undefined | Better HN

0 pointskbenson3y ago0 comments

> No, you don't get to change what I said to fit your worldview. The 70's and the 80's had tons of multinational companies that didn't treat their employees like cattle, and that treated each of their branches as its community.

And were those companies acting as stewards of small communities, taking some of the role of local governments? If not I'm not sure how it applies.

> It's curious why your cynicism doesn't cut both ways...

> Just as it is easy to find evidence of corruption at all levels of government.

It does, and I agree. The difference is that with elected officials you have a mechanism to do something about it. How do you change the agenda of a company that controls the economy of the town you live in? You're not on the board, you can't feasibly get enough of the stock (if it's even public) to sway their strategy.

I will lay out my argument very clearly, again, so there's no confusion, and I will make some parts explicit that I left out that people seem to be making assumptions on.

- For any group in power, you cannot control their future actions. Any person that acts in a way you agree with today, may not act that way tomorrow. That extends to all politicians and all management of companies.

- Because of this neither a company, or interest group, or individual, whether elected or not, can be relied on to work in your interest in perpetuity. I do not view a governing body or a company in any way as superior or inferior to each other because both can go bad.

- Having some way to incentivize or change those in power is important because of the above.

- Citizens of a democracy have some power to do this. People that rely on a non-governmental body for this are thus relinquishing some of their control to affect whether those in power if they are working against their interest.

- Therefore in the absence of evidence that a specific governing body is better or worse than some company in meeting the needs of a community if given the resources of that community (e.g. lessened tax burden and favorable treatment by the community and local government), choosing the apparatus that you have more control over is the better choice.

I am not making any claim that an elected government at any specific instance of time is inherently more likely than a company to act beneficially for a community, but I wholeheartedly believe that since the community can change that local government, they are a better choice to have the power.

0 comments

rglullis3y ago

> I will lay out my argument very clearly

I think I got it, but it still seems that you were talking past the point from OP.

You are trying to make some statement about how individuals have more power with functional democratic institutions vs the despotic-like nature of the "town company".

What OP seems to be getting at is the point how communities before had higher levels of inner trust, and how this relates with TFA.

In a time where things were not globalized and people actually knew and interact with their neighbors (instead of getting stuck on Hacker News talking with people on the different side of the planet), the idea of the "town company" as the institution that coordinated the society vs "the government" didn't matter so much, as long as there was some sense of community and high-trust.

It was this local community with insular trust that we lost with globalization, and this why it makes no sense to talk about "company loyalty" anymore.

kbensonOP3y ago

My whole point rests on the assertion that things are not static. Explicitly stated as companies changing from benevolent to less so, or politicians going from working for the people to against them. Implicitly, I expected this to be applied to other things as well, and I think it should be applied to things such as inner trust in communities.

You cannot expect the current conditions to persist indefinitely. Ceding what power you have to control parts of that, or even just to control tools which themselves affect that (such as politicians), just because right now things are good and you trust your community and the companies in it is a losing strategy.

Even back in the past when people had much more trust that a company would not treat them badly, any actions to make that the status quo (by weakening methods which those people had active input and ways to influence) was a bad choice, but possibly a less understood one.

Additionally, my response to rmason was meant less as a rebuttal, and more as an aside to do with the entire concept that relying on a company was ever a good idea, regardless of whether it often turned out okay for people during a certain time period. Not all replies are counters directly to what was stated, even if we are sometimes primed to view them that way. I didn't view myself as rebutting someone when I wrote that, but instead exploring the idea of why relying on a company was always a bad idea.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse