If Intel had trotted out Chip and then announced it would be creating a universal basic income scheme based on the savings the company was amassing by using Chip, then I’d be clapping along with the audience. As it stands, it just seems like bad taste during a difficult time.
I’m not sure the author of the article has a realistic understanding of Intel’s role or ability to affect change public policy.
It’s not a great place to be. Intel and other major corporations buy political influence. Politicians act in the best interests of their benefactors, and for most, that’s not the voters. I don’t think it’s practical either, but maybe there’s some use in including these kinds of political ideas when these things happen, as a reminder that they wield political influence.
It’s true that Intel probably shouldn’t be handing out UBI, but if companies want to promote how much they don’t need people’s labor anymore, then that should be taken into consideration in policy making.
Somewhere along the line we lost one of the basic things underpinning our current economic structure – that corporations are supposedly better at allocating, distributing, and utilizing resources than a centrally planned economy with a governmental overlord. It sure sounds to me like Intel and other companies that are handing out pink slips for every bit of thing they automate cannot find anything to do with the human resources they’ve got.
To put it more simply, corporations aren’t allowed to exist purely because they “make money”. One of their primary functions is to employ people.
It’s true that Intel probably shouldn’t be handing out UBI, but if companies want to promote how much they don’t need people’s labor anymore, then that should be taken into consideration in policy making.
Yes exactly, policy making at the government level, not at the corporate level as the author was suggesting.
To put it more simply, corporations aren’t allowed to exist purely because they “make money”.
Under capitalism, yes they are.
One of their primary functions is to employ people.
I’d argue under capitalism, that isn’t even a secondary function. Employing people may be tertiary at best.
If you look at what many consider to be the golden age of American corporations after the second world war, the notion of a “company man” was a celebrated one, and companies bragged about how they treated their employees. In that era, unlike today’s, shedding employees was not seen as an achievement but rather either a necessary evil, or a sign that the company was going down the tubes.
Over time and with complacency, we’ve ceded the territory on these things. We can say that is inevitable under capitalism that this happens if it makes you happy, but either way at one point it was a major part of the stated purpose of corporations to employ people and help them live productive lives.
Edit: I agree that what you currently have with corporations are resource devouring, profit-pursuing, psychopathic immortal monsters, but none of those things, philosophically speaking, justifies their existence as legal entities.
The platonic ideal of a corporation that owns everything, builds everything, controls everything, and employs nobody will never be fully realized, because the people it is harming will eventually rise to destroy it, or die trying.
If you look at what many consider to be the golden age of American corporations after the second world war, the notion of a “company man” was a celebrated one, and companies bragged about how they treated their employees. In that era, unlike today’s, shedding employees was not seen as an achievement but rather either a necessary evil, or a sign that the company was going down the tubes.
You’ve got rose colored glasses on. This was only true if you were white, male, and a white collar worker.
At the same time for everyone else, employers were increasing working hours, reducing workplace safety, in exchange for higher worker wages:
“During the years when wages were rising, working conditions were deteriorating. Employers made up for higher wages by negotiating higher levels of output into union contracts. And the labor leaders–seasoned veterans of business unionism by the 1960s–were all too willing to comply. Time off in the form of vacations, coffee breaks and sick leave all fell victim to new work standards negotiated in the 1950s and 1960s, while automation, forced overtime and speedups allowed management to more than compensate for high wages. During the period from 1955 to 1967, non-farm employees’ average work hours rose by 18 percent, while manufacturing workers’ increased by 14 percent. In the same period, labor costs in non-farm business rose 26 percent, while after-tax corporate profits soared 108 percent. And during the period between 1950 and 1968, while the number of manufacturing workers grew by 28.8 percent, manufacturing output increased by some 91 percent.”
Not really, I expect that I would’ve hated a great many things about the supposed golden age.
This was only true if you were white, male, and a white collar worker.
Of course, people didn’t have anything approaching equal rights at the time. It could be argued that they never actually would up to and including today.
It wasn’t a utopia by any stretch, but in today’s economy Intel will openly celebrate laying people off and having less employees. There has been a giant swing toward people generally thinking that “greed is good”, and an exhaultation of sociopaths.
The wealth distribution wasn’t perfect, great, utopian, or even good during the entire history of the US, but it’s worse now than it was in the – what I’m now calling the first – gilded age.
It wasn’t a utopia by any stretch, but in today’s economy Intel will openly celebrate laying people off and having less employees.
…and…
The wealth distribution wasn’t perfect, great, utopian, or even good during the entire history of the US, but it’s worse now than it was in the – what I’m now calling the first – gilded age.
You’re painting the 1950s as a better time for workers than today, and except for the white, male, white collar workers, I think your position is just fiction.
There were some bad things that were even worse in some cases happening back to lots of other groups (again besides white, male, white collar workers).
Things like:
1952 President Truman using the power of government to suppress wages of workers to keep the price of steel lower to fund the Korean war effort. source
1950, a record (for the time) 4843 work stoppages PDF source
1956 Whirlpool Tracking workers and firing any the exhibited “pro union” ideas source
1951 police jailing children of workers that were on a strike picket line source
I’m not defending corporations of today, I’m pointing out that there’s been shitty behavior all along. The 1950s were not a pro-worker era as you’re trying to paint it as…unless you were white, male, and white collared worker. If so, then yes, it was great.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove here to be honest. Of course there’s been shitty behavior all along. This is America. It’s a country founded by slave owners that wanted to be free. (Carlin)
My point is simple: corporations are a made-up concept and one of the main things people are supposed to get in the deal to allow them to exist in the first place is efficient allocation and utilization of human resources.
It seems to me they are admitting that they cannot do that. In which case, the deal should be renegotiated.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove here to be honest. Of course there’s been shitty behavior all along.
This is the first post you haven’t been praising the 1950s as a better time for workers. Thats what I was trying to prove. All your prior posts were speaking nostalgically about the “better time” for workers in the 1950s. Besides a small set, it wasn’t better, and many times worse. Thats all.
My point is simple: corporations are a made-up concept and one of the main things people are supposed to get in the deal to allow them to exist in the first place is efficient allocation and utilization of human resources.
Efficient for the corporations. Not efficient for an individual.
It seems to me they are admitting that they cannot do that. In which case, the deal should be renegotiated.
Their goal isn’t your goal. There can be an argument made whether capitalism should exist, but under the current system they are behaving as capitalists. Workers welfare isn’t their primary goal, and in fact, only a goal at all as required by law (OSHA, DoL rules).
I’m not sure the author of the article has a realistic understanding of Intel’s role or ability to affect change public policy.
It’s not a great place to be. Intel and other major corporations buy political influence. Politicians act in the best interests of their benefactors, and for most, that’s not the voters. I don’t think it’s practical either, but maybe there’s some use in including these kinds of political ideas when these things happen, as a reminder that they wield political influence.
It’s true that Intel probably shouldn’t be handing out UBI, but if companies want to promote how much they don’t need people’s labor anymore, then that should be taken into consideration in policy making.
Somewhere along the line we lost one of the basic things underpinning our current economic structure – that corporations are supposedly better at allocating, distributing, and utilizing resources than a centrally planned economy with a governmental overlord. It sure sounds to me like Intel and other companies that are handing out pink slips for every bit of thing they automate cannot find anything to do with the human resources they’ve got.
To put it more simply, corporations aren’t allowed to exist purely because they “make money”. One of their primary functions is to employ people.
Yes exactly, policy making at the government level, not at the corporate level as the author was suggesting.
Under capitalism, yes they are.
I’d argue under capitalism, that isn’t even a secondary function. Employing people may be tertiary at best.
If you look at what many consider to be the golden age of American corporations after the second world war, the notion of a “company man” was a celebrated one, and companies bragged about how they treated their employees. In that era, unlike today’s, shedding employees was not seen as an achievement but rather either a necessary evil, or a sign that the company was going down the tubes.
Over time and with complacency, we’ve ceded the territory on these things. We can say that is inevitable under capitalism that this happens if it makes you happy, but either way at one point it was a major part of the stated purpose of corporations to employ people and help them live productive lives.
Edit: I agree that what you currently have with corporations are resource devouring, profit-pursuing, psychopathic immortal monsters, but none of those things, philosophically speaking, justifies their existence as legal entities.
The platonic ideal of a corporation that owns everything, builds everything, controls everything, and employs nobody will never be fully realized, because the people it is harming will eventually rise to destroy it, or die trying.
You’ve got rose colored glasses on. This was only true if you were white, male, and a white collar worker.
At the same time for everyone else, employers were increasing working hours, reducing workplace safety, in exchange for higher worker wages:
“During the years when wages were rising, working conditions were deteriorating. Employers made up for higher wages by negotiating higher levels of output into union contracts. And the labor leaders–seasoned veterans of business unionism by the 1960s–were all too willing to comply. Time off in the form of vacations, coffee breaks and sick leave all fell victim to new work standards negotiated in the 1950s and 1960s, while automation, forced overtime and speedups allowed management to more than compensate for high wages. During the period from 1955 to 1967, non-farm employees’ average work hours rose by 18 percent, while manufacturing workers’ increased by 14 percent. In the same period, labor costs in non-farm business rose 26 percent, while after-tax corporate profits soared 108 percent. And during the period between 1950 and 1968, while the number of manufacturing workers grew by 28.8 percent, manufacturing output increased by some 91 percent.”
source
Not really, I expect that I would’ve hated a great many things about the supposed golden age.
Of course, people didn’t have anything approaching equal rights at the time. It could be argued that they never actually would up to and including today.
It wasn’t a utopia by any stretch, but in today’s economy Intel will openly celebrate laying people off and having less employees. There has been a giant swing toward people generally thinking that “greed is good”, and an exhaultation of sociopaths.
The wealth distribution wasn’t perfect, great, utopian, or even good during the entire history of the US, but it’s worse now than it was in the – what I’m now calling the first – gilded age.
…and…
You’re painting the 1950s as a better time for workers than today, and except for the white, male, white collar workers, I think your position is just fiction.
There were some bad things that were even worse in some cases happening back to lots of other groups (again besides white, male, white collar workers).
Things like:
I’m not defending corporations of today, I’m pointing out that there’s been shitty behavior all along. The 1950s were not a pro-worker era as you’re trying to paint it as…unless you were white, male, and white collared worker. If so, then yes, it was great.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove here to be honest. Of course there’s been shitty behavior all along. This is America. It’s a country founded by slave owners that wanted to be free. (Carlin)
My point is simple: corporations are a made-up concept and one of the main things people are supposed to get in the deal to allow them to exist in the first place is efficient allocation and utilization of human resources.
It seems to me they are admitting that they cannot do that. In which case, the deal should be renegotiated.
This is the first post you haven’t been praising the 1950s as a better time for workers. Thats what I was trying to prove. All your prior posts were speaking nostalgically about the “better time” for workers in the 1950s. Besides a small set, it wasn’t better, and many times worse. Thats all.
Efficient for the corporations. Not efficient for an individual.
Their goal isn’t your goal. There can be an argument made whether capitalism should exist, but under the current system they are behaving as capitalists. Workers welfare isn’t their primary goal, and in fact, only a goal at all as required by law (OSHA, DoL rules).
Employing humans is a bug, not a feature
I’m not sure I’d call it a “bug”. It can be exploited to obtain tax breaks, which benefits the “make money” primary goal.