Comment by lenerdenator

Comment by lenerdenator 4 days ago

8 replies

Idk.

When you own 98% of Lanai, have a net worth equivalent to the annual gross product of a mid-sized American metropolitan area, and still feel the need to lay off thousands of people to increase your net worth at age 80, that's not a very, very tiny bit of information.

That's a person being presented with the knowledge that his choices will have a very clear set of consequences for society and proceeding with them anyways. Know the "if you press the button, you'll become a millionaire, but someone you don't know will die" thought experiment?

Larry has, multiple times, been told that if he presses the button, he'll get millions of dollars at the extreme expense of people he doesn't know, and done it. I think it's fair to say that at least one person has died from it; mass layoffs result in one additional suicide per 4200 male employees and one per 7100 female employees [0]

[0]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...

lotsofpulp 3 days ago

Protecting people from sudden loss of income is the responsibility of government, not individual businesses.

  • lenerdenator 3 days ago

    It would be, but individual businesses (particularly those with the resources of Oracle) don't like paying the taxes necessary to offer that sort of social safety net past a certain point.

    • lotsofpulp 3 days ago

      In a democracy, that is a voter issue.

      • OccamsMirror 3 days ago

        Interesting how the buck always ends up getting passed to those with the least amount of power.

        • lotsofpulp 2 days ago

          Interesting how helpless voters (and those who could vote but don't) are portrayed, especially in the age of instant access to information in everyone's pocket.

          Especially considering elections in recent years.

      • riehwvfbk 3 days ago

        You get a choice of not one but two horrible candidates! In a dictatorship you'd only have one. Be happy!

        • lotsofpulp 2 days ago

          That must be how democracies all over the world prevailed over dictatorships (at least for a couple hundred years).