• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Adding fuel to the class-war fire: How do we bring altruism back to corporate America

D

Dman8777

Senior member
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-hours

The above comes from Mother Jones website, a decidedly left-leaning news outlet. The article is written in a way to get the reader fired up and pissed off, but despite the spin, the basic premise is solid. I'll spare those of you who don't care to go through it. The charts are pretty interesting though.

Summary: By a variety of indicators, the recession wasn't that bad in the US. Both output and profits returned pretty quickly. People in the highest income bracket experienced a significant reduction in income but it was brief and they have long since surpassed their previous levels.

However, wages for the rest of society haven't changed in a long time. Also, employment hasn't recovered and it's because businesses have found ways to get more work out of less people. This means different things in different industries but accross the board, Americans have to work longer hours and shoulder more responsibilites. This process has been going on for some time but the recession has given businesses another excuse to overwork their employees. End Summary

Anecdotal evidence: I started working as a temporary office worker for a variety of tech firms in my state starting around 2000. A lot of them were going through down-sizing and they needed temps to fill in now and then while they re-organized devisions and so forth. Everywhere I went, I met guys who were doing the work of 2 or 3 people because of down-sizing. Another commonality was the duration of the re-structuring process. It always seemed to have been going on for a year or more.

My last job was in engineering at a defense contractor. My bosses there never over-worked me or pressured me into working extra time. However, people in production regularly had to work weekends and there was a prevailing culture of ''there's no such thing as too much overtime.'' A lot of people in our department, despite being salary employees, worked over 50 hours a week. End anecdotal evidence

My question is: Do people in general find this trend to be a problem? if so, how do we solve it/is it solvable?
 
Dman8777 said:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-hours

The above comes from Mother Jones website, a decidedly left-leaning news outlet. The article is written in a way to get the reader fired up and pissed off, but despite the spin, the basic premise is solid. I'll spare those of you who don't care to go through it. The charts are pretty interesting though.

Summary: By a variety of indicators, the recession wasn't that bad in the US. Both output and profits returned pretty quickly. People in the highest income bracket experienced a significant reduction in income but it was brief and they have long since surpassed their previous levels.

However, wages for the rest of society haven't changed in a long time. Also, employment hasn't recovered and it's because businesses have found ways to get more work out of less people. This means different things in different industries but accross the board, Americans have to work longer hours and shoulder more responsibilites. This process has been going on for some time but the recession has given businesses another excuse to overwork their employees. End Summary

Anecdotal evidence: I started working as a temporary office worker for a variety of tech firms in my state starting around 2000. A lot of them were going through down-sizing and they needed temps to fill in now and then while they re-organized devisions and so forth. Everywhere I went, I met guys who were doing the work of 2 or 3 people because of down-sizing. Another commonality was the duration of the re-structuring process. It always seemed to have been going on for a year or more.

My last job was in engineering at a defense contractor. My bosses there never over-worked me or pressured me into working extra time. However, people in production regularly had to work weekends and there was a prevailing culture of ''there's no such thing as too much overtime.'' A lot of people in our department, despite being salary employees, worked over 50 hours a week. End anecdotal evidence

My question is: Do people in general find this trend to be a problem? if so, how do we solve it/is it solvable?
Click to expand...


You will never solve it as long as the short term profit mentality is prevalent and middle and upper management only care about the short term prospects of a company in relation to their compensation,

Cut back, squeeze everything possible out of the remaining employees and call it efficiency boost short term profits and blow your horn telling everyone you did,

because they know they will move onto bigger and better things so the long term ramifications of their policies are irrelevant to them.
 
Since our economy is capitalist, there's nothing that can be done about it. Employers will find any way they can to increase profits.

The problem is with people. Sure, the rules may ALLOW employers to overwork employees, it by no means FORCES them. Since people are greedy animals I find little reason to be optimistic that this will ever change.
 
Ok so far the responses seem to indicate it's hopeless because:

it's the (natural?) progression of our system for decades
it's the nature of the system
humans are greedy
I don't know where a777pilot is coming from. Are you in favor of altruism and see it as a hopeless goal? Or do you think altruisim has no place in business?

I'm interested in learning if the majority of people see this as a problem or not. That's mainly why I'm asking...
 
Stockholder captalism has failed spectacularly. To see a system that works, look to Germany. They have very high taxes (top marginal bracket is 40-45%, and their top brackets cover a lot more people than we do), they have VAT tax, etc.

They also employ something called 'stakeholder capitalism' or 'codetermination' where capitalists don't get to do whatever they want and have to basically share their capital with the employees at their firm. Employees get 50% board representation, while smaller firms, they get 33% board representation. This is codified by German law.

This is why they have a booming economy with 6% umeployment and workers get ridiculous benefits like 6 weeks vacation. Of course this would never fly in America because we've decided that treating workers like dog shit should be the norm.

Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.
 
Phokus said:
Stockholder captalism has failed spectacularly. To see a system that works, look to Germany. They have very high taxes (top marginal bracket is 40-45%, and their top brackets cover a lot more people than we do), they have VAT tax, etc.

They also employ something called 'stakeholder capitalism' or 'codetermination' where capitalists don't get to do whatever they want and have to basically share their capital with the employees at their firm. Employees get 50% board representation, while smaller firms, they get 33% board representation. This is codified by German law.

This is why they have a booming economy with 6% umeployment and workers get ridiculous benefits like 6 weeks vacation. Of course this would never fly in America because we've decided that treating workers like dog shit should be the norm.

Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.
Click to expand...

Interesting theoretical solution.
 
Some mites infected a wheel of cheese and lived for generations building a mitey civilization when, after enough of the cheese had been eaten the wheel collapsed. Altruism will return when bands of thirty or less people roam the wilderness picking through trash when the labor of each of the thirty will earn not income but fulfill some vital function for the other 29.

There is no other way because the world right now is filled with the vanity of morons who admire themselves for the jobs they do to bring cultural death.

But as with all things, new organs of perception occur only with need, so the need of the many to feed their kids maybe, just maybe, will bring change. Let us hope the response is not to allow the people to have cake.

We could begin a war to destroy the Republican party and the influence of wealth on politics, reverse the war of the rich on the poor with the vote, but don't hold your breath. One only needs to read this forum to count the number of walking brain dead.

This question was asked in intellectual form, how can you bring altruism back, but the answer is not in the form of words. The answer is in awakening to what it means that there is no intellectual answer. The answer lies is seeing what is, that as time moves on the least among us in self restraint, food, and opportunity lose it and act on their frustration. The rich have poisoned the well and they are going to pay.
 
As long as employers can find people to do the work and people to buy there product it won't change.

This is a huge problem for the average American.

As long as the cuts in pay, long hours continue to happen to the bottom with the top extracting the wealth that this creates. The economic outlook in the USA will continue to get worse. Demand for products will decline due to the lack of wage increases and jobs for those who spend there money on every day items.

If you want to make money ether go into a high demand field that you can make a lot of money, and or start your own business. Otherwise right now you might be alright but down the road you may end up moving backwards.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
Interesting theoretical solution.
Click to expand...

It is a well known one though. Executive pay is tied to short term profit in the form of bonuses whereas a better solution is future stock options payed in future for profitability down the road. There are a ton of other ways business can be changed to promote the general welfare but a I forget them because I don't see anything ever being done.

Might want to listen to InBiz:Bad Company 11 Aug 11 here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/worldbiz
 
Last edited:
Dman8777 said:
Ok so far the responses seem to indicate it's hopeless because:

it's the (natural?) progression of our system for decades
it's the nature of the system
humans are greedy
I don't know where a777pilot is coming from. Are you in favor of altruism and see it as a hopeless goal? Or do you think altruisim has no place in business?

I'm interested in learning if the majority of people see this as a problem or not. That's mainly why I'm asking...
Click to expand...

I don't know where a777pilot is coming from.
Click to expand...

Think it through.
 
Moonbeam said:
It is a well known one though. Executive pay is tied to short term profit in the form of bonuses whereas a better solution is future stock options payed in future for profitability down the road. There are a ton of other ways business can be changed to promote the general welfare but a I forget them because I don't see anything ever being done.
Click to expand...

I've been considering some things I've been reading and unfortunately concluded that people don't want things done well. They want quick and dirty. In a society where the next fiscal quarter determines how we work and have partisan hacks tell us how to live, we are merely pawns with the illusion of self determination. Indeed I think we've come to fear it. Nothing to do but argue and let others think for us to get imagined security, and never ever consider.
 
Phokus, you mentioned Germany as an example where altruism seems to be legislated. Is that really all there is to it?

I had read somewhere that generally in Europe, businesses look to hold on to employees during down periods whereas in the US businesses immediatly dump payroll. I think it was in an article linked by a post here about month ago. Perhaps that behavior is incentivized or legislated as well...
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
In a society where the next fiscal quarter determines how we work and have partisan hacks tell us how to live, we are merely pawns with the illusion of self determination. Indeed I think we've come to fear it. Nothing to do but argue and let others think for us to get imagined security, and never ever consider.
Click to expand...

The quote in my Sig from the Matrix comes to mind on this one. Perfect fit.

Merovingian: Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without. With that in mind, are we the ones living in The Matrix?
Click to expand...
 
It isn't altruism we want returned to Corporate America, it's enlightened self interest. That is the idea that it's better for everyone to make a buck rather than our current model of one corporation making five bucks while putting everyone else out of business.

We all know how and why we got to this point in our economy, the hard part is figuring out how to fix it. a777 sees absolutely nothing wrong with our existing system. I believe he is in the minority along with the management of Corporations.

America has paid a stiff price to support the wealth of a few. Greater work loads and increasing costs of living have altered our society, economy and, perspective on life and business. Our quality of life has plummeted in every way except one. We have tremendously more goods and services than ever before. Some folks are fine with that, most people aren't because it's not just the disparity in incomes but the lack of options for family, lifestyle and, personal development that cause such dissatisfaction with our present business model.

I believe the only way to change Corporate behavior is to remove the protection from personal liability that they currently enjoy.
 
We don't need corporations to be altruistic. We need them to function under rules of a government serving the people's interests.
 
Dman8777 said:
Phokus, you mentioned Germany as an example where altruism seems to be legislated. Is that really all there is to it?

I had read somewhere that generally in Europe, businesses look to hold on to employees during down periods whereas in the US businesses immediatly dump payroll. I think it was in an article linked by a post here about month ago. Perhaps that behavior is incentivized or legislated as well...
Click to expand...

The problem is systemic and so the answer is systemic change. But the system is a reflection of the consciousness of the people. So in order to change the system, consciousness has to change and conscious change happens best with systemic change.

We created the German system when we won the war, Roosevelt democratic idealism, and so Germany had imposed on it a better system than we have because Roosevelt change was destroyed here by money. We have a shit system and they have a better one. Germans therefore are much more consciously evolved than we are.

America is chuck full of Republican brainwashed garbage, but you can't blame folk for that. They have been told they are worthless and have value only as puppets. Americans have learned to be proud of being morons. Ditto heads is a good thing.
 
In response to a777pilot: Businesses are run by people. I worked for a business about 5 years ago that was run atruistically. The owner was a former nun. She specifically started and ran her business to serve the employees, the customers, and the town. It was an employee owned company and distributed profits equally between business growth projects, employees, and the township.

I think the business world reflects life in general. It's one massive prisoners dilema and there aren't enough people out there in the right places that understand that...
 
The bigger question is how do we bring altruism back to the general public? That has to come first.

And it's not good enough just to say all the right things, you guys actually have to *act* upon what you say. Sitting on your asses voting government representatives to force *other* people to be altruistic (to your benefit), is not a solution, it is a massive part of the problem.
 
Last edited:
Craig234 said:
We don't need corporations to be altruistic. We need them to function under rules of a government serving the people's interests.
Click to expand...

Wrong. No regulation is required of people with internalized morality and all the regulation in the world will not stop scum from acting like scum.

This is the essential dilemma that Hayabusa has, he is an ethical person who suffers under the regulation required to manage scum and that is a disaster too.

Only deep empathy, what makes folk human, expressed systemically can save humanity. We spent millions of years in groups of thirty where everybody did different things but all were valued by necessity. Money is the root of all evil, can you see, because only some of the original thirty could earn a pay check.
 
Dman8777 said:
In response to a777pilot: Businesses are run by people. I worked for a business about 5 years ago that was run atruistically. The owner was a former nun. She specifically started and ran her business to serve the employees, the customers, and the town. It was an employee owned company and distributed profits equally between business growth projects, employees, and the township.

I think the business world reflects life in general. It's one massive prisoners dilema and there aren't enough people out there in the right places that understand that...
Click to expand...


The key word of your post is that of "profits". If that nun did not run a business that made a profit she would not be able to any of the good she does.

The business is the means but it is her character that brings about this good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top