Seems very popular when given at face value like this.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Yeah, hard to see the controversy with this opinion
Yes. It's the modern equivalent of "I was just following orders".
I was just following orders
...from the shareholders who would advocate bathing a thousand peasant children in leaded gasoline if they could get away with it and it netted them an extra nickel in private profit.
I would argue that it shows how blinded one can be by the demands placed upon us by capitalism. We think about the rewards more than the karmic costs, because it's easy to think about what you got at Walmart but abstract how that's undermined life all over.
How is this even remotely unpopular?
I don't think you're interpreting the phrase correctly. It's not about harming someone in order to make money vs not harming them at all, but rather about harming someone in order to make money (or attain some other reasonable goal) vs harming them simply because you wanted to. Consider the analogous situation with animals: shooting a deer because you want to eat it vs shooting it because you like killing things. The deer probably won't like you any better in the first case, but most onlookers will.
I was just pondering this on my way to work. Balzac’s “Behind every great fortune is a great crime.” (I’m doubtlessly misquoting it)
Whether it’s directly adjacent the monetary gain or displaced by distance and time, it always holds true.
Hurting others for profit in the name of business shouldn’t be a defense, it should be considered an admission of guilt and come with consequences.
"Hurting others" as in poring toxic waste in residents drinking water or "hurting others" as in laying off a worker that you can't afford to employ?
"can't afford" as in your business will cease to exist in the short term if you don't lay this person off who helped facilitate the busesses's survival to this point, or because net profits will be too flat or underperforming for your liking?
Because the latter is sociopathic cruelty.
“can’t afford” as in your business will cease to exist in the short term if you don’t lay this person off who helped facilitate the busesses’s survival to this point,
More this.
or because net profits will be too flat or underperforming for your liking?
"Liking" is a loaded term, but there's a middle between these two states, as well. If the business is generating less revenue from this worker's labor than it costs to pay the worker, then the business is losing money. This is absolutely fine in the short term if business is cyclical and expected to turn around. However, doing this too long with no end in sight, drains resources from the company. What this eventually can translate into is that the other workers that are earning profit for the company are essentially subsidizing this under performing worker in perpetuity. This means profit that should go to raises or other benefits for the other workers are instead going to keep this under performing worker employed. Again, short term with expected turnaround, very acceptable. Long term with no end in sight is where the problem is.
How many of us have received little to no raises when a business struggles? This may be because money that would have gone to your raise may have gone to keep someone else employed that isn't producing.
If you don't give raises to high and middle performing workers, they rightfully leave to businesses that will. The business suffers, and its another wound to a slow death of the business. If this goes on, the business ends and everyone loses their jobs regardless of how high a performing worker they were or how much they contributed.
These are a few of the ugly choices that have to be made in business that sometimes get labeled as "its just business".