Comment by asteroidbelt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asteroidbelt | Hacker News Reader

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> why is it moral that the people that do all the work have no control over their working lives?

Basic principles of civilized society like respect of private property (which is the company which is owned by shareholders) and respect of contracts, and these principles are more important than employee wishes to play CEO.

> Creating a company requires capital.

So this is the problem. Some people worked hard to obtain that capital. They studied hard, got top notch education, deprived themselves of private life, had very high risk of failure (majority of entrepreneurs fail). And their work resulted in them being shareholders and top management.

While others were smoking marijuana, downshifting, working 9-5 at best, taking long vacations.

And the second ones demand the same rights to control the company. I don't see how that is fair. It is having a cake and eating.

And I have another answer to that. Want to make decisions in the company? Then get hired as CEO. They don't want to hire you as CEO? Then perhaps you are not qualified to do company-wide decision. And if you are not qualified to do company-wide decisions, then probably you should not make these decisions working entry-level jobs.

> Basic principles of civilized society like respect of private property (which is the company which is owned by shareholders) and respect of contracts, and these principles are more important than employee wishes to play CEO.

This alone isn't enough to argue that it's not immoral because the company is their private property. What if Amazon bought up all the farmable land in the country/world and started charging prices that were unaffordable to 90% of people and causing starvation. This is comparable to what's happening, but instead of one company it's multiple companies and instead of food price it's employee conditions

edit: to be clear, I know my point isn't enough to prove it IS immoral either, just that the private property point isn't enough to prove that it isn't. I don't think I'm capable of arguing this argument all the way through, But my opinion probably falls closer to Marx than most people. The only thing I do know for sure is that what we have now isn't working, and if capitalists don't want socialism/communism to take over they better fix things soon.

> What if Amazon bought up all the farmable land in the country/world and started charging prices that were unaffordable to 90% of people and causing starvation.

That would cause anti-monopoly intervention by the government.

> This is comparable to what's happening, but instead of one company it's multiple companies and instead of food price it's employee conditions

What employee condition? Facebook employees who leak these emails are quite rich, perhaps top 1% in the US let alone in the world. Their are unhappy because they want more than money, they also want to "do greater good" as they erroneously view it.

> The only thing I do know for sure is that what we have now isn't working

It does not work perfectly, but it works relatively well. The US is one of the richest countries in the world. Poorest 10-percentile US citizen is way more rich than average person living in a third-world country.

> if capitalists don't want socialism/communism to take over they better fix things soon

I think capitalism is doing fine. The largest problem in the US (I'm not in the US) is partly corrupt election system. E. g. representatives being too dependent on the party because of certain restrictions like limits of how much money a candidate can raise for a campaign. Or lack of ranked choice voting.

Most capital is inherited. No amount of hard work will make up for that.

The very notion of private property exists to maintain that inherited capital, with state violence.

Is that moral? Why?

> Most capital is inherited.

This is a common myth. (I should say, marxist myth.)

> Of those folks, 67.7% were self-made, while 23.7% had a combination of inherited and self-created wealth. Only 8.5% of global high-net-worth individuals were categorized as having completely inherited their wealth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...

If you ignore the fact that only those whose families are at least comfortable financially can afford to take the risk necessary to get into a position where they can begin exploiting other workers.

Globally, the vast majority of capital is owned by people who grew up rich.

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