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1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I miss the days when that's what a company was for.  It was a cleaner and more honest way of doing business.  I think the problem today is that these companies are in fact being run by emotionalist moralizers with pitchforks.

You misunderstand. When I say nothing else, I mean they lack values and any purpose for their money. Of course it is great to make money for the sake of building wealth or attaining goals. I'm not talking about profit motive in general. I'm talking about making money divorced from human values. Seeking to operate a company for the sake of seeing the yearly profit increase without regard for how values are affected, it's a really bad thing. Compare that to a company like Tesla, which certainly operates to increase yearly profit, and at the same time integrating long-term values so that wealth increases. 

It's not hard to see how making money divorced from human values becomes focuses on second handed people. Technology people are usually utilitarians, or at least the leaders of these companies. I doubt they are moralizing as much as they are virtue signaling for the sake of making money from those same second handers. Although the companies themselves are run by utilitarians, emotionalists influence the products and services they offer. What we end up with is an interaction between utilitarians and emotionalists. When these companies don't seek to increase wealth through long-term values, of course they end up serving the lowest common denominator.

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2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Amazon has a webpage on "our positions" under "about us" ...

"The federal minimum wage in the U.S. is too low and should be raised."

Yeah, if you're Amazon you want to raise the minimum wage to ass-out smaller businesses trying to compete with you. 

Edited by MisterSwig
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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Your context dropping is exhausting. I don't even think you realize you're doing it. 

 I think you mean nuance dropping.

You must be one of the innocents who believes the media platforms are good capitalists. After they raised a billion for a Marxist cause. Really, wake up.

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4 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

You must be one of the innocents who believes the media platforms are good capitalists.

I'm only responding to this because it's a distortion of something I said. I've said several times throughout this thread that I don't think these companies are acting morally. They are not good capitalists. I even just made a post explaining how they are bad capitalists, as in, not capitalists. 

 

Edited by Eiuol
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1 minute ago, Eiuol said:

I'm only responding to this because it's a distortion of something I said. I've said several times throughout this thread that I don't think these companies are acting morally. They are not good capitalists. I even just made a post explaining how they are bad capitalists, as in, not capitalists.

 

Yes, and that latest post of yours is quite a good one. I have the impression you play devils advocate too often, investigating both sides at a cost. It makes your reasoning look indefinite.

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22 hours ago, Eiuol said:

You misunderstand. When I say nothing else, I mean they lack values and any purpose for their money. Of course it is great to make money for the sake of building wealth or attaining goals. I'm not talking about profit motive in general. I'm talking about making money divorced from human values.

It sounds like you might be trying to whitewash what I'm actually saying. It's kind of flattering that such would be your response (thank you) but I really do mean that the exclusive purpose of a company should be to make money.

 

I distinctly remember listening to a lecture of Rand's at one point in which she mentioned some textile company called Indian Head, and quoted its CEO as saying (roughly):

'The purpose of this company is to maximize the wealth of its shareholders; not to make the best textiles or the best customer service or anything else. Those things might be necessary means towards the end of our stock value but means and ends must never be confused.'

That's what I'm arguing for.

 

Now, to say that the goal of a company is profit is not to say that it must also be the highest goal of its employees, suppliers, customers or CEO; if any of those individuals held chasing profit as their highest goal then I'd consider it a psychological problem of some sort.

A company is not an individual, though; it's a team of individuals who work together to make money. And to say that profit is the team's only goal is to say that whenever its members are "on the clock" they must be focused on the pursuit of that one goal; no different from what it means to say that the purpose of a basketball team is to maximize points or that the purpose of an orchestra is to create beautiful music. Such goals will inevitably create lesser subgoals which are necessary in order to consistently reach them. Orchestra members should usually take good care of their instruments, just as factory workers should usually take good care of their equipment (and each other) - but only so far as they actually serve that higher goal. In situations where that goal calls for something else they must be abandoned (such as by overclocking a machine or smashing a guitar to bits).

 

And again, whoever owns a company is and should be free to set whatever goals they think it should have (including zany things like raising the minimum wage, enforcing preferred pronouns and even "being less white"). None of it should be a crime. But the further removed it is from the pursuit of profits the less honest of a goal it is and the less moral it becomes to work for or deal with that company.

 

You wouldn't work for an allegedly non-profit organization that secretly funnelled buckets and buckets of profit to its leaders. Don't deal with allegedly for-profit companies that operate in fact as political advocacy groups. Or with bands which have no interest in music, for that matter, or with "scientists" who have no interest in truth.

 

 

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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22 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Yeah, if you're Amazon you want to raise the minimum wage to ass-out smaller businesses trying to compete with you. 

The one about the "treatment of black people in this country" being unacceptable was what really confused me.

Did we reimplement Jim Crow at some point and I just missed it? Because I thought the "treatment of black people in this country" by law must be at least as good, if not better (as in affirmative action) than the treatment of anyone else.

Furthermore at least the minimum wage and climate change could theoretically have something to do with Amazon's bottom line. I personally wouldn't buy the argument that climate change is but that argument could be made in all honesty. And yeah - since Amazon pays a minimum of $15 an hour to every single employee that one is a no-brainer. But racism???

I guess that's what Amazon is for, though. Not the sheer volumes of profit it makes but these social issues which I'm sure it'll be just as effective at fixing.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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47 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

The one about the "treatment of black people in this country" being unacceptable was what really confused me.

Amazon might be trying to virtue-signal its way out of a controversy.

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2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Did we reimplement Jim Crow at some point and I just missed it? Because I thought the "treatment of black people in this country" by law must be at least as good, if not better (as in affirmative action) than the treatment of anyone else.

Laws can't always be enforced.

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

Laws can't always be enforced.

Affirmative action laws? You're right; they can't. There is no way to prove whether people get hired based on competence or on race and the best we can do is penalize anyone who lacks a sufficient number of diversity hires.

The laws against lynchings and racial segregation, though, I believe we are enforcing just fine.

Black people living in modern America have nothing special to complain about that the rest of us don't also have to deal with.

 

And from the article MisterSwig linked to:

Quote

Some of those who spoke to Recode recounted what they saw as biased interactions inside Amazon’s corporate offices, including a white male manager who told a Black female employee, unprompted, that his ancestors “owned slaves but I’m pretty sure they were good to their slaves.”

That's not racism.

Quote

Others described microaggressions like being called out by managers and peers for not smiling or being friendly enough.

Far from being racism, that just sounds like these peoples' coworkers were trying to be friendly.

"What's wrong, Joe?  Are you having a bad day?" he asked with MURDER IN HIS EYES!!!

Quote

Amazon’s top lawyer, David Zapolsky, later referred to Smalls as “not smart, or articulate” in notes from a meeting with Bezos and other company leaders. After these notes leaked to the press, Amazon white-collar employees fumed over the treatment of Smalls and Zapolsky’s choice of words, which were viewed as offensive at best and racist at worst.

Apparently calling any individual person with brown skin stupid and inarticulate is what "racism" means now.

 

What I'm getting from this article is that Jeff Bezos' mistake here was failing to announce to the world that these people are insane and he's not going to tolerate them.  That would've been the appropriate response.

And I'm sorry if anyone reading this believes that asking about the expressions on your coworkers faces or calling a stupid individual stupid is racism, but if you are one such person then you need to go home and rethink your life.

 

How did it go from that to Amazon declaring "the treatment of Blacks in this country" a top priority?

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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And there is a reason I've been referring to "sanity" so much lately.

 

If you believe that this last election was rigged specifically by a secret cabal of child-eating Satanic pedophiles, or that "microaggressions" like complimenting someone's hairstyle have anything to do with racism, or that the California wildfires were caused by Jewish space-lasers (which just sound awesome), or that Doctor Seuss or COVID have anything to do with racism, or that there's a vast underground complex beneath DisneyWorld where abducted children are taken to be sacrificed to Satan, or that vaccines could cause autism or do anything other than give immunity to certain diseases, or that a disease with such a laughably low fatality rate could ever have been designed to be a weapon, then your standards of rationality have not been lowered; they're just gone.  You have officially departed from the planet that I live on and are just making unintelligible noises.

And let's give ourselves some credit here, as Objectivists: the insanity going on here, on this forum, is nothing like what's going on in our wider society.  I think we deserve a pat on the back for that.

 

I'm not quite sure what to do with the fact that so many of the people around me seem to be going insane.  But calling it what it is and making a clear distinction between what makes sense for rational people to question, and which questions are just nuts, seems like a good starting point to me.

It's exactly what I would've urged Jeff Bezos to do about miss Chanin Kelly-Rae if I'd known about her at the time and if Jeff Bezos could've been bothered to notice my existence.  😆

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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6 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Rand's at one point in which she mentioned some textile company called Indian Head, and quoted its CEO as saying (roughly)

What did Rand say about it? Certainly, companies qua companies, only operate to make money, but the company is the subgoal. Primarily, the goal of establishing a company, or at least an integrated one, would be the wider goal of seeking values. The company is the means to something else.

That part of values is why when you say:

6 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

to say that profit is the team's only goal is to say that whenever its members are "on the clock" they must be focused on the pursuit of that one goal; no different from what it means to say that the purpose of a basketball team is to maximize points or that the purpose of an orchestra is to create beautiful music.

I think you are missing something. The goal of an employee while working for the company would include the goal of making money, but then it sounds like you are saying that there cannot be a wider goal than making money. Money is a sign of value exchange, yet that's in relation to wealth. It's morally good when money is seen as signifying value and the growth of value. And I imagine when you or I identify a really awesome company, we are talking also about the incredible wealth it brings that includes money. A basketball team can't strictly maximize points because the purpose of the team is to ultimately be the best of that sport, even though maximizing score is part of that. The best teams go beyond the scoring mentality.

 

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25 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

What did Rand say about it?

That it was great and she wished more companies could operate the way Indian Head was at the time of the lecture in question.  I'm pretty sure it's one of the speeches on the Ayn Rand Lexicon and I'll have to get back to you when I figure out which part of which one I'm thinking of.

25 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Primarily, the goal of establishing a company, or at least an integrated one, would be the wider goal of seeking values. The company is the means to something else.

Yes, but the primary goal of the company itself must be to maximize profits, or else it would be a bad company.

I know how weird it is to discuss something like a corporation having goals at all (since it is such an abstract way of organizing human efforts) but I really do think it's a meaningful kind of thing to discuss.  So do Google and Amazon, for what it's worth; even though the gist of my argument is that both are doing it very wrongly.

25 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

The goal of an employee while working for the company would include the goal of making money, but then it sounds like you are saying that there cannot be a wider goal than making money.

Not for the company itself, no.  There really ought to be a higher goal than money for every single employee working there.  I know that's not a straightforward thing to conceptualize (since a "company" is not a person but a certain team of people which changes from one day to the next) but if you could make that cognitive stretch with me, everything else I've been saying about it is right on the other side.

25 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

A basketball team can't strictly maximize points because the purpose of the team is to ultimately be the best of that sport, even though maximizing score is part of that. The best teams go beyond the scoring mentality.

What?  To where?

When I play BattleStar Galactica: Deadlock (as I have been far too much of late) I focus on killing as many Cylons as I can while minimizing the risks to the life of every human involved.  If I were to train somebody else to play it (or a team) that is precisely what I'd tell them to focus on, and if it were a basketball team I'd tell them to focus on maximizing their own points. 

What else should they be paying attention to when they're on the court and in the game?

 

18 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

That company does not strike a bell with me. The movie "Wanted" (2008) comes to mind.

Damn.  I'll probably remember where exactly it was eventually, but I was really hoping your memory would've been able to do what mine currently can't.

That is a great movie, though.  I really can't blame your unconscious mind for trying to pull that up instead of the lecture I was talking about; it is worth pulling up.

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE ANGELINA JOLIE IS ONE OF US!!!!!

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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Earlier today I started going through all the entries on the Ayn Rand Lexicon alphabetically, because I'm sure the thing I'm thinking of is there.  If it's a false memory then I swear I will return to this thread and say so.  I probably won't change my mind about corporate ethics but I will at least mention whether Ayn Rand actually said anything in support of it or not.

 

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10 hours ago, Reidy said:

I believe the quote comes from her article "The Money-Making Personality" that ran in Cosmopolitan in the early 60s.

She read that article on the radio. ARI uploaded it to YouTube. At 18:36 she tells the story of James E. Robinson of Indian Head Mills.

 

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21 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

The laws against lynchings and racial segregation, though, I believe we are enforcing just fine.

Lynchings, yes.

Racial segregation explicitly imposed by state and local governments, yes.

Racial segregation implicitly imposed by state and local governments, I'm not so sure.

Private racial segregation, an improper law, difficult to enforce.

On the other hand, people who say the underclass situation is just about racism overestimate the power and effects of racism.

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20 hours ago, Reidy said:

I believe the quote comes from her article "The Money-Making Personality" that ran in Cosmopolitan in the early 60s.

 

PS: https://www.amazon.com/COSMOPOLITAN-magazine-MONEY-MAKING-PERSONALITY-Cosmopolitan/dp/B000NE6D22

 

9 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

She read that article on the radio. ARI uploaded it to YouTube. At 18:36 she tells the story of James E. Robinson of Indian Head Mills.

Thank you!!!  I was about to come back here and declare it a false memory.

Sorry about all the music videos, too.  I was so sure of myself that I started drinking and listening to music while waiting for a response, and after the first few shots I decided my music was so good that everyone else needed to hear it, too.

It is all excellent music.  But I'm sorry for making a bit of a mess in the middle of this thread with it.  If any moderators felt like retroactively chopping a few songs out (or even just replacing the embedded videos with hyperlinks) my sober self would actually appreciate it.

 

Actually, for future reference, if you ever see me posting more than one song on a single page or posting any depressing or upsetting music, it's probably because I've had a bit too much already and you have explicit permission to clean the results up in whatever way you like, if you feel like fixing it at all.

 

Also @MisterSwig how on Earth did you get a functional timestamp in there?

22 hours ago, Eiuol said:

What did Rand say about it?

That it was basic economic common sense and that if it sounds shocking then that's a measure of the dishonesty of the dominant culture.

3 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

On the other hand, people who say the underclass situation is just about racism overestimate the power and effects of racism.

Absolutely.

 

Actual racism is evil and annoying but not life-altering.  As long as it remains the exception and not the rule (which is demonstrably true in America) all one has to do about it is not deal with the racists.  Which is precisely what I'm currently struggling to do about Coca-Cola (even though nothing else goes quite so well with rum).

 

Cheers!

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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57 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Also @MisterSwig how on Earth did you get a functional timestamp in there?

At the end of YT URLs add this code:

&t=1h12m24s

But replace my madeup numbers with the particular hour, minute and second you want to start the video.

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On 3/22/2021 at 10:50 PM, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE ANGELINA JOLIE IS ONE OF US!!!!!

Being a fan of Ayn Rand does not necessarily make someone one of us.  There are people out there who are fans literarily but not philosophically.  Do you have any further information?

I recall a post on a blog different from this site where the take on Atlas Shrugged was "great story, stupid selfish philosophy".

I recall overhearing a conversation on a plane.  Someone was reading Ayn Rand.  Someone else seemed to think it was good fiction but said "Just don't take Ayn Rand's philosophy of life too seriously".  The reader assured them not to worry.

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6 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Being a fan of Ayn Rand does not necessarily make someone one of us.  There are people out there who are fans literarily but not philosophically.  Do you have any further information?

Just that she's a fan, she's referred to Atlas Shrugged as "life-changing" and had been trying to play the role of Dagny Taggart in it.  I don't know why they turned her down (nor Kevin Sorbo when he wanted to play John Galt).  It might just be a literary appreciation.

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