We really need to rethink our capitalistic obsession of running things like a business. Cutting costs to increase profits obviously doesn't make sense in areas of education, healthcare, public utilities, and prisons, to name just a few.
Hell, Boeing is making a strong case that it doesn't even make sense for businesses to be run like a business, much less these public goods...
@FantasticalEconomics It's the perpetual growth model that stock trading investors often demand that simply leads to the rot economy. It's unsustainable.
The company starts rotting their product & driving consumers away for the sake of perpetual growth, until it reaches a point of no return and inevitable collapse. But the CEO would have gotten their golden handshake long before this point and moved on to rot the next company.
This is the rot economy. This is late stage capitalism.
@FantasticalEconomics The idea that anyone thinks hospitals should be for-profit businesses is jaw-dropping. If consumers can't choose who to purchase a service from, BY DEFINITION THIS IS NOT A "FREE MARKET."
@smach@FantasticalEconomics
The modern concept of “hospitals” developed out of a need to centralize care resulting from industrialized warfare.
So much of our modern society is vestiges of the Industrial Revolution (school bells condition children for factory work!) and we just never evolved the #institutions.
The future of #healthcare is in the home and that breaks business models, talent, training, supply chain, logistics, etc.
I like to joke that when politicians try to run society like a business, they run it like a shitty, exploitative business trying to goose its next quarter numbers with a stock buyback at the expense of any investment in its workforce or future.
Boeing isn’t run like a business, it’s being strip mined. Investment practice is distinct from manufacturing practice, but the former has come to dominate in the US, UK and is creeping through Canada, despite it’s unique talent for destroying everything it touches.
Consider that very capitalist Singapore ditched neoliberalism when it blew up in their face. Their outlook is result orient, not ideological.
Yeah. It's a shame there is such a disconnect between what is and what should be.
But, alas, the way businesses are run today is running everything into the ground, including many businesses themselves, all for the short-term gain of those in power.
There's a lot of talk about capitalism this, and socialism that. But most people hear "businesses owned by non-govt people" vs "businesses run by an authoritarian govt like in USSR".
Those are the two options people think we have, and so understandably they're not in favor of the second one... If we could explain better to everyday people we would get farther. Not only are those not the only options we don't even have either one right now.
Yes we can thank Friedman for advancing that false dichotomy as well as false equivalence (ie that capitalism = freedom and prosperity). Since picking over some of the classic interviews of him (Phil Donanhue'79) and being much more aware of logical fallacies, his methods glaringly mendacious.
"Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense) (p. 14)."
It's an overt ask that people surrender their critical faculties and an frontal assault on epistemology. The man might as well argue spontaneous generation.
Agreed. It's a hell of a false dichotomy, and one that is intentionally amplified to prevent meaningful change.
In general, I try to teach my students that either-or framing is problematic. It's often used to trick and mislead as there are very rarely only two options. Getting them to specifically think about options for a society that lie between pure capitalism and communism is a good start. Then expanding their views to realize that is only the beginning.
I would ask any public education system to teach rhetoric and logical fallacies. Maybe not go whole hog on it, but certainly the ones in general use today.
gish gallup
strawman,
false dichotomy
false equivalence
arguments from authority
and a few others whose name's I don't remember
then there is this good article relevant to AI, but also an overview of how confidence scams work
Once again we see how naive neoclassical theory is. By every model I have seen, Boeing's share price should be dropping faster than its planes from the sky.
But that is based on having adequate competition (obviously false) and an utter inclusion of the financial engineering that you bring up.
I liked the segment, by the way. Short and sweet and communicates the disconnect between theory and practice effectively!
@FantasticalEconomics To be fair, Boeing have been doing their best to kill people by negligence. But there's been a spate of bullshit headlines along the lines of "a tire burst on a 30 year old 757 taking off! Is Boeing doomed?!?" over the past couple of months, and I am so over this.
@FantasticalEconomics I think a major issue is related to the open secret that universities offer degrees. And they often offer business degrees too for the people who couldn't get a real degree.
If your line of work often involves meetings at a golf course you don't actually work. You play a game and the world would be better off if you switched to a more challenging, less damaging game like Zelda or Gardenscapes.
@FantasticalEconomics
I don't really know what goes into business degrees. But the only person I know who has one runs a small business providing gymnastics instruction to kids ages 2-18. So let's do more of that please. @philip_cardella
Can confirm, by having taught in a business college, that most end up unquestioning automota in corporations. A surprising amount do it to take over the family business. Essentially, business programs teach greed. Or, that it's OK to be greedy because metrics for greed exist. Either way, they end up much like what LinkedIn turns people into.
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