Unity CEO John Riccitiello is leaving 'effective immediately'

It has gotten very tiring for all the comments to be about politics here, so I'm glad to see this comment that does not make me feel defensive for the place I was born.

First of all, I think this is economics, not politics.

I agree with everything else you said, but economics is political. That's why large corporations, purely "economic" entities, spend so much money lobbying/bribing/etc politicians. Politics is about people having different interests and deciding whose interests will be served how hard--and economics is a really big factor in whose interests get served.

That's fair.

The problem is not capitalism, it's human nature.

The problem is not capitalism, it's human nature.

Meh. It's like the nature/nurture debate--the two both operate. Human nature exists, kinda, but societies are not all the same and how human nature is expressed is different depending on the social environment. Even within the broad system of capitalism, the broad umbrella of "the West", and the narrow confines of the present day, Finns seem to act quite different from Americans in how they approach economic life, despite both being human and presumably heir to the same "human nature".

Really, IMO invoking human nature is a bit of a dodge. It means nobody has to be responsible for anything and nobody ever has to try, because if anything is shitty, well, that's just inevitable because human nature. That's not how trade unionists won the weekend.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 16 October 2023 at 3:28 am UTC

I'd say the problem here is specifically how a corporation is incentivized to behave in a typical capitalist economy. It would be naive to blame each ghoul of a corporate CEO individually while ignoring the underlying reasons for their ghoulish actions.

I'm not much of a revolutionary. The solution isn't likely to be that we simply scrap the system and try something else. It would be more logical to honestly acknowledge these problems and take steps to remedy the worst of them using controls and methods that have been shown to work. Active (and adaptive) regulation and mixed ownership models come to mind as examples.

The problem is not capitalism, it's human nature.

Meh. It's like the nature/nurture debate--the two both operate. Human nature exists, kinda, but societies are not all the same and how human nature is expressed is different depending on the social environment. Even within the broad system of capitalism, the broad umbrella of "the West", and the narrow confines of the present day, Finns seem to act quite different from Americans in how they approach economic life, despite both being human and presumably heir to the same "human nature".

Really, IMO invoking human nature is a bit of a dodge. It means nobody has to be responsible for anything and nobody ever has to try, because if anything is shitty, well, that's just inevitable because human nature. That's not how trade unionists won the weekend.

It's not a dodge at all. It's simply pointing out the fact that every economic system is vulnerable to the same greed and deceit that people often mistake for the "evils of capitalism".

The problem is not capitalism, it's human nature.

Meh. It's like the nature/nurture debate--the two both operate. Human nature exists, kinda, but societies are not all the same and how human nature is expressed is different depending on the social environment. Even within the broad system of capitalism, the broad umbrella of "the West", and the narrow confines of the present day, Finns seem to act quite different from Americans in how they approach economic life, despite both being human and presumably heir to the same "human nature".

Really, IMO invoking human nature is a bit of a dodge. It means nobody has to be responsible for anything and nobody ever has to try, because if anything is shitty, well, that's just inevitable because human nature. That's not how trade unionists won the weekend.

It's not a dodge at all. It's simply pointing out the fact that every economic system is vulnerable to the same greed and deceit that people often mistake for the "evils of capitalism".

Yeah, but that isn't actually true. Different systems are vulnerable to different things. Not that greed goes away, exactly, but feudalism's problems generally involved destructive wars and dynastic squabbles--political ambitions of the warrior class that ran things. Merchants could be greedy . . . and nobles could take their stuff if they got uppity. Craftspeople could be greedy . . . but their guilds regulated them and their greed could only operate on a very small scale anyway. Sure, there was greed, but it wasn't a huge driver of behaviour or political events. The other big problem with feudalism was its decentralization made it hard to do big things, like create infrastructure or mount big national armed forces; also not related to greed.
Theocracies as far as I can tell tend to be all about dogma and schisms and sort of McCarthyist witch hunts and brutal enforcement of tradition. There's surely some greed happening, but what they're vulnerable to is conformity gone wild.

A lot of people imagine that other economic systems were just capitalism with different clothes on, but they weren't.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 17 October 2023 at 1:55 am UTC

It feels like every reaction to something bad these days is blamed on capitalism.

What do you want people to blame it on? Feudalism? Capitalism is what we have (until the revolution comes ); it's like farmers blaming everything on the weather--of course they do, and of course it's true.

OK, next time someone looks at me funny, I'm blaming capitalism. And when I do, I expect a grave nod from you in agreement, maybe a "dag nabbit" and knee slap to go with it.

It has gotten very tiring for all the comments to be about politics here, so I'm glad to see this comment that does not make me feel defensive for the place I was born.

To be less sarcastic: What do you expect comments on an article like this to be about? Something completely unrelated?

No, but it could stay focused on the topical subjects of Unity and the CEO. When the blame so quickly jumps to a giant systemic thing, it becomes a bit fruitless. The vision is too big to take any kind of action, so it is just complaining because it's fun to complain. Like when someone says, "Ah man, it's Monday!" OK, great. Please don't say that to me every week! That would be tiring. Make sense?

No, but it could stay focused on the topical subjects of Unity and the CEO. When the blame so quickly jumps to a giant systemic thing, it becomes a bit fruitless. The vision is too big to take any kind of action, so it is just complaining because it's fun to complain. Like when someone says, "Ah man, it's Monday!" OK, great. Please don't say that to me every week! That would be tiring. Make sense?

How do you think such giant systemic things have changed in the past? Without talking? Or do you believe we're at the end of history, things are not going to change anymore?

There's also little things people can do around the corner: repair cafés, local currencies, cooperatives, ... These are not going to end capitalism of course, but they're making people a bit less dependent.


Last edited by Eike on 21 October 2023 at 4:20 pm UTC

It feels like every reaction to something bad these days is blamed on capitalism.

What do you want people to blame it on? Feudalism? Capitalism is what we have (until the revolution comes ); it's like farmers blaming everything on the weather--of course they do, and of course it's true.

OK, next time someone looks at me funny, I'm blaming capitalism. And when I do, I expect a grave nod from you in agreement, maybe a "dag nabbit" and knee slap to go with it.

Cute. Specious, but cute.
Of course, if the someone looks at you funny because you look like you might be gay or trans, then they probably did it because of a social media network funded by the remaining Koch brother and various similar people, who funded the network in hopes of gaining shock troops for fascism who would help them avoid constraints on their ability to keep heating the planet for profit . . . so, yes, still capitalism, I nod gravely.