Jim Starluck
New member
This is a brief run-down of what I have come to believe is driving the majority of the economic hardship in the world right now, and the chief thing that needs to be overcome.
Within the existing economic paradigm, the majority of all production -- and when I say "production" I refer to the harvesting/gathering of raw resources, the cultivating of crops, the refining of those materials, the assembly of those materials into a more finished product, the delivery of the finished product to the end user/consumer and the providing of needed services -- is all driven with the intent to earn a profit for those who own the means of that production (the tools, equipment, facilities, etc. needed for the productive process).
I feel that this sets up a feedback loop which incentivizes behaviors that are damaging to the people who actually do the production (i.e. the workers), the end consumers, society as a whole, the environment... basically everyone and everything.
In short, for a company to survive, it needs to earn a profit. In theory you could get by just breaking even, but in practice you're either in the red or the black. If companies existed in a vacuum a modest profit would be sufficient, but of course they do not. Companies compete with one another, and in this competition profit is both the weapon and the objective.
When two companies are in competition, they leverage their profits against one another, and the company with the greater profits is at an advantage: it can expand faster, acquire resources more easily, and ultimately drive its competition out of business or absorb them into itself. What this means is that in the long term, a company is driven not just to profit, but to maximize profit and anything which stands in the way of this is an obstacle to overcome.
This seems intuitive, but the consequences are not as obvious.
We often look at a company's decision-making and assume they have the same values, ethics and morality that we humans do... but they do not. When a company is faced with a decision, the only factor that wins out is profitability. If there is a choice, and one option is ethically questionable but will earn the company greater profits, the company will opt for that option when at all possible.
Now, this doesn't mean that a company will always pick the least ethical option; it only looks at profitability. If the ethical choice will earn it a greater profit, it will happily pick the ethical option -- but not because it is ethical. The ethics of the situation is completely irrelevant to the company's decision-making. They just happen to line up sometimes.
This is also not to say that every company will eschew ethics for profit every time, because companies are ultimately composed of people, and sometimes they will balk at making the most profitable choice because of their personal conscience. If they keep doing this consistently, however, the profitable choice for the company becomes to fire that person and hire someone more ethically flexible. And if the company does not yield to this logic, it puts itself at a disadvantage relative to a company that does.
This is, incidentally, why I think psychopaths can succeed in business: they're capable of making the unethical yet profitable choice more consistently.
Now, here's the kicker.
When companies make unethical choices to pursue greater profits, many will say that they should be regulated; the government should step in and enforce the ethical decisions with laws and fines. And they might even succeed at this in some situations; take a look at FDR and the New Deal, for example.
Thing is, this situation cannot persist... because it just gives the companies a different avenue to pursue to maximize profit:
Undo the regluations.
Buy favors with politicians. Lobby. Bribe, if you can get away with it. Push your message in the media with a propaganda campaign.
Get the laws holding you back repealed. Make such laws illegal if you can. Roll back the clock.
This is essentially what has already been happening for the last several decades here in the US, and in my mind this is why we will not be able to safely regulate capitalism: because there will always be greater profits to be had in reversing any regulation.
In this sense, the profit motive is a beast which cannot be chained and safely domesticated, because it will inevitably start gnawing at the chains the moment you turn your back.
Instead, we must move past the profit motive entirely. Food must be grown purely because people are hungry, shelter built purely to house the homeless, healthcare provided purely because people are sick. The essentials that people need simply to survive must be provided as-needed, rather than monetized. Ideally, everything would become de-commodified, because sooner or later some asshole would start calling for charging money again.
This is part of why I'm not 100% convinced on the idea of worker-owned co-ops, because it doesn't remove the profit motive. It would still be feasible for a worker-owned co-op to make unethical choices for greater profits; it just prevents them from doing so at the expense of the workers, because the workers are the ones making the choices. But the motive is still there.
I don't know what the ultimate answer is; I have no idea what the solution will look like. I just feel deeply that we have to move beyond the profit motive, because that is cancerous.
Within the existing economic paradigm, the majority of all production -- and when I say "production" I refer to the harvesting/gathering of raw resources, the cultivating of crops, the refining of those materials, the assembly of those materials into a more finished product, the delivery of the finished product to the end user/consumer and the providing of needed services -- is all driven with the intent to earn a profit for those who own the means of that production (the tools, equipment, facilities, etc. needed for the productive process).
I feel that this sets up a feedback loop which incentivizes behaviors that are damaging to the people who actually do the production (i.e. the workers), the end consumers, society as a whole, the environment... basically everyone and everything.
In short, for a company to survive, it needs to earn a profit. In theory you could get by just breaking even, but in practice you're either in the red or the black. If companies existed in a vacuum a modest profit would be sufficient, but of course they do not. Companies compete with one another, and in this competition profit is both the weapon and the objective.
When two companies are in competition, they leverage their profits against one another, and the company with the greater profits is at an advantage: it can expand faster, acquire resources more easily, and ultimately drive its competition out of business or absorb them into itself. What this means is that in the long term, a company is driven not just to profit, but to maximize profit and anything which stands in the way of this is an obstacle to overcome.
This seems intuitive, but the consequences are not as obvious.
We often look at a company's decision-making and assume they have the same values, ethics and morality that we humans do... but they do not. When a company is faced with a decision, the only factor that wins out is profitability. If there is a choice, and one option is ethically questionable but will earn the company greater profits, the company will opt for that option when at all possible.
Now, this doesn't mean that a company will always pick the least ethical option; it only looks at profitability. If the ethical choice will earn it a greater profit, it will happily pick the ethical option -- but not because it is ethical. The ethics of the situation is completely irrelevant to the company's decision-making. They just happen to line up sometimes.
This is also not to say that every company will eschew ethics for profit every time, because companies are ultimately composed of people, and sometimes they will balk at making the most profitable choice because of their personal conscience. If they keep doing this consistently, however, the profitable choice for the company becomes to fire that person and hire someone more ethically flexible. And if the company does not yield to this logic, it puts itself at a disadvantage relative to a company that does.
This is, incidentally, why I think psychopaths can succeed in business: they're capable of making the unethical yet profitable choice more consistently.
Now, here's the kicker.
When companies make unethical choices to pursue greater profits, many will say that they should be regulated; the government should step in and enforce the ethical decisions with laws and fines. And they might even succeed at this in some situations; take a look at FDR and the New Deal, for example.
Thing is, this situation cannot persist... because it just gives the companies a different avenue to pursue to maximize profit:
Undo the regluations.
Buy favors with politicians. Lobby. Bribe, if you can get away with it. Push your message in the media with a propaganda campaign.
Get the laws holding you back repealed. Make such laws illegal if you can. Roll back the clock.
This is essentially what has already been happening for the last several decades here in the US, and in my mind this is why we will not be able to safely regulate capitalism: because there will always be greater profits to be had in reversing any regulation.
In this sense, the profit motive is a beast which cannot be chained and safely domesticated, because it will inevitably start gnawing at the chains the moment you turn your back.
Instead, we must move past the profit motive entirely. Food must be grown purely because people are hungry, shelter built purely to house the homeless, healthcare provided purely because people are sick. The essentials that people need simply to survive must be provided as-needed, rather than monetized. Ideally, everything would become de-commodified, because sooner or later some asshole would start calling for charging money again.
This is part of why I'm not 100% convinced on the idea of worker-owned co-ops, because it doesn't remove the profit motive. It would still be feasible for a worker-owned co-op to make unethical choices for greater profits; it just prevents them from doing so at the expense of the workers, because the workers are the ones making the choices. But the motive is still there.
I don't know what the ultimate answer is; I have no idea what the solution will look like. I just feel deeply that we have to move beyond the profit motive, because that is cancerous.