hater-of-terfs:olivesawl: If you’re the kind of person who would do that, you never become Bez
hater-of-terfs:olivesawl: If you’re the kind of person who would do that, you never become Bezos in the first place. My Dad owned a business my whole life. It was profitable, but it didn’t expand. I ask him once why he never grew it, and he said it’s nearly impossible without climbing on someone’s back–your vendors, your customers, your employees. Particularly that last one. You don’t wait until your business is big to be a good human being. The very first time you have to choose between your own profit and your employees health insurance, you choose the later. You give maternity leave even though the government doesn’t make you. You dock your own salary to not lay people off during a recession. You have adequate staffing and reliable hours. Anybody who says you can’t run a retail business on a normal, reasonable, predictable schedule you know in advance is full of shit. My Dad did it for 35 years (always have one more person than you think you need, and 98% of your staffing problems vanish). It’s just not maximum profit. If you don’t prioritize extracting profit from every corner of your business, you never become rich enough to give billions away. (One of the things my father is proud of is that by the time he retired they hadn’t needed to take a help wanted ad in 30 years. Turnover was low, and when a spot opened, referrals filled it.) Obligatory reminder that our society can’t function if we just rely on all capitalists to act like this person’s dad. Nice people in power doesn’t justify the existence of power, because there will always be more ruthless people trying to outcompete or take over and even nice people die eventually. The fact that people like this person’s dad don’t succeed is an indictment of the system from top to bottomIf we want to stop abuse of systems we need to design systems that are resistant to abuse. Worker’s coops and collectives, union shops, etc. One person using their flamethrower to host a barbecue doesn’t justify giving away flamethrowers to everyone, and it doesn’t justify letting that person keep their flamethrower either. Not as long as grills exist -- source link
#jeff bezos#capitalism