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mlooney

NP Wed Jan 8 2020

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It's not hard to build evil organization. Just make sure that everyone who would care would be so overworked he wouldn't have time for it. Actually ... in most cases that happens automatically.

Still, it's nice if they have it officially divided. Less doubts that way.

 

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It's not hard to build evil organization. Just make sure that everyone who would care would be so overworked he wouldn't have time for it. Actually ... in most cases that happens automatically.

Soooo.....pretty much like Corporate America?

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The big difference with real life organizations and the "Evil" organizations of fiction is that the baddies in the "Real" world do not openly call themselves evil

When it's your turn to be the tyrant, make sure there is some sort of justification for every despicable, or even questionable, act

Let your enemies go to the effort of labeling you as "Evil"

Then you will be able to identify your enemies more easily

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12 hours ago, Scotty said:
18 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It's not hard to build evil organization. Just make sure that everyone who would care would be so overworked he wouldn't have time for it. Actually ... in most cases that happens automatically.

Soooo.....pretty much like Corporate America?

Why single out America? Just because the companies founded there are between the richest ones?

10 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The big difference with real life organizations and the "Evil" organizations of fiction is that the baddies in the "Real" world do not openly call themselves evil

When it's your turn to be the tyrant, make sure there is some sort of justification for every despicable, or even questionable, act

Let your enemies go to the effort of labeling you as "Evil"

Then you will be able to identify your enemies more easily

Yeah, not even Hitler labeled himself as evil ... on the other hand, lot of those evil organizations in fiction go for another angle: they not just label themselves as evil, they also go well overboard with the "ruling with fear". Calling themselves evil is part of deliberate building of reputation so scary most people don't actually try how evil and ruthless they are.

Most real life evil regimes needed to actually kill some demonstrating people to get such reputation ... and, like, justifying that tends to be very hard so they were labeled evil afterwards anyway.

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15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Why single out America? Just because the companies founded there are between the richest ones?

You could make a case for wealth disparity within the culture marks American corporations as leaning further toward the dark side than your average corporate beast.

I personally believe being multinational lobotomizes corporations from even cultural ethical standards. Each culture has a circle of behaviors they think of as wrong. In the aggregate they only hold the pieces they agree to as wrong, as wrong; the intersection of the Venn diagram.

 

15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Yeah, not even Hitler labeled himself as evil ... on the other hand, lot of those evil organizations in fiction go for another angle: they not just label themselves as evil, they also go well overboard with the "ruling with fear". Calling themselves evil is part of deliberate building of reputation so scary most people don't actually try how evil and ruthless they are.

Most real life evil regimes needed to actually kill some demonstrating people to get such reputation ... and, like, justifying that tends to be very hard so they were labeled evil afterwards anyway.

It is not hard at all to justify; refer back to your prior paragraph. It merely requires the "right" warped point of view. Recall prior discussions in this forum, regarding the role of religion in excessive behavior. I think if you replace "religion" with "ideology", considering "religion" to be a subset of "ideology", you'd have pretty much covered all the bases.

And, bonus points, if you are successful enough at eliminating those who disagree with you, you don't even have the pointing fingers.

 

 

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7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Why single out America? Just because the companies founded there are between the richest ones?

You could make a case for wealth disparity within the culture marks American corporations as leaning further toward the dark side than your average corporate beast.

Maybe, but I don't think so. It's just that more wealth makes the evil they are doing more visible due to scale.

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I personally believe being multinational lobotomizes corporations from even cultural ethical standards. Each culture has a circle of behaviors they think of as wrong. In the aggregate they only hold the pieces they agree to as wrong, as wrong; the intersection of the Venn diagram.

This might have some effect, but 1) you can have multinational company skipping United States 2) there are nations with quite ... flexible ethical standards in their culture already 3) there are nations - and not just United States - who can produce multicultural company without being multinational.

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Most real life evil regimes needed to actually kill some demonstrating people to get such reputation ... and, like, justifying that tends to be very hard so they were labeled evil afterwards anyway.

It is not hard at all to justify; refer back to your prior paragraph. It merely requires the "right" warped point of view. Recall prior discussions in this forum, regarding the role of religion in excessive behavior. I think if you replace "religion" with "ideology", considering "religion" to be a subset of "ideology", you'd have pretty much covered all the bases.

Yes, it's sufficiently justifiable from inside the religion/ideology (yeah, the difference between those two is quite small ... ) ... I was thinking like "rest of the world", but on second though, that's not intended audience ...

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

And, bonus points, if you are successful enough at eliminating those who disagree with you, you don't even have the pointing fingers.

Yeah. Also, you reach peace. Cemeteries tend to be quite peaceful outside horrors.

(Most of "evil" religions/ideologies had some real or at least pretext infighting and eliminated or tried to eliminate some quite close to inner circle. Hitler himself was target of unsuccessful assassination - well, multiple ones, but I specifically meant this one - and people who tried were obviously executed. Therefore, it's quite likely that eliminating those who disagree will take longer than expected.)

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Maybe, but I don't think so. It's just that more wealth makes the evil they are doing more visible due to scale.

This might have some effect, but 1) you can have multinational company skipping United States 2) there are nations with quite ... flexible ethical standards in their culture already 3) there are nations - and not just United States - who can produce multicultural company without being multinational.

 

I was pulling "our wealth disparity is among the worst" from memory of The Daily Show a few years back. To fact check, I looked it up.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/countries-rich-poor-gap_n_7471214 has us in the top five.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/05/23/countries-with-the-widest-gaps-between-rich-and-poor-2/ does not have us in the top 15.

I suspect the difference is a matter of definition of the parameters of a disparity, and who is included. I took note for instance, that I did not see Saudi Arabia on either list, but I think they are very high by some set of criteria.

More to your point, it's not about the wealth, it's about the disparity, treating your workers like serfs and not paying a living wage.

Maybe "evil" is the wrong word. "avaricious" is more exact.

Your other points, 1. is common. I wasn't saying it wasn't. 2. Surely. As an American citizen, at the moment I am reminded how flexible Iranian ethics is. Not that we didn't get our thumbs all over the problem long ago. 3. I agree with you there, although in many multicultural places, the cultures are antagonistic. We might have a weaker cultural representation but lower barriers. These last three years have been pretty messed up, though, polarizing.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

More to your point, it's not about the wealth, it's about the disparity, treating your workers like serfs and not paying a living wage.

 

Good point. It matters little whether you have ten million bucks and treat your workers like garbage, or if you have ten BILLION bucks and treat them like garbage . . . except that to get to ten billion, you probably treated more workers poorly than for the ten million.

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23 minutes ago, ijuin said:
1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

More to your point, it's not about the wealth, it's about the disparity, treating your workers like serfs and not paying a living wage.

Good point. It matters little whether you have ten million bucks and treat your workers like garbage, or if you have ten BILLION bucks and treat them like garbage . . . except that to get to ten billion, you probably treated more workers poorly than for the ten million.

What I wanted to say is that treating all your workers like garbage it's same evil, but companies who treat millions of workers as garbage are usually more known than companies who treat few hundreds workers like garbage. Which is pretty close but not exactly what you mentioned ...

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I was pulling "our wealth disparity is among the worst" from memory of The Daily Show a few years back. To fact check, I looked it up.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/countries-rich-poor-gap_n_7471214 has us in the top five.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/05/23/countries-with-the-widest-gaps-between-rich-and-poor-2/ does not have us in the top 15.

I suspect the difference is a matter of definition of the parameters of a disparity, and who is included. I took note for instance, that I did not see Saudi Arabia on either list, but I think they are very high by some set of criteria.

Yeah ... those statistics would be likely based on different methodologies ... and possibly falsified data or data "creatively" partitioned. And might not really be as relevant to the specific company as it would seem based on which country it's based in ... for example, regarding treating your workers like garbage, the nationality of those workers might be more relevant than nationality of management.

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Maybe "evil" is the wrong word. "avaricious" is more exact.

There is big difference between those two, but also big corelation, especially in companies ...

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

although in many multicultural places, the cultures are antagonistic

I'm sure that antagonistic cultures can be successfully used to ensure the resulting company ethics is worse than under either of those cultures.

 

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8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Maybe "evil" is the wrong word. "avaricious" is more exact.

There is a reason why Avarice (or, as some would say, Greed) is among the classic seven deadly sins

It isn't that desiring material gain is itself evil, it is that giving into greed can lead individuals or groups to many evils in pursuit of wealth

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27 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

There is a reason why Avarice (or, as some would say, Greed) is among the classic seven deadly sins

It isn't that desiring material gain is itself evil, it is that giving into greed can lead individuals or groups to many evils in pursuit of wealth

To echo your point, you know the quote, "Money is the root of all evil"? It's a misquote. The source (1 Timothy 6:10) is "For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil." "For" is connecting with a previous statement, giving this as the rationale. Love of money is a good working definition of avarice. "root of all sorts of evil" could be restated as "leads to various societally harmful practices."

I see a nuanced difference between the synonyms avarice an greed. Greed is a short sighted, gut reaction, observable in little children and dogs. Avarice is more polished and cultured, it must be taught, cultivated and learned. Avarice can on occasion embrace short term generosity to meet long term goals. Am I wrong?

A wise person once told me that the most foundational core human motivation is fear. (He was a preacher, he spoke it from a pulpit, he was often wise, and he was often foolish; but that's another story.) It took a while to digest that, to wrap my head around it; it was even a bit offensive, in an, "No, that can't be right." kind of way. The more I thought about it, I realized that he made a good point, if you dig deep enough, you will find fear. I believe that applies to avarice; avarice does not stand on its own, there is a deeper foundation of fear, of being without, needing to build a buffer, to not be one of the people that people such as yourself are exploiting.

 

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11 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

There is a reason why Avarice (or, as some would say, Greed) is among the classic seven deadly sins

I'm pretty sure almost everyone would say Greed.

10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I see a nuanced difference between the synonyms avarice an greed. Greed is a short sighted, gut reaction, observable in little children and dogs. Avarice is more polished and cultured, it must be taught, cultivated and learned. Avarice can on occasion embrace short term generosity to meet long term goals. Am I wrong?

Reminds me the joke about what words for agreement people says based on their education.

10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

A wise person once told me that the most foundational core human motivation is fear. (He was a preacher, he spoke it from a pulpit, he was often wise, and he was often foolish; but that's another story.) It took a while to digest that, to wrap my head around it; it was even a bit offensive, in an, "No, that can't be right." kind of way. The more I thought about it, I realized that he made a good point, if you dig deep enough, you will find fear. I believe that applies to avarice; avarice does not stand on its own, there is a deeper foundation of fear, of being without, needing to build a buffer, to not be one of the people that people such as yourself are exploiting.

It doesn't need to be related to people at all. You just need a buffer, period. Without the buffer, something might happen and you end up on street, homeless, with nothing to eat ...

... which is definitely true, so that fear is not completely unfounded. It's just that some people's idea of buffer is not exactly proportionate. And, like, it's true that in case of hyperinflation the reasonable amount of money on account might suddenly be too little, but to protect from hyperinflation you need to diversify, not just have more money on account.

 

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3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'm pretty sure almost everyone would say Greed.

Reminds me the joke about what words for agreement people says based on their education.

It doesn't need to be related to people at all. You just need a buffer, period. Without the buffer, something might happen and you end up on street, homeless, with nothing to eat ...

... which is definitely true, so that fear is not completely unfounded. It's just that some people's idea of buffer is not exactly proportionate. And, like, it's true that in case of hyperinflation the reasonable amount of money on account might suddenly be too little, but to protect from hyperinflation you need to diversify, not just have more money on account.

To be entirely fair, I share that fear; I live fairly marginally; I'm paid well, but it goes too fast, and if I was unemployed the reserve would not last long. But does a billionaire really have an excuse.

Flip side, when I was young, a millionaire was in perception what a billionaire is now; wealthy enough that financial concerns should not be a big deal. That's no longer true for a mere millionaire. Even moderate houses go for a good chunk of that.

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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:
4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... which is definitely true, so that fear is not completely unfounded. It's just that some people's idea of buffer is not exactly proportionate. And, like, it's true that in case of hyperinflation the reasonable amount of money on account might suddenly be too little, but to protect from hyperinflation you need to diversify, not just have more money on account.

To be entirely fair, I share that fear; I live fairly marginally; I'm paid well, but it goes too fast, and if I was unemployed the reserve would not last long. But does a billionaire really have an excuse.

He has team in charge of making excuses, most likely. Question is if those excuses are valid.

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Flip side, when I was young, a millionaire was in perception what a billionaire is now; wealthy enough that financial concerns should not be a big deal. That's no longer true for a mere millionaire. Even moderate houses go for a good chunk of that.

I didn't knew you were that old :)

But, yes, thanks to inflation, being millionaire is quite common nowadays. In USD or EUR, at least, although I suspect it's even worse in other currencies. Hmmm ... let's see ... the most expensive world currency in 2020 cost still less than $4. So yes, not enough to make millionaires rich. And not even billionaires are that rich in Japan.

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On 1/10/2020 at 4:15 PM, hkmaly said:

... which is definitely true, so that fear is not completely unfounded. It's just that some people's idea of buffer is not exactly proportionate.

True. To a sufficiently paranoid person, any threat is Too Danm Close.

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