Comment by lostlogin
1 day ago
It sounds like you have been burnt, badly.
There is surely a business out there that does fit your world view, though the pay and conditions might not.
In my view, the need for growth at any cost is toxic and leads to all sorts of horrible behaviours.
There are no good organizations, only ones that aren’t completely corrupt yet. Consider that to start and maintain an organization takes significant capital and energy expenditures upfront, which means you need to fund them from somewhere and ask sources of funding are corrupted. Consider: there are no long lasting egalitarian, distributed power, grassroots organizations that can compete at a level of social influence that can overcome or resist the existing power structure.
I’ve looked at every possible organization that could theoretically fit including; MSF a.k.a. doctors without borders, swords to plowshares, goodwill industries (who employ significant numbers of disabled people for sub min wages while the CEO makes 3M+), Mondragon etc… and they all have exactly the same fucked up incentives
why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk.
unless your organization is the lead maximalist resource dominator you will be overrun by some organization with no ethics
Ultimately it comes down to the fact that people have to trade physical and mental work for money to survive. So there is no alternative to do the “right thing” without also risking your own safety and stability in your chosen society. 99.99999% of people are completely unwilling to risk their life on behalf of any particular philosophy - if only because those people don’t feel strongly enough about any particular philosophy to actually put themselves on the line for it.
So whoever has the most money, has the ability to get the most people to work for their goals.
Unfortunately the people with all the money/power do not care about anything other than growing their own personal power
> ask sources of funding are corrupted
What does it mean, exactly? (I assume it's a typo - s/ask/all/, "all sources funding are corrupted")?
Yes its a typo - should’ve been “all”
I would love to hear more about your definition of corruption and why it is inevitable. From what I can tell it is that an organization with “morals”, meaning some sort of code restricting their possible actions, will be out competed by an organization without “morals”, whatever that might be. I think it is compelling at face value, but I’m not sure I see a world of wolves out there. Maybe I’m naive.
I want to argue that the rule of law is one moral system that applies to all organizations. Sure, some overstep and may gain some advantage due to that. But in principle and hopefully on average the result should be net negative. In democratic countries the laws are more or less directly the will of the people, about as egalitarian as we can get, no? Anyways, following the rule of laws should lead to “morally sound” corporations as defined by the people. Corporations can go further than what is legally required, too. That is often used in marketing.
Finally i think the same principles apply wherever humans (or other species) compete. Humans on the whole are not entirely cruel barbarians, we try to care for individuals who are not able to care for themselves etc. Whether “true” altruism exists is another discussion, but it certainly looks like it. So if that’s how people act, why should corporations be more corrupt than the bodies that make them up and govern them?
Who makes the laws?
The rich and powerful through lobbying and direct corruption. Here’s a link just from today: https://www.somo.nl/the-secretive-cabal-of-us-polluters-that...
So any “rules based order” simply locks in the rules of whomever has the most money to bribe politicians
There are no corruption free entities because they are starting with corrupt roots and grow through nepotism and political favors
The proof of this is dripping out of every seam of human organization
2 replies →
> why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk.
The worse offenders in terms of corrupting power structures seem to be religious organisations, so being a monk is out too.
That power eventually corrupts shouldn’t rule out an organisation, but if it does, start your own and keep it to one employee.
I’d be curious what you identified as the shortcomings of e.g. MSF or Mondragon. I might throw semi-decentralized social ventures like the IFRC in the mix there too: that emblem alone sure carries an almost-talismanic degree of social weight, seemingly worldwide, I think in large part because they’re foresworn from swinging around their influence outside of their lane.
And I mean… “don’t want to live like a monk” seems like a telling qualifier: the whole monastic lifestyle seems pretty widespread and enduring across cultures and through time… is the humbler mode of religious devotion an example of what you’re looking for?
In any case you’ve clearly thought deeply and widely about this question—I’d be interested to read your thoughts if you end up collecting them somewhere!
I’m simply acknowledging that only a tiny fraction of any group will find themselves devoted to the group in the “monastic” way of self erasure