August 2, 2015

Right! Only corporations are right when they're greedy!

I love this line of reasoning. Greed is good when it comes to ownership paying labor as little as possible, because that's some kind of immutable natural law we should all celebrate. Money demanding money is A-OK.

But people -- phew, no way. If you represent actual human beings seeking their own self-interest, that is COMMUNISMS! Or possibly witchcraft, or something.

Remember when the OWS people were supposed to be hypocrites because they had computers? Because you can't be against inequality and also own anything yourself. Just like you can't receive public assistance and also be able to afford a cell phone, or a pair of shoes.

Why do we -- more importantly, why does anyone -- listen to this horse apple nonsense -- for a millisecond?

Christy, if he shouldn't be in jail for for the "Bridgegate" scandal, or the Sandy money shenanigans -- and that seems wildly unlikely -- should at least be laughed off the national stage.

The fact that he hasn't been yet is what is wrong with basically everything.

August 2, 2015

Fascinating look into human stupidity.

Look at the bizarre illogic, even in the comments here.

1. He's hurting people who make more than $70k, by not giving them a bump.

The article implies he DID give higher-salaried employees a bump, in that an unhappy employee felt they didn't get "enough" of a bump.

And by the way, so what? Do you suddenly make less if someone else makes more? This is the core illogic here.

2. He shouldn't have made it public.

Why? He wanted to show it could be done, and apparently it could be done. Why wouldn't a company want to advertise raises? It's a sign of financial strength, which is supposed to be a good thing.

Unless, the fear is that the "lie agreed upon" would be revealed, which is that you can pay people more than the average, and the damn world will not explode. Well apparently you can.

Sorry?

3. Now crappy employees will be motivated to stay crappy, and good employees will be motivated to become crappy, because there is less pay differential between them.

Well, no. Low pay doesn't motivate people to work harder, just as high pay doesn't motivate people to work less. That is simply ridiculous.

The actual "logic" going on here is a bit of bad human psychological wiring that's been documented before. People gauge their success not simply by how well they're doing, but by how much "better" they're doing than other people. Asked if they would prefer to live in a world where they made $50,000, and everyone made $25,000, or $100,000 where everyone made $100,000, people often pick the $50,000.

In other words, some people prioritize having more than others over the absolute value of whatever they have themselves.

Stupid.

That's a drive not for fairness, but for POWER. And no, you don't deserve more power because you have a degree, or you think you work harder, or are smarter, or whatever. No one is affirmatively entitled to have "more than" others, if you're already getting what you've earned or deserve.

We are sometimes some dumb little monkeys, obsessed with having more bananas than our neighbors, when we could do a lot better for ourselves worrying about our own little bunch of bananas, and not craning our necks to the next tree over and worrying about what all the other monkeys have.