This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I have a really hard time with CEO vs worker pay discussions. It kind of drives me crazy. Lets take Starbucks, since I'm currently hearing unions complain about the disparity right now. The argument mostly feels like math blindness, but maybe my problem is that I'm bringing an abacus to a knife fight.
The Starbucks CEO makes $95 million a year. They argue this is outrageous because their employees only make $20/hour or whatever.
Why not complete the math? What if we took the Starbucks CEO, fired him, and redistributed his $95 million a year a salary to the workers? Well, the 361,000 workers would see their pay bumped by about $1 per day. It's really hard to get across that the workers at each Starbucks already capture a huge portion of the value of the cup of coffee they serve (aside from real estate costs, cost of goods, etc). The Starbucks CEO takes perhaps a 1 cent from that cup.
This is a simple economic fact that seems almost impossible to communicate. Unionization won't improve worker pay on this front because there isn't much on a per unit basis that can be squeezed to give to workers.
I mean, the union could say lets increase the cost of coffee at Starbucks by 2.5x so that every employee can now afford a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house in their neighborhood but then their competitors would eat their lunch. And customers might actually be pretty outraged by the idea of paying $18 for a blended coffee plus tip. So, the unions don't try this angle.
In my town a particular annoying version of this argument is happening regarding a company that distributes Pepsi products in the region. They somehow ended up with a union 50 years ago which includes a pension. The company recently announced they can't fucking afford to give employees a pension anymore for the very not valuable job of delivering cases of Diet Pepsi to 7-11s all day and they want to switch them over to an 401k. This was an enormous outrage and the delivery people have been on strike over this for a year now. Going by the town's reaction, they seem to believe thousands of dollars per case of soda being delivered are waiting to be wrestled away from the evil classists who run the company.
It never occurs to anyone to learn to do something more valuable. Just that they need to win the fight against the classists, a fight that could not change anything if they won.
How much unrest is actually caused by failure to reason through 9th grade math regarding your personal conditions?
Is any of this even about actually improving worker conditions? I know it's cliche to be skeptical of unions but I honestly don't understand their modern presence at all.
Your mistake is thinking that this has anything to do with math. People aren't upset because the CEO's pay causes them to get underpaid, they are upset because it is ludicrously, wildly unfair to pay someone over 1000x what you pay the people who actually drive the company's ability to make money. It's a question of justice, not one of "how much would we benefit from cutting this guy's salary".
Precisely.
The resentment workers feel towards the CEO is exactly the same they would feel if they saw Gruk take 1000x their share of mammoth meat in the ancestral environment. Okay, maybe Gruk is exceptional hunter who contributed more to the hunt than most, and deserves 2x the regular share, or even 3x if he is wise and respected and high status, but 1000x?! Nobody deserves that, it's unfair!
And in the ancestral environment, it really is unfair. Nobody is 1000x a better hunter than average. But in a modern economy, it is perfectly possible for an exceptional man to produce 1000x the value of a regular man. I'm pretty sure Elon Musk and Warren Buffett produce more than 1000x the value I produce.
problem with the idea that CEOs produce 1000x the value the employees is that the CEOs are 1000x compensated as a rule, including those CEOs who don't oversee enermous successes but stagnation or drive the company to the ground. All well-paid until the end.
I think it is strongest argument that executives are not highly paid because their value is competitively assessed. It is a combination of a principal-agent problem and some kind of scope issues: executives are placed at the top of company hierarchy and control its day-to-day functioning whereas stock-owners are numerous and have relatively little direct input, which causes the principal agent problem. Because the executives are few in number, humongous compensation to few executives is only a drop in a bucket to large company, so they can get away with it.
It is a problem that probably can not be fixed in joint stock company capitalism, but perhaps benefits of capitalism are worth the costs.
Musk and Buffett, for the record, are not only CEOs. Neither is rich man because of their CEO compensation, but because they hold significant amount of shares in their respective companies. Buffett owns something like 30% of Berkshire Hathaway. Musk owns 15% of Tesla and majority of SpaceX.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link