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Comment by zentiggr | Hacker News Reader

> I'd like to live in a world where a virtuous feedback loop would lead to companies treating their employees better and better, but history says that's not the world we live in.

This sort of comment always reminds me of the quintessential answer: "That's funny, I always thought the world is what we make of it."

If the only way we can 'make consumers choose better' is to continually publish and broadcast the worst corporate behavior in order to spur these kinds of shifts, then so be it.

Scream loudly about WalMart subverting local government and historical societies to build a store within sight of Tenochtitlan.

Republish over and over about Amazon's treatment of their fulfillment workers.

Shame them all until the baseline is as much better as we can make it, and keep pushing against the entropy.

That's how we make the world better.

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The world is what We make it, not what I make it. The coordination problem is not trivial.

Look at our lord and savior Bill Gates saving the USA from novel Corovirus. He could only do that after amassing a fortune from being a criminally savage businessperson for decades.

This is an excellent point.

Bill Gates has money because he created a product that set back science for decades. It still hurts science today. The way Windows differentiates itself from Unix for the sole reason of not being compatible has set back society immensely.

Today, after having made all this money exploiting society in general and science in particular, he is putting money back into science.

Look, I get it, the damage is already done, so him putting money back we gain some back. And I also get it. If he didn't do it someone else would have.

But does that absolve the sins of the individual?

How does Windows hurt science?

They were trying to kill off Linux for decades. Yet most science ran on Linux/Unix.

there is actually a lot many more examples, I am just summarizing in one sentence.

Agreed it's not a trivial problem. That was my point, that we need to show the cases of worst behavior often, loudly, and broadly so that people are informed and have the option to make choices.

Got a bone to pick about BG, gotcha.

My main issue with that approach is in practice it has two issues one of which is escalation of standards for being "good" means that you are still a bastard for paying workers $15/hr when the minimum wage is $10. And responding to one demand means others try to push more without any returns. It makes conceding not worth it and does everything about negotations wrong. And attempts to influence companies fundamentally are negotations which depend upon being a party to it one way or another.

Meanwhile ignoring the "fuck you we don't care" bad actors already know about especially the commodities it winds up disproportionate.

The second issue is lack of chosing battles it depletes social capital to the point nobody outside the bubble takes them remotely seriously.

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