I think the demonization comes from people resenting the use of authority to restrict liberty, and from conflating the resentment of authority with bigotry. In this case, let private people discriminate freely.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -H. L. Mencken
I think people should be allowed to make their own choices in terms of whom to hire/associate with, with absolutely no outside intervention. That doesn't make me a bigot.
"leftist subtexts" that treat this as a problem, and not as the single largest driver of growth in human history, to which we owe all of the material comfort we now enjoy.
Many of us don't do what we do for our expertise to be recognized or valued by others, rather that is a pleasant side effect. Many of us do what we do for intrinsic reasons related to the nature of the work, and would likely do it for free, or indeed, would pay for the opportunity. Many STEM-types are in this category, and as such, are compelled to continue to tinker as we fancy, and are glad for more tools to help us expand the breadth of our tinkering capabilities.
A dedicated engineer is always looking to automate themselves out of existence, so that they can move on to the next thing to automate. Ongoing repetitive work is less engineering and more akin to toiling on a line.
This dodges the moral argument behind "guns don't kill people", which is worth confronting directly. I think people can reasonably disagree about whether second/third/fourth/etc. order effects carry moral/legal responsibility.
In light of such disagreement, and given the lack of any higher authority among free, equal, people to arbitrate it, the only reasonable way to coexist peacefully is to avoid imposing your ideas on others. This is the foundation of a liberal society.
No, because that would indicate there should be some sort of regulatory standard for what does/does not constitute "lazy engineering". Creating this standard in turn creates regulatory/compliance overhead for every software engineering organization. This in turn slows everything right down and destroys the startup ethos. "Move fast and break things" is a thing for a reason. The whole point of the free market is to avoid this kind of burdensome regulation at all costs.
If customers want to buy "lazily-engineered" products, from where do you derive the authority to tell them they can't?
If airplanes used this logic, likely at least hundreds more would have died over the last decades. Accident rates are even going up, because of logic like yours. Yeah planes are fine most of the time, when the long tail involves safety concerns (that wouldn’t have otherwise happened) making money on people using your product becomes unethical without mutually agreed upon safety regulation, ideally motivated by voters instead of special interest groups
For something to be deserved, it must be earned. What do these people do to distinguish themselves from The Engineer’s pets? If they are wholly dependant on him for their subsistence, what distinguishes him from their god?
To derive an alternate system you need alternate axioms. The axioms of our liberal society are moral equality and peaceful coexistence. Among such equals, no one person, group, or majority has the right to dictate to another. What axioms do you propose that would constrain The Engineer? How would you prevent enslaving him?
Hey, dude. How does someone earn value once automation does all the work? Earning the right to a share of the resources when resources are derived from automated labor is such a thoroughly pathological concept that I'm not sure we're communicating on the same planet.
Same way everyone has earned value from the beginning of time: negotiate with others. We are all born naked and without possessions. Everything we get, from the first day of our birth, is given to us by someone else. Our very first negotiations are simple, we are in turns endearing and annoying. As we grow older they become more complex. All I’m saying is that these interactions should be maximally voluntary and nonviolent.
> For something to be deserved, it must be earned.
Eeeeeerrrr, wrong! This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology.
Did you earn your public school education? Did you earn your use of the sidewalk or the public parks and playgrounds? Did you earn your library card? Did you earn your citizenship or right to vote? Did you earn the state benefits you get when you are born disabled? Did you earn your mother’s love?
No, these are what we call public services, unalienable rights, and/or unconditional humanity. We don’t revolve the entire world and our entire selves solely around profit because it’s not practical and it’s empty at its core.
Arguably we still do too much profit-based society stuff in the US where things like healthcare and higher education should be guaranteed entitlements that have no need to be earned. Many other countries see these aspects of society as non-negotiable communal benefits that all should enjoy.
In this hypothetical society with The Engineer, it’s likely that The Engineer would want or need to win over the minds of their society in some way to prevent their own demise and ensure they weren’t overthrown, enslaved, or even just thought of as an evil person.
Many of my examples above like public libraries came about because gilded age titans didn’t want to die with the reputation of robber barons. Instead, they did something anti-profit and created institutions like libraries and museums to boost the reputation of their name.
It’s the same reason why your local university has family names on its buildings. The wealthiest people in society often want to leave a positive legacy where the alternative without philanthropy and, essentially, wealth redistribution, is that they are seen as horrible people or not remembered at all.
> This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology.
Go on then, how do you decide what people deserve? How do you negotiate with others who disagree with you?
> examples above like public libraries
I agree! The nice part about all these mechanisms is that they’re voluntary.
If you’re suggesting that The Engineer’s actions should be constrained entirely by his own conscience and social pressure, then we agree. No laws or compulsion required.
These examples aren’t generally voluntary once implemented. I can’t get a refund from my public library or parks department if I decide not to use it.
The social pressure placed on The Engineer is the manifestation of law. That’s all law is: a set of agreed-upon social contracts, enforced by various means.
Obviously, many dictators and governments get away with badly mistreating their subjects, and that’s unfortunate, shouldn’t happen, and shouldn’t be praised as a good system.
I think you may be splitting hairs a little bit here and trying really hard to manufacture…something.
Slavery was (is) also an agreed upon social contract, enforced by various means. What makes it wrong? You clearly have morally prescriptive beliefs. Why are you so sure that your moral prescriptions are the right ones? And that being in the majority gives you the right to impose your beliefs on others?
What if you are in the minority? Do you just accept the hypercapitalist dictates of the majority? Why not?
Law is more than convention. What distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate law?
The only way for people who disagree axiomatically to get along is to impose on each other minimally.
You sure seem to know a lot about what people 'deserve' so I'm not sure I can hope to crack the rind of that particular coconut but I will leave you with this: Humans, by virtue of being living, thinking beings deserve lives of fulfillment, dignity, and security. The fact that we have, up until present, been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to achieve this does not mean it's not possible or desirable, only that we have failed in that goal.
Everything else, all the 'isims' and ideologies are abstractions.
> Humans, by virtue of being living, thinking beings deserve lives of fulfillment, dignity, and security.
You wanting people to have that doesn't mean that people deserve to have that. Fundamentally, no one deserves anything. We, as a species, lived for a hundred thousand years with absolutely nothing except what we could carve off the world by ourselves or with the help of small groups that chose to work with us. Everything else since then is a bonus (or sometimes a malus, but on average a bonus).
Also, as much as it sounds nice to declare such things as goals, deserved or not, it is indeed impossible, and probably not desirable, since, for starters, you can't even define what those things would be like. Those aren't actionable, they're at most occasional consequences of a system that is working to alleviate scarcity of resources.
Unfortunately, we're nowhere near that replicator.
Who ever said you have the right to a decent a secure life? People don’t universally agree about this. Some of us posit that we will never escape a state of competition for fundamentally scarce resources. And that the organizing principle of a free society should be peaceful coexistence, not mandatory cooperation.
You figure out your own economic security, I’ll manage mine.
There are already enough resources that nobody should live in abject insecurity and poverty. Your position is fundamentally morally abhorrent to me. You're saying that your ability to take a little bit more for yourself is more important than a child not having polio, a mother feeding her child, a village having clean water.
You are, in short, a tiny little microcosm of why humanity is doomed as a species.
We don't need to have every human care about every single other human to thrive as a species. If anything, if we did, we wouldn't be able to thrive at all.
The issues you mentioned are, in the vast majority of cases, caused by the lack of peaceful coexistence to begin with, because as long as me and everyone else is coexisting peacefully, getting more for myself isn't taking anything away from those in the situations you mentioned. Resources might be scarce, but that doesn't mean they're zero sum.
I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that my right to choose which children I help is more legitimate than your right to dictate to me. That the voluntary nature of our cooperation is more important than equality of resource distribution.
Oh my, please rant on. I'd love to hear more about people not having the right to a decent and secure life. (After all, I've often thought that having my life tracked and used my a corporation or government would be a wonderful utopia!)
Advocating for regulators to step in is already a value judgement. Why is "high profitability" a cause for regulatory scrutiny? The optimal behaviour in any ecosystem (corporate or natural) is to defend as much territory as is within your power, not to keep only to what covers your "needs". Why have you deemed this behaviour, which is emergent anywhere competition between organisms exists, as in need of regulation?
Apple is succeeding largely on merit, within the bounds of civilized, peaceful competition. Shouldn't we all just be grateful for the contributions they have made to our civilization?
What if military intervention was an explicit part of the investment agreement in the first place? I’m not saying it was, but would it affect your judgement?
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