I remember when I was growing up, tech industry has so many people that were admirable, and you wanted to aspire to be in life. Bill Gates, founders of Google Larry Page, Sergey brin, Steve Jobs (wasn’t perfect but on a surface level, he was still at least a pretty decent guy), basically everyone involved in gaming from Xbox to PlayStation and so on, Tom from MySpace… So many admirable people who were actually really great…
Now, people are just trash. Look at Mark Zuckerberg who leads Facebook. Dude is a lizard man, anytime you think he has shown some character growth he does something truly horrible and illegal that he should be thrown in prison for. For example, he’s been buying up properties in Hawaii and basically stealing them from the locals. He’s basically committing human rights violations by violating the culture of Hawaiian natives and their land deeds that are passed down from generation to generation. He has been systematically stealing them and building a wall on Hawaii, basically a f*cking colonizer. That’s what the guy is. I thought he was a good upstanding person until I learned all these things about him
Current CEO of Google is peak dirtbag. Dude has no interest in the company or it’s success at all, his only concern is patting his pockets while he is there as CEO, and appeasing the shareholders. He has zero interest in helping or making anyone’s life pleasant at the company. Truly a dirtbag in every way.
Current CEO of Home Depot, which I now consider a tech company because they have moved out of retail and into the online space and they are rapidly restructuring their entire business around online sales, that dude is a total piece of work conservative racist. I remember working for this company, This dude’s entire focus is eliminating as many people as feasibly possible from working in the store, making their life living heck, does not see people as human beings at all. Just wants to eliminate anyone and everyone they possibly can, think they are a slave labor force
Elon musk, we all know about him, don’t need to really say much. Every time you think he’s doing something good for society, he proves you wrong And does the worst thing he can possibly do in that situation. It’s like he’s specifically trying to make the world the worst place possible everyday
Like, damn. What the heck happened to the world? You know? I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…
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This phenomenon is not limited to tech company leaders.
It’s a common problem with all large corporations leadership, and gets increasingly worse the larger that corporation becomes.
“I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…”
They are but as usual it’s the WORKERS who are the good brilliant people, not the ownership class and 3 letter executive dirt bags. They’re the same in EVERY industry. Owner/CEO ONLY cares about profit profit profit, fuck everyone and everything else.
Workers, they’re a mixed bag as there are so many different people, but in the tech space they’re generally intelligent “good” people.
The workers also just care for profits. Nobody is working for free. Everyone needs to pay their bills. Companies will stop making profits when workers dispense with their wages, but I bet that’s not gonna happen.
Technically workers do not care about profits, they care about wages. The average worker doesn’t benefit from profit because they represent a fixed expense. The work they produce is worth more than their salary which is how a company produces profit. As long as a company breaks even and the salary is enough to meet one’s needs a worker does just fine. However a worker’s job could easily be axed in the name of profit because they are what is being profited off of, not the entitled beneficiary of the business as a whole.
Profit it just the take home winnings of the investors or owners of the business and the few jobs at the top where compensation is based off of profit percentage or lavish bonuses for making the targets.
Wages are also subject to change based on performance or company profits.
But what I mean is that the company and the worker have the same interests in some way. Everyone wants to make money to pay the bills. Companies are no charities and your work isn’t either. If you dislike your relationship with the company, you can just resign that relationship any time. But one thing will never change: the worker will only do the work required from him and the company will only pay the wage required from them. There is nothing evil about that. It’s human nature for the past 20.000 years.
So many people don’t understand that profit comes after all expenses which includes labor. :/
Idk, given how many evil mobile games and dark patterns there are, there are plenty of “bad” people, or at least people who won’t push back against bad decisions from management.
Nobody is going to “push back” very hard against the people who control their food, shelter, and other basic human needs. If they had that level of comfort, they wouldn’t be working there in the first place.
Yup, it’s very much like the prisoner’s dilemma. If everyone in tech refused to do this nonsense, we wouldn’t have dark patterns and whatnot and stakeholders would find another way. But if enough people are willing to do this nonsense, the “good” people end up worse off.
Shareholders want the CEO that gets them more money. If that person doesn’t deliver, they don’t ask why, they ask when. If they don’t like the answer, they get a new CEO. Rinse repeat, here we are.
Except Zuckerberg, of course. He’s just evil.
It’s not just tech, but leadership positions in general.
Short answer is that the traits you need to climb the ladder have significant overlap with the traits of legit psychopathy.
To add to this, there’s been evidence that as an individual accrues more wealth, their empathy response lessens over time.
My arm chair psychologist hypothesis is that: as the individual sees their quality of life increase, they look at other human beings in deplorable conditions, and their empathy response atrophies in order to avoid cognitive dissonance.
There’s a concept in the study of wealthy individuals which goes over their desire to hide impoverishment from their view.
Any good books or other articles on this? I’d be legitimately interested.
The more money I make or the better off I am, I actually just end up feeling more guilty and giving more away. Frankly, one only needs so much, after that if you can improve the quality of life of those around you it makes everything better.
I remember when I was growing up
You can basically stop right there. You were young and naive, viewing the world through the rose colored glasses of youth.
For real, all those guys were always cutthroats. How do you think they dominated the markets? It was not because they shared and encouraged competition. No, they stole, lied, and cheated their way to the top.
I remember when I was growing up,
You remember propaganda (when corporations do it, it’s called “Public Relations”).
That’s what you remember. Now, thanks to the internet democratizign information somewhat, they don’t just get to feed us their “public relations” anymore. Now people can counter that shit, and people see them for what they really are - parasites.
It’s capitalism, baby. Welcome to the real world.
Social media would be drowning in negative posts about Bill Gates if they were a thing in the 90s. The only difference, perhaps, is back then the industry was still at its early years, it was quickly evolving, so many brilliant people had a chance to achieve something too. Today, it’s huge corporations where each individual has virtually no impact.
It’s better to assume good humans don’t exist, they just haven’t shown (to you) their bad side yet
They still exist and they’re just as unheard of as the unsung heroes who brought us the digital revolution of the 20th century.
Alan Turing, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Gary Kildall, the list goes on. At least Torvalds and Stallman got some recognition for what they did within their respective communities, even if the latter is a bit of a creep.
All of those people where far more important to computing, and far less famous. Just like how no one really thinks about the developers holding up the open source projects which function as the bedrock of our modern society. They’re more interested in company heads than actual technologists, or more accurate, that’s what the people in power are more interested in.
Actual engineers tend to have pesky things like morals and ethics.
you either die a hero or live long enough to see your self become a villain
Because sociopathic tenancies are useful when on your way to the top. It lets you step on everyone else in your way and then do whatever you want without having to care about others.
Yep!
Tech is absolutely a space where people who break the rules get rewarded. Every tech company I’ve worked at has had a situation where they turned the other cheek on laws. And if they broke it, the fine was just the cost of doing business.
A example at my old job (with fake numbers), they broke laws in some EU countries. It took them like a decade to finally catch up with them. And the fine was like $8 million dollars. But during that law breaking, they made $100mil in sales, while also destroying the competition and solidifying they position in the marketplace, guaranteeing more profits for another decade.
If they followed the law, they wouldn’t be this major player in the industry.
And the job I worked at is one of thousands of companies that think like that.
Shit like this doesn’t deserve to remain anonymous. Just name the company.
They all have a story like this. They are all terrible.
I think Gareth Reynolds said it or was it Jordan from knowledge fight? But once you reach a billion you should get a medal saying you won capitalism then be 100% taxed the rest of your life.
Everything over a certain amount should be taxed 100%. Not everything. But also there should be a substantial house tax on mansions. And a higher house tax if you own more than one property.
Yeah, you don’t need to have a billion to exclude people from shelter and exceed complicity in their suffering or death. Anyways, yeah short of abolishing property and landlords a significant tax, property hoarding deterrance, and rent control would make so much sense. It would take an severe naivete or true sociopathy not to support it.
It would take an severe naivete or true sociopathy not to support it.
… or seeing how those things affected a few rent-strained places not in the USA where you are apparently from.
Property taxes are fine and all. But renting out has a place in economics. It should be profitable and encouraged, it does benefit people who can’t buy real estate.
Of course when huge realty companies rent out, and there’s not much other choice, you are going to have problems. But that’s work for anti-monopoly laws.
But where I live, for example, it’s usually individuals who rent out and they don’t own dozens of apartments.
Landlords do spend their money and time on maintaining their property, buying furniture, appliances, keeping it in good state, insured and all that, so that someone without time and energy to do a hundred things would be able to rent that property and live there without too much bother.
They provide a useful service. Hating them all is stupid.
Sitting in the “shelter is not a right” space:
They withold houses from the market, thereby driving cost up. In turn that drives mortgage down payments up. The credit system and bank hurdles to securing a mortgage are also a big part of that issue but another conversation.
The generalization that the individual landlord does the maintenance and tasks that the tenants don’t want to is hard bs. Considering that rent is based on a profit, and any landlord I’ve had has hired out labor, the tenants functionally already pay for all of that maintenance and upkeep. Many would love to DIY but others could afford to hire the labor and save money with a mortgage vs rent. That’s not to mention it’s basically 50/50 on whether the landlord actually maintains a property or sits in the area of, “tenants aren’t going to report me cause i have all the power and they need shelter”.
Now owning a home i can easily say, you don’t really have much to do for maintenance. I guess i mow the lawn every few weeks and otherwise do basic cleaning? Even my old car only takes a few hours of labor every few months and it has moving parts. I guess i also cleaned the gutters back in spring. Took an hour and a buddy to hold the ladder. Oh i also have savings put away for larger infrequent maintenance which i can just hire out(if i wanted) at a tiny fraction of what i used to pay in rent.
Anyways, to the part where i can agree in some sense is short term housing. That’s a real need. That’s where rent really makes sense. Still, rent control based on simple percent profit and tax. Limits on unused properties. So on. Housing capacity should grow but housing cost should not drive cost of living nor exceed inflation.
They withold houses from the market, thereby driving cost up. In turn that drives mortgage down payments up. The credit system and bank hurdles to securing a mortgage are also a big part of that issue but another conversation.
Wouldn’t that stimulate more construction?
Now owning a home i can easily say, you don’t really have much to do for maintenance. I guess i mow the lawn every few weeks and otherwise do basic cleaning?
OK, where I live people usually don’t own houses, they own apartments, and maintenance minimally involves ensuring that your apartment is not a cockroach breeding ground and your piping doesn’t make your neighbors below feel too wet.
In a separate house yeah, you can more or less just shrug because liquids go into the ground anyway, and there are no central heating pipes that may rupture, and so on.
Limits on unused properties.
That’d be fine. Maybe if you own 5+ apartments, or by living space, because otherwise you’d, say, hurt people who have one apartment they are slowly restoring to livable condition to maybe rent out later and one they themselves live in.
Wouldn’t that stimulate more construction?
New construction isn’t always an option in dense urban areas. It’s also possible that new development is simply purchased by investors and put on the rental market (with or without tenants) and you’re back at square 1.
OK, where I live people usually don’t own houses, they own apartments, and maintenance minimally involves ensuring that your apartment is not a cockroach breeding ground and your piping doesn’t make your neighbors below feel too wet.
As much as I loathe HOA’s, and I’ve heard of bad condo association drama, multi-unit housing can be run under alternative, collective schemas. If you are renting there’s a lot of value in considering a renter’s union in such scenario. Tenants have banded together to buy out their own building collectively before. But also I’m talking outside my experience here and shouldn’t prescribe a solution for ultra-dense housing when I’ve only lived in a 30 unit building in a medium sized city and not new york or whatever.
That’d be fine. Maybe if you own 5+ apartments, or by living space, because otherwise you’d, say, hurt people who have one apartment they are slowly restoring to livable condition to maybe rent out later and one they themselves live in.
Look, no one is saying do this overnight. There is shitloads of nuance to it which needs to be addressed but it is east to get voiced down in. But people shouldn’t be on the street when they can’t afford rent. That’s the quickest way to losing your job, your belongings, a permanent address, and even your personal documentation. Without those you can’t get a job, or housing, or any public benefits. We have to stop putting people out for the mere act of attempting to survive and making one mistake or missing one bus.
We have to stop putting people out for the mere act of attempting to survive and making one mistake or missing one bus.
I’m actually fine with pretty communist futuristic solutions here, as long as they are very clearly defined to prevent slippery slopes.
As in - state-provided place to bunk for those who have problems.
Sort of a capsule, behind one sliding door there’s a toilet, behind another there’s a shower and a water tap and a mirror, behind the third one there’s a space to sleep horizontally, and a space to store your stuff under it. A retractable table and a seat. Obviously electricity. Something like that, taking minimal space, allowing modular maintenance and repair. One of the walls has a window, that can be opened. The space shouldn’t be too small either - if people get too claustrophobic, they might prefer grass or subway stations.
Of course, if we think about this seriously, multiple such capsules’ inhabitants can all queue for shower and even to use toilets and even to cook. A washing machine for laundry in every capsule seems inefficient, so common laundromats it is. A place to sleep and keep possessions is the most important thing.
Such apartment buildings should have sufficiently passable corridors and sufficiently spacious common areas.
With those requirements in mind - it takes a standard design and a program of construction of such housing. Apartments won’t be property of their inhabitants, just something provided by the state as long as it’s needed.
But a program of construction of such things, only with selling to end inhabitants by subsidized price, is too a possibility. Only I’d separate them - a building is either inhabited by owners\renters\guests, or by people needing temporary housing, not both at once.
What did I write …
Well first of all, I don’t personally think evil even exists.
Secondly, I don’t think these people are any more or less “evil” than the rest of us. They just operate on a much larger scale that affects many more people. If any of us normal folk would be put under equivalent level of scrutiny as these guys with journalists combing thru our every social media post and paparazzis following us around combined with the intention to dig up dirt and contribute to the negative narrative that sells better than a positive one, we’d all look like them. Most people don’t like Gates, Musk or Zuck because that’s the conclusion they’ve independently arrived at. It’s how they’ve been told to think by the media.
I don’t know how someone could possibly say that evil doesn’t exist.
There are people out there that torture animals to death purely for fun, with no other purpose. There are people that wish genocide and debilitating diseases on a demographic they don’t like. There are people who abduct children, tie them down, rape them, then murder them.
The whole “there’s no good and bad, just what the media conditions you to believe” philosophy is bullshit, and screams of a 14 year old thinking they’re enlightened and philosophical, when in reality they’re just being a fuckwit.
I’d ask how you define evil in this case. To me, an act is evil when the net detriment to the planet and its contents (including humans) is greater than the net benefit it creates, and the actor pursues said act knowing this. I’d argue it scales with the nature and context of the act. It’s hard to say this isn’t real. But yes, we all have the capacity for evil, and also can be complicit in other evils by dint of normalized behaviours (without necessarily being ‘evil’ ourselves)
I do agree that an absolute Evil doesn’t exist, the same way an absolute Good doesn’t exist. But we’re a pile of writhing meat puppets on a moist, moldy rock - we don’t exist on that level in the first place.
I don’t ever remember Bill Gates or Steve Jobs being good people. Or Jeff Bezos, trying to kill bookstores.
The guys behind Google seemed okay at first and I think they really wanted to do good. But the way the company culture was built was toxic.
But in the end it’s all about the greed. As soon as a company becomes public and whose stocks become available on the market, it turns to shit.
Look at how Steam is going well and actually helping personal computing progress. Gabe Newell is doing a great job because he loves that he does and ensures the people who work for him do too.
Newell also has overseen Valve as one of the pioneers of the most predatory monetization in the video game industry (lootboxes, etc.).
There are no saints at this level.
Bethesda used to be awesome. Until they popularized DLC
TBF to Valve, their lootboxes were limited to cosmetic items in a free to play multiplayer games. You can ignore those and it wouldn’t change the gameplay at all.
I mean their unwillingness to do anything about the market abuse and rampant child-gambling aside, the lootboxes for purely cosmetic items are one of the least predatory ways to do microtransactions. It’s not like EA where the only way to unlock entire characters in some games is to grind for hundreds of hours or pay, or like COD where they took the lootbox idea and made it actually affect (multiplayer) gameplay
the least predatory ways to do microtransactions
Damning with faint praise.
You’re not going to out-compete the sociopaths if you’re a saint. That’s a reality.
And in politics, too!
You’re out of your mind if you thought bill gates was someone to look up to.
You cant get that kind of money without being piece of shit humanbeing. You need to constantly look out for opportunities to exploit others and how could you even do that if you have any shred of empathy or decency. Not sure if they were like this from the beginning or if they became like this when they got enough money or if its influence from their family, but we will all suffer under their rule.
