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Comment by mikelyons | Hacker News Reader

The incentive structure of unregulated capitalism is "Extract maximum value with minimum expense. As much as possible externalize the costs."

The things to extract value from: employees, environment, government policy, tax code, if I was smarter I'd think of a few others.

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you have my name, and my views. I don't know how to feel about this. there's some solace in knowing Mike Lyons is an extraordinarily popular name though.

What's in a name?

"Extract maximum value with minimum expense. As much as possible externalize the costs" is also the incentive structure of workers.

in the context of capitalism, sure.

In the context of humanity. People do this even in non-capitalist countries. Or do you think that when a country is not capitalist the people suddenly stop doing things to benefit themselves?

Worker's incentives seem more along the "do whatever those with resources say to trade your mind and body and time for survival"

Companies compete for workers. Don’t like your current situation, leave. Companies know this, so cannot simply do whatever they want.

Both sides have power, and the same incentives.

I would argue that this is a perspective of someone with power in the job market, and perhaps that perspective is limited to a small portion of workers' experiences.

I also find "don't like it, leave" to be a very unaware oversimplification of the situation many American workers are in.

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