal for a savvy capitalist.
Every house that is owned for an investment contributes to the high price of housing. People shouldn’t own homes if they’re not going to make them a home. It’s unethical in my view to hoard real estate.
A little over a decade ago I worked for a company that designed and fabricated stonework for buildings. Not just anyone can clad their house in marble, so I wound up interacting with some very wealthy people. I can't say who, because they're still just as wealthy and powerful and I'm about to shit all over them. I came away from the experience with much less respect for them afterwards. They essentially have no interaction with ordinary people at all. They don't do anything for themselves, and they don't engage with the real world. It's no wonder they lack empathy and only act in their own self-interest. The real world is an abstract concept to them, I doubt they think about any of us as being real people.
I was raised dirt poor, like food insecure and periodically unhoused poor. The guy I interacted with was literally a billionaire and had always been a billionaire. His staff treats him like a noble lord, and they buffer him from nearly any circumstance that would lead to him experiencing reality. One perk of being a white guy with good diction and vocabulary is that you can hide your low-class upbringing. Put me in some decent clothes and they'll assume I'm from a similar background and speak more openly. The conversations were disturbing. The things they said about poor people, my people, were horrible. They think about us like animals if they think about us at all. I had to sit there and smile the whole time.
Even before he became a political figure, he could have had the entire LAPD at his house within moments of the first sign of trouble. It's not like the french revolution. They have a modern army that is well trained to deal with large groups. They've had lots of practice. We can't just roll up on him with a guillotine in the back of our truck and expect to actually prevail.
My experience at that job radicalized me somewhat and drove from me any lingering desire I might once have had to obtain wealth. I do not want to live in that world. I want to unmake that world.
people are rarely able to harm the person that harmed them, because the power imbalance is what facilitated the harm to begin with. The axe forgets, the tree remembers. Getting through the multiple layers that insulate the upper class from consequences is an uphill battle and it’s fought on many fronts. most of these fronts you’ll never see because the upper class prefers it that way. It’s a long war with many individual engagements. but this is always the goal.
We’ll if that’s the case I wish they’d have sent me a notification. I collect bans from hate subs. Sucks not having receipts. I mean, I blocked the community, obviously, but I don’t think that would stop mod notifications. I wonder if it was because my opinion was unpopular.
Yes it’s totally defeatist to talk about things in the past that happened and acknowledge things that are presently happening. I didn’t say no one would beat them, I said that they will never relinquish power. Two very different concepts.
Hmmm. you make some mighty fine points there son. Looks like you were following me all over the place. I’m always happy to meet a fan. it wasn’t a ban though, which was a shame. They just took down the post. A ban from a community like that would look great on my mantelpiece. Feel free to keep following me around if you like.
Make THIS great, asshole!