Comment by 9999px | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9999px | Hacker News Reader

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I think "progress" is a culturally and personally subjective concept.

To me, a lot of the progress we're making is efficiency only for the sake of profit. We should be answering the deeper question of "what's the point of work?" Do businesses exist to make profit for a small group of people or do they exist as privately-owned community pillars providing services and wages to citizens?

Personally, I lean towards the latter. And that's as a business owner twice-over.

We should also be asking ourselves "why do we make the products we make?" Are we building and consuming to fulfill an urge created by advertising? If so, can we scale back advertising and thus consumption and thus waste?

Unionization and employee-ownership are other options for fairly distributing wealth based on effort. A shop that unionizes can vote to automate – or not – and thus control their own destiny. Granted we're not there yet legally; our laws skew heavily in the favor of business owners. So were a union shop to vote to _not_ automate, a shop that fired all of its employees and automated would more than likely succeed in the market.

And that brings me full-circle – is succeeding in the market and being profitable more important than keeping people employed in a democratically-controlled workplace?

Here's my question about unions and worker controlled workplaces.. What happens when the entire shop becomes uncompetitive?

It's the same as when a country is happily going about their day and suddenly tanks show up at your door because someone else wants what you have.

that's just human nature, I don't see a way around it.

I don't believe it's human nature. I believe it's decades of prioritizing profits over civic results – we've warped our culture to the point of valuing monetary progress/success over humanity itself.

I'm sure this sounds very bleeding heart, but as a business owner, I'd rather give up stake in my own business to keep my employees and their families fed rather than opt for automation, firing my employees, and sitting in an empty office with piles of cash.

Business owners and shareholders need to learn empathy and start valuing the community at large over their own narrow interests.

To answer your question, though: I don't know.

The U.S. is an owner/exec-first economy, with labor holding very little political power. "At will" employment and "Right to Work" are inherently anti-union policies and although some states have successfully beat them back (Missouri for example), a majority of the country's labor is still without ways to organize.

It's a chicken and egg problem. A unionized shop probably couldn't compete against a full automated shop (depending on the industry). So until _most_ shops are unionized – which won't happen with rulings like Janus – it's almost an impossible task to organize the working class.

More reading:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/08/missouri-...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/janus-a...

Businesses exist to make a profit. Do you care that a washing machine or dishwasher replaces the work of what used to be a labor intensive activity? Do you care that construction workers are using backhoes instead of shovels (which would employ more people)?

Unionization made sense in part due to the very labor intensive work of the early 20th century. Conditions were poor and pay was low and you had massive numbers of people doing related work together. It made sense. Nowadays unionizing is like herding cats across disparate, ephemeral organizations.

I don't think you can take a 20th century approach to 21st century problems.

Workplaces aren't democracies.

> Businesses exist to make a profit. Is that their only purpose? Profit über alles?

> Workplaces aren't democracies.

Some already are (co-ops, worker-owned, etc.) and all _should be_ if we want to keep society from pulling itself apart.

Sounds a lot like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

Yang talks about coming up with a more wholistic measurement than GDP to optimize on which is more in-line with how we value people culturally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2FnZPXjRyI&feature=youtu.be...

> Do businesses exist to make profit for a small group of people or do they exist as privately-owned community pillars providing services and wages to citizens?

If that's your take on businesses, would you support a requirement for corporate charters to keep public as stakeholders?

Ie, removing the oft-repeated opinion that corporations have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to make the most money possible?

I'd love to read more about this. Does this concept have a name? At face value, yes, some sort of contractual agreement that considers externalities of production, employee well-being, etc. sounds like a solid idea.

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