Comment by artsyca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by artsyca | Hacker News Reader

When you create a corporation, you're essentially creating a society (remember: culture is the foundation of society and society is the foundation of civilization)

You can model your society in any way you wish but the intention ought to be to make your society more competitive and capable than the default (i.e. society at large)

The socialist system is something along the lines of 'from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs' but that has never worked out in practice.

There are other systems but the capitalist system ('to each according to his investment, from the collective pot') is close but we mistake what investment is and we drastically misunderstand how to maximize the collective pot.

The whole VC system as it currently stands is a symptom of our distorted view of what investment is and the breakdown of trust required for people to truly maximize their returns, nothing more.

VC's bring money to the table and it seems that this buys them enhanced privilege compared to people who bring other sorts of investment. The minute you begin the VC conversation you begin devaluing the investments of people who bring other sorts of investment (i.e. faith, effort, opportunity costs) and create a sort of toxic feedback bubble whereby the entire system goes off the rails because apart from the money the VC's are hardly invested in your vision, innit

hence the term 'vulture capitalists' -- how are VC's any different from tech recruiters anyway?.

The only way to make any money is to sell something somebody else makes.

> culture is the foundation of society and society is the foundation of civilization

That’s a terrible analogy because it’s trivial for the culture to change without civilization being put at risk. Foundations can’t be substantially changed without risking everything on top.

What are you saying? the minute culture shifts so does civilization. Look at where we are now compared to where we were in the industrial age.

This whole techbro culture has destroyed corporate society and brought about drastic shifts in the entire world civilization and not for the better.

What is this wishful thinking?

Edit: and by the way the word 'culture' comes from the latin for 'core' it's by definition the foundation. I can't believe we're arguing the semantics of well-known words look up culture and society for yourself.

Edit 2: think of your culture like a potluck dinner. Everyone brings their carefully prepared dishes. Some latecomer shows up to the door with a wad of cash and says I didn't prepare anything but suddenly the money they brought entitles them to be first in line. What kind of civilization can exist under these cultural manners?

A culture can be destroyed without taking out civilization though. It happens all of the time. Comparing it to a foundation is absolutely terrible.

I think I can understand what you're saying but you obviously can't understand what I'm saying.

You're objecting to my use of the word foundation for some reason and all I'm getting out of it is why even bother.

But here goes anyway as you may have heard words have multiple meanings and not everyone uses them the same way.

I'm referring to the second meaning of foundation: an underlying basis or principle.

Culture -> society -> civilization

These three things are built on each other.

When one changes all the others are affected without necessarily being destroyed but yes if one is destroyed the others will suffer too.

You're also probably referring to an alternate definition of civilization as in all of humanity whereas if you ask Siri the definition of civilization is literally what I've written so like why all the hate bub?

"The society, culture and way of life in a particular area" i.e inside a corporation.

Mess with the culture and it has outward ripples to the entire way of life duh

I understand what you’re saying and I’m suggesting it’s a bad model.

You can’t have culture without a society and culture is heavily impacted by civilization as well.

“Culture -> society -> civilization” is too rudimentary to be useful and it’s just plain wrong in many cases. Changes in technology (e.g. smartphones) or massive events (e.g. pandemics) flow backwards through the chain eventually forcing the culture to change to adapt (social distancing, etiquette for texting at the table, etc).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com