this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
456 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
60332 readers
4246 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm glad someone said it because this thought popped in my head yesterday. Been thinking about the consequences of my system, and really if it brings benefit to the users, but also who it affects indirectly.
So far, I'm ok with it. There is part of it that adds some safety for the business, the users, and people affected indirectly. But it still has a profit motive and that's the uncomfortable part.
Edit: I should clarify that I'm talking about my software system. Not the healthcare system in the U.S. like the author is. It's nowhere near as lucrative as making money off of people literally suffering from life. But the author mentioned how the CEOs see numbers not people. If the numbers my system collects ends up hurting people, that's what I was reflecting on.
There is nothing wrong with making a profit. People have to be paid, after all, and that includes the ownership who put the money at risk in the operation to begin with. The problem is when making a profit becomes the only motive.
Every company is established with the purpose of offering a product or performing a service that makes their customers' better or simpler. If is successful, it grows from nothing to something in a relatively short period of time. Then it gets the attention of the Investor Class, who shovels money into it with the expectation that it will sustain that growth. Now, the focus is on Building Shareholder Value, and the customer is seen as a necessary evil toward that goal.
The worst thing that ever happened was when we decided that public corporations had a duty to maximize shareholder value above everything else. It renders all those mission and vision statements irrelevant. No matter how much the CEO says the firm's goal is to make the world a better place through selling stuff, we all know it's a lie. Their goal is to enrich tthemselves, at our expense.
If the people putting money in deserve to be paid for that money, it can be treated as a fixed term loan, with an established interest rate. That makes it a business expense.
Profit is what's left over after everyone is paid for their work, and the costs of materials, housing, and maintenance - invluding the maintenance of debts - are covered. It's either what you've over-charged your customers, or underpaid your employees.
And that's wrong.
The most amazing part is not even that long ago, everyone agreed this is how it worked, even the business owners. I remember recently watching the 1923 silent film “Safety Last!” starring Harold Lloyd. I was very struck by a particular scene in the film where the owner of the store Harold Lloyd works at says:
“I’d give $1000 for a new idea that would attract an enormous crowd to our store. Something is wrong with our exploitation! We simply are not getting the publicity that our position in the commercial world calls for.”
This character is not presented as some kind of villain or saying something wrong. He’s just talking about how everyone understands business to work, by exploitation, which has always simply meant taking advantage of some kind of opportunity, even when people like Marx talked about it.