> of pinning failure on everything except profit motive
I see. Profit motive is bad. The world would be so much nicer if people were just less greedy.
I do agree with that.
And then what? Will you appeal to people to just stop being greedy, and join in a brotherly harmony?
Or you will try to strengthen the state mechanisms that make greed less dangerous? For example, greed could make some people steal. Rather than appeal to people not to steal, we can (and do) have law enforcement that deters people from stealing.
Well, recently that deterrence started losing its potency. Do I hear you criticizing the human greed and deploring those who go in stores and steal in plain daylight to satisfy their greed?
Obviously I’m an advocate for stronger regulation. I am saying that cannot be sufficient against a cultural backdrop that glorifies greed above all else. So we should be both regulating more effectively and encouraging an ethical culture of obligation to more than just one’s own bottom line — especially in large scale and/or safety-critical business.
Given that most of us here on HN aren’t policymakers but we are creators and receivers of culture, I am focusing on the latter dimension.
Greed is not a virtue, it is a local vice that can be converted into positive outcomes through a system that constrains it. But the necessary prerequisite to constraining greed is seeing it as a vice, a thing to be constrained and not celebrated for its own sake.
I'm not sure what culture you are talking about that celebrates greed. Maybe you are thinking of Michael Douglas's character in the Wall Street movie, and his meme-like "Greed is good". The guy was the negative character, the movie's message was that greed is bad.
What you hear in America, at least, is a culture that celebrates hard work, and generally considers laziness a vice. Why are people willing to work hard? Because they want to succeed in life. That's what the American dream is, after all. You could try to look at it from the angle of "because they are greedy", and, in the end it comes down to dollars: people work hard because they want more of those green bills. But pretty much nobody perceives that as greed, they perceive it as the right compensation for hard work. And certainly nobody goes out there with the message "kids, be greedy; follow my lead, I was greedy in life and look how well I did in life".
What I have noticed though is that a lot of people deplore grid, just like you are doing. It's very easy to perceive that other people are greedy. But very few people perceive themselves as being greedy.
Well, duh, you could say. But here's the thing: in a culture that celebrated greed, people would be proud to call themselves greedy, and to perceive themselves as greedy. But that is just not the case.
Happy to hear counterarguments. Especially examples in popular culture where greed is glorified.
1. Over the last 5 years, Boeing's stock went down 50% while the S&P500 index went up 85%. How exactly did the shareholders benefit from Boeing becoming a shitty company?
The common answer to that is something like focus on short-term returns, like quarterly earnings. That makes the hugely simplifying assumption that shareholders are stupid. If you show them good quarterly earnings, you hypnotize them, and they shower you with gold. That is far from true. The vast majority of shareholders have no idea about any quarterly earnings, or about any details of any company, because they own the shares passively through some mutual funds. The top 5 shareholders of Boeing are [1] Vanguard, BlackRock, Newport Trust, State Street and Fidelity.
But there are lots of professional analysts, including those at the said mutual funds, who know many more details about companies than you or I can imagine. The myth of the quarterly earnings is just that, a myth. Of course the earnings matter, but if they come at the expense of the long term viability of a firm, the truth comes out quickly. As a CEO you can't just make the stock go up by showing good earnings while secretly dismantling the firm.
What's the explanation for Boeing then, you ask? It's the exception that proves the rule. The vast majority of companies have CEOs that are focused on the right balance of short term gains and long term viability. Some of these CEOs are better than others. From time to time you see an example like Boeing, but for the most part you don't.
2. Deploring "shareholder primacy" is fine and dandy until you have to come up with an alternative. The problem with stakeholder value, or contribution to community, or any other heart throbbing sound you want, is that CEOs are smart and they'll figure out how to game that in no time. They are already doing that. Go to any company of any size and see how much they talk about how they help society, how they care about the environment, etc, etc. Do you think there aren't any consultants out there that are more than happy to help you put out press releases about what an angel your company is?
Ah, what you want is for companies to be actual angels and not just pretend angels? In that case, it's all good. I'm ok with that.
I see. Profit motive is bad. The world would be so much nicer if people were just less greedy.
I do agree with that.
And then what? Will you appeal to people to just stop being greedy, and join in a brotherly harmony?
Or you will try to strengthen the state mechanisms that make greed less dangerous? For example, greed could make some people steal. Rather than appeal to people not to steal, we can (and do) have law enforcement that deters people from stealing.
Well, recently that deterrence started losing its potency. Do I hear you criticizing the human greed and deploring those who go in stores and steal in plain daylight to satisfy their greed?
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