Yesterday we talked about AI: how business has been adopting it wholesale even though so far most of the evidence is that it performs worse than humans on almost all tasks. They do this because bosses don’t want to deal with employees: they want drones that just do what they’re told, and hope that AI can replace humans.
Socrates famously said that people should eat to live, not live to eat.
Business provide services or goods to make money, they don’t make money to provide services or goods, and that’s the fundamental problem with our economy and capitalism.
If businesses were run for employees, by employees, they’d use automation and AI to make jobs better, not just to get rid of employees and hope to make more cash. If they were run for customers, then they’d use AI and automation to improve their services and goods. That might mean making them cheaper, in an economy with money, but there wouldn’t be a huge drive to get rid of employees. The question would be “does this make what we provide our customers better?”
This goes far beyond AI and automation, though. It’s why everything becomes crappified. Google, to give an obvious example, made Google Search crap to make more money. Facebook’s algo is hell, and makes Facebook worse, but it boosts engagement and make more money, while every study shows it makes people who use it more unhappy and depressed and spreads vast amounts of misinfo, optimizing for anger and outrage.
Pick whatever service or good you want (tractors are a good one) and the drive for profit over mission (despite all the BS in business books about mission) is why it’s getting worse and more expensive.
Organizations (not necessarily businesses) which optimized for good services and products wouldn’t act this way. They would also be more viable long run. Google is vulnerable to replacement (and some loss of search dominance is showing up) because their service is crap. Facebook has never managed to produce another good product and everything they buy, they crappify. But if people genuinely loved their services (and early Facebook — a timeline just of people you chose to follow, in reverse chronological order) was good, just as Google search, at the start, was breathtakingly good.
Profit first, and shareholders being the only people who matter, has the economy crap. It’s also one of the main reasons (along with oligopolization) for why the US has fallen behind China. Chinese businesses, though they have to make money, exist in a competitive market with an activist government which steps in when it sees excessive crapification. So they make their products better (including cheaper) to compete.
We need to find a new way to organize our society, which doesn’t optimize for profit, but optimizes for organization mission. When we do so, crappification will become the exception, not the rule.
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John9
Money driven as opposed to purpose driven is why the US military industrial complex makes arms that don’t compete particularly well and are outrageously expensive. There will be a time soon when those chickens come home to roost.
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I don’t think there will be. The days of chickens coming home to roost seem to be long gone, if they ever were.
Employee-driven is certainly better than oligarch-driven organizations and/or business entities but none of it is ideal. Employee-driven can still result in a tyrannical, dictatorial organization — the dictatorship of the proletariat so to speak. Employees, much like oligarchs but perhaps for different reasons, have a vested interest in making sure the organization perpetuates come hook or crook. This can and does result in obsolete organizations continuing to exist when they long ago should have disbanded.
Mining is a great example. Think of the contradiction involved in fighting for miners to keep their jobs in the face of automation. It’s a terrible job. A terrible existence. Sure, it;s their livelihood but actually it’s their deathlihood. Mining is terrible period in so many respects but to the extent it can be automated, it should be and sure, yes, the remaining miners should have the best deal possible and their health and rights should be protected but it’s a farce to advocate that their jobs should be protected in perpetuity and that’s just on example of so many.
Eric Anderson
I think that’s why Democratic Socialism (done well) works.
Socialize the necessities | Privatize the luxuries.
Enshittification really only impacts the “necessities.”
The luxuries actually have to actually compete.
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What’s a necessity and what is a luxury? At first blush, it’s easy to say that should be obvious but apparently it’s not.
Is a college education a necessity? Bernie Sanders thinks it is and therefore it should be for all and be free. Of course, nothing is free even if it doesn’t cost you anything and paying the tuition for students to not-for-profit organizations only serves to further drive up the cost of that tuition and to infalte the salaries of the administrations and bloat those administrations thus undermining any original mission, if there ever was one, to educate the masses.
College education is not for everyone and in fact not for most people. It is completely unnecessary for most people. It is not a necessity and yet democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders treat it as though it is a necessity.
Mary Bennett
I would like to see some of these “better” Chinese products. Because at my low consumption level, nothing “made in China” is anything like as well made or useful as the stuff I used to be able to buy way back when. Some of which stuff I still use. Maybe Chinese high end products are better, but I doubt I would buy the if I could afford.
Ian Welsh
A lot of the good stuff isn’t allowed in or is ludicrously tariffed. EVs for example: there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that the Chinese have the best.
Eric Anderson
Wow, Ian. You and Stoller are seriously channeling each other today: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-number-go-up-rule-why-america?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=11524&post_id=168396972&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2yfgu&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
And note his attention to the boomer class. Pox on the entire world.
Eric Anderson
Like &Subscribe: You’re just repeating talking points. Look at the research. Privatizing does not bring down costs. After cost overrun after cost overrun, after cost overrun, after gouge, graft, and insider favor … the state provides the same or better services cost effective than the private sector.
And Bernie thinks everyone should go to college? Really??? No. Pretty sure he’s on the record saying “education” is a right and should be provided by the State. Education takes many more forms than a 4 year college degree. Noooo. It’s not the socialists pushing this line. It’s the PMC liberals.
Stop it please.
Feral Finster
Henry Ford, FWIW, had similar ideas.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/about-money/henry-ford-road-riches#:~:text=My%20idea%20was%20then%20and,and%20out%20of%20its%20earnings.
“My idea was then and still is that if a man did his work well, the price he would get for that work—the profits and all financial matters—would care for themselves and that a business ought to start small and build itself up and out of its earnings.”
Henry Ford was the richest man in the world for a time.
Ian Welsh
Matt is the master of anti-monopoly, but we started at the same blog (BOPNews) and have a fair bit of overlap on technical issues of how to fix capitalism. (We disagree significantly on a lot of foreign affairs opinions and Matt is an American patriot and nationalist.)
Mark Level
Thank you to Eric Anderson. Yes, L&S writes a great deal of stuff that is shallow and uninformed, and based only on his own prejudices. He seems to be a pro-American Empire nationalist based on the tenor of his posts, but evidently doesn’t like Trump. (Broken clock, right 2x daily.)
I guess he is a Dem Blue Maga, “Vote Blue No Matter Who” type, likes the B-Team pretend “Good Cop.” I don’t like either, I identify as post-duopoly.
I really do not know why he comes to this site, when it is so to the left of his very conventional views. When something that COULD (not necessarily will) be good comes up, say Mamdani becoming NYC Mayor, he suddenly becomes an ultra-cynical Leftie, Mamdami will be a guaranteed sell-out, e.g. His BS about Bernie (who I no longer admire) is typical, Left Hippie Punching!! The quote is exactly what Obama (the actual sell-out) was saying: WE elites are not giving you a diminution of Economic Inequality, the only solution is for everyone to go thru expensive Higher Ed and deeply into debt, if you are lucky you will make it into the pretend meritocracy.
I guess he may be on Lawyers, Guns and Money under another handle, that is certainly his crowd– or the Daily Kos? L,G & M lamented that because Trump briefly closed off the aid spigot to the failed Ukraine War, “We (US) are now the Baddies!!” Because Nazi ethno-nationalists should be supported over dirty Neolib Russkies. Maybe he’s not there coz he’d just be another sheep bleating with the choir? Like Trump, he craves attention?
I think I was one of the ones who contributed to “Ms. Jennings” leaving this site because his repeated insane claims that Putin is so Zionist he would allow his own country to be defeated just to please Benjie Netanyahu failed to stand up to any scrutiny. Some people take the hint, some don’t, they just want to be the fly in your soup.
Eric Anderson
Both your posts are laser focusing on the same diagnosis. Refreshing to see consensus developing among the intelligentsia.