
Why the Assholes Are Winning: Money Trumps All - rbanffy
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joms.12177/full
======
jondubois
Agreed. Whenever I hear some big successful entrepreneur saying how everything
is better now then it used to be (and sincerely believe this to be the case) -
They are proving themselves to be completely out of touch with reality.

Sure, today's working class can get access to more goods and services than
ever before but when it comes to things that actually matter like our time and
our ability to feel fulfilled in our work; we have never been so poor.

People today are unhappy. Our working conditions are deteriorating and we are
starting to feel like slaves. Our rents or mortgages are massive and we cannot
afford to lose our jobs. People are no longer allowed to be themselves because
saying the wrong thing to the wrong person might have serious negative
repercussions for their careers and livelihoods. People are turning to video
games and drugs to give themselves the feeling of fulfilment that they
desperately need.

Based on US statistics I'm like in the top 5% of household income bracket but
I feel like a slave at work - I seriously wonder how people in the bottom 95%
must feel!

The distribution of income seems so unnatural:
[http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-
rank/](http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/) I bet the distribution
of wealth is even worse.

~~~
stevetrewick
_> Our working conditions are deteriorating_

My paternal grandfather, in common with many of his generation was sent to
work in a coal mine at the age of 14. Had he not died from a dust induced
respiratory disease a few years back I can well imagine him dying from
laughter on reading such a ridiculous statement.

~~~
maerF0x0
Todays work places are nearly devoid of physical risks and yet rife with
psychological and spiritual ones. Sure, RSI maybe the biggest physical risk.
But think of the damage caused by unkind work environments, constant fear of
losing one's job, the demand to work 45,55,or 65+ hours per week. Having to
work those hours despite the research indicating its idiotic. etc. etc.

People are unhappy because their workplace (and maybe society in generaly) is
full of happiness landmines that didnt exist before.

~~~
stevetrewick
You're right of course, silly me. Stupid things like being surrounded by
things exploding and the constant possibility of being trapped underground in
complete darkness with no possibility of rescue just pale in comparison to
your 40 hours in an office with distasteful wallpaper. The horror.

Happiness land mine wise, I am deeply unconvinced. Nothing new under the sun
in that department.

~~~
petegrif
Being facetious doesn't advance your argument. You are of course right that
appalling working conditions are not new. The labor movement was a response
that such conditions. But the key point being made is not that conditions
today are in all regards worse than all conditions in the past but rather that
despite all our much vaunted progress and productivity gains many people don't
experience the benefits and are in fact working in toxic work conditions that
are profoundly stressful. And that point is, I believe, not especially
difficult to substantiate.

~~~
Dr_tldr
I'd agree, but a common doom-mongering narrative is "things are worse than
they used to be and they're getting ever worse!"

Very few people say "the present has a number of trade-offs that's arguably
not much better or about as bad as the past." That said, I think a lot of the
gains are invisible to white professional class heterosexual secular/christian
males, which is part of the problem.

As a pure issue of labor, the average work conditions are probably the same or
worse than in 1970 and purchasing power is about the same. Both of those are
bad things that need to change, but there are vast cultural and technological
improvements that often get diminished, and I think the comment above is a
pushback against that, which does advance their argument.

If you only identify with the historically most privileged group, a lot of the
advantages like "not being provided with inferior safety equipment because of
your race" or "living in constant fear of your career being destroyed because
of your sexuality" don't seem very important. What seems "toxic" to the most
privileged group can seem like "acceptable tradeoffs" to other groups, and
this also speaks to the attitudes of many immigrants and H1-B employees.

~~~
iofj
In 1900 you would not just have been fired for different sexuality or skin
color. The consequences would have been worse.

Racism in any period in time other than today was far, far worse. Not just, of
course, for non-whites in Europe. What were the survival chances of a lone
white man in Moorish Spain ? Not good. In India ? You would have been attacked
and killed because you were probably trading goods they could steal. Africa ?
Same. Japan ? It was illegal for foreigners to be in Japan, punishable by
death, before the Meji restauration.

Especially for minorities today's living conditions are amongst the best that
have ever existed. Even today's Saudi Arabia is more tolerant of women and
homosexuals, and especially much more tolerant of black/otherwise different
ethnical people, than the Ottoman empire was 100 years ago. Yes, they kill
them, however they don't publicly torture them first anymore.

Racism is not something that's new or unique to our portion of history. It is
a constant throughout the entire history of the world that not being part of
the majority ethnicity was very, very bad for you, with few exceptions, like
the Roman Empire.

I think you're on the right track with the second part of your argument
though. Working conditions for the middle class today have, imho, clearly
deteriorated compared to 10-20 years ago (depending on whether you're talking
Europe/America/Asia and which "class"). This is a constant across most (all ?)
of the world, and certainly seems to be getting worse. And there is an
exception : China, although that's begun to deteriorate as well. India still
seems to be moving forward. But today's level in the west is still at
1980-1990 level conditions, no worse. Compared to before that, we've still
advanced. But a hell of a lot of middle class people were better off in 2000
than today.

------
vezzy-fnord
One of the great ironies of contemporary left-leaning commentators is that
despite their insistence on paying attention to institutional factors that
others allegedly neglect (see how Pfeffer constructs the popular but false
dichotomy of "self-interest and profit maximization" versus "human well-being,
longevity and happiness"), they are largely stuck in thinking in terms of the
very same institutions they abhor. Effectively, the current approach is mostly
fine, it just needs a few tweaks and reforms to turn it into a "social
democracy".

If money is the problem, then the solution is not to engage in petty social
democratic welfare reforms, but to end the monopoly on currency and allow for
communities and individuals to coordinate savings-investment decisions and
account for their local capital using the denomination of currency that they
have decided to create. This is the mutual credit solution as advocated by
19th century anarchists and a minority of monetary reformers since then.

Pfeffer quotes Article 23 on the "right to work," and indeed full employment
has always been a bizarre fetish for Keynesians, social democrats, Marxists
_and_ conservatives. The Protestant work ethic is the right-wing version of
the labor theory of value. It is a contradiction how so many bemoan the
supposed rat race working conditions and then advocate the "solution" of
having the state put everyone into the rat race through full employment
policy. Nowhere have I seen any social democratic reformer argue for artisanal
crafts and decentralized governance. It's always more and more massive
centralization. I will note it was the mercantilists who first provided
economic rationales for full employment. And they went to great lengths to
achieve it: anti-vagrancy and poor laws to forcefully turn people into serfs.
The current proposals are more humane, but borne of the same logic of "to live
is to toil".

I will also note that a reason why formal models haven't focused that much on
things like subjective utility and happiness is because those suffer from
intractable aggregation problems. It's easy to speak of the "public interest"
in colloquial language, it is brutally difficult to model and quantify it,
actually drawing the line of how far it extends. Then, of course,
interpersonal comparison of utility is fraught with issues because there is no
measurement of utility as such. Robert Nozick's thought experiments have been
good at illustrating this.

This trite paternalistic reformism leads nowhere except to further
exacerbation of instability.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Pfeffer quotes Article 23 on the "right to work," and indeed full employment
has always been a bizarre fetish for Keynesians, social democrats, Marxists
and conservatives. The Protestant work ethic is the right-wing version of the
labor theory of value. It is a contradiction how so many bemoan the supposed
rat race working conditions and then advocate the "solution" of having the
state put everyone into the rat race through full employment policy.

There's a _really_ banal reason for this. The vast majority of people want
jobs.

In Argentina when they implemented an incredibly popular "right to a job"
scheme (Plan Jefes) and then replaced it with basic income (i.e. get the same
money but you don't have to turn up to work), a majority continued to do their
jobs.

It helped that the jobs that the state were paying them to do were, by and
large, necessary and rewarding - looking after the elderly, etc. I doubt if
the work they were doing were debt collection or cold calling to sell
insurance they'd have wanted to continue working.

~~~
SixSigma
> The vast majority of people want jobs.

only as a proxy for security

~~~
kleer001
I'm a big fan of animalistic reductionism, for personal reasons. And that
perspective tells me, from looking at the way well trained and motivated dogs
perform tasks, that socialized sentient beings do appreciate being helpful and
useful. Also, being an arm chair evolutionary psychologist, I can easily
speculate that a species with this trait would continue better than a similar
species without that trait. A bit like the aesop fable of the ants and the
grasshopper.

And also personally I get a good old dopamine kick out of solving problems in
a group. It may be that I'm socialized to behave that way. But then again a
culture that ingrains that kind of behaviour... (see above).

~~~
collyw
There are plenty of not so well trained dogs that just do as they please as
well.

~~~
kleer001
Very true. And there in lies the problem of socialism / communism / guaranteed
income. What do you do with the freeloaders? If the basics of life are free,
why do anything extra? It creates an economic drag, like physical drag on a
wing. Then again Whales have bumpy features on their fins that actually help
them reduce drag, kinda like dimples on a golf ball.

[http://www.gizmag.com/bumpy-whale-fins-set-to-spark-a-
revolu...](http://www.gizmag.com/bumpy-whale-fins-set-to-spark-a-revolution-
in-aerodynamics/9020/)

And then again I'm of the firm belief that parasitism is a basic feature of
complex reproducing systems. So, the solution is more of a process, an arms
race, than a destination or closed end solution.

[http://infidels.org/library/modern/meta/getalife/coretierra....](http://infidels.org/library/modern/meta/getalife/coretierra.html)

~~~
SixSigma
There are no freeloaders in a basic income society

~~~
kleer001
Then what do you call able bodied people who choose not to contribute, but
instead choose to live at the most basic means? That's the very definition of
freeloading to me.

freeload - intransitive verb:

to impose upon another's generosity or hospitality without sharing in the cost
or responsibility involved

------
rrggrr
Age adjusted mortality rates have declined 60% over the past 75 years courtesy
of those "assholes" in health care, pharmaceuticals and Wall Street who
financed them. (Source: CDC)

College enrollment has increased by more than 1000% and graduation rates have
increased by 10% thanks to those "assholes" who run colleges and those "jerks"
who underwrite college loans. (US Census)

Those "assholes" in the environmental industry and their "criminal"
counterparts in government have cut by about 2/3 air pollution in the US since
1900, while the population has exploded. (US EPA).

Progressives have an important role to play in demonizing business, finance
and government. It gets the ball rolling for reform that sometimes creates new
businesses. Thank you progressives.

They don't know when to stop and the hysteria/drama engine chugs along causing
government to over-reach with feel good legislation and regulation &
boondoggles that rob the treasury and business of funds needed to train, hire
and maintain a vibrant work force... of good paying jobs... not retail and
fast food gigs.

~~~
chillwaves
That's interesting how the profit seekers get all credit, but you leave out
things like public education that train the professionals and do much of the
research.

Also interesting how you think in binary, things are either good or bad,
assholes or saints. Could it be that some good can come from more access to
college, while other negative effects like administrators taking advantage of
unlimited financing to naive students that results in crippling lifetime debt
happen at the same time?

~~~
rayiner
Public education does little to train the professionals or do the research. I
went to a major public research university. 20% of our budget came from the
state. All of the research and innovation was done pursuant to grants and
contracts, many of them related to defense. The educational system is _not_
effective in doing research. The military/industrial/educational complex is
incredibly effective at doing research.

~~~
Thriptic
> The educational system is not effective in doing research. The
> military/industrial/educational complex is incredibly effective at doing
> research

At the end of the day it's still the same academicians doing the work at these
institutions, regardless of the funding source. If the DOD has more success
than the NIH for example in funding good research, it's probably because their
budget is literally 20 times bigger.

------
dawnbreez
Actually, the assholes are winning because they're willing to cheat.

There's a thought experiment called the "Prisoner's Dilemma": two people are
caught robbing a bank, and are taken to separate interrogation rooms; they can
either rat their "friend" out or stay silent. If they both keep their mouths
shut, they both take a short sentence; if one talks and the other doesn't, the
rat goes free and the other guy gets a big sentence; if they both talk they
both get a mid-range sentence.

The people who play this game can be neatly divided into the ones who play for
the minimum jail time, and the ones who play to build trust with their friend.

Now imagine that, instead of reducing your jail time, screwing your neighbor
nets you a few thousand dollars.

~~~
bobby_9x
So running a successful business means you are ’screwi ng your neighbor’ now?

~~~
dawnbreez
Nah, more like screwing your neighbor makes running your business a bit
easier.

~~~
none_for_me_thx
Have you ever run a business?

~~~
dawnbreez
No, but as I understand it, much of the "screw your neighbor" is things like
"use low-end materials", "hold features out until the now iPhone release", or
even "increase prices in current territory instead of expanding".

All of those, on some level, are affecting the consumer negatively for profit.
They all fail in the long term, but are less expensive in the short term,
making business easy for the people who can't run a business to save their
life.

------
vinceguidry
Seems a bit circular. When you define winning as having the most money, then
go on to conclude that money trumps all, you're not saying a whole lot.

------
Animats
Poor article. Read "Assholes, a Theory"[1] for a serious look at the subject.
This focuses on why society rewards assholes. That book makes the case that
denial of reality and violating certain other social norms yields social
advancement.

For a non-serious look at the subject read "TFM - Total Frat Move".[2] This is
a very light book, but it captures the fraternity mindset at a party school.
The frat is a training ground for assholes. The important item is in the
introduction: "All but two US presidents since 1825, 76 percent of the U.S.
Senate, most high-level executives, and all of the Apollo 11 astronauts were
in fraternities."

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Assholes-A-Theory-Aaron-
James/dp/08041...](http://www.amazon.com/Assholes-A-Theory-Aaron-
James/dp/0804171351) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/Total-Frat-Move-W-
Bolen/dp/1455515035](http://www.amazon.com/Total-Frat-Move-W-
Bolen/dp/1455515035)

~~~
tamana
Those US Presidents didn't go to party schools. They were in different kind of
fraternities.

~~~
Animats
DKE, five presidents, including both Bushes. Even the Yale Herald says DKE at
Yale is a party frat.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Kappa_Epsilon#Controvers...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Kappa_Epsilon#Controversy)
[2] [http://yaleherald.com/sports/bros-booze-and-balls-why-
yale-a...](http://yaleherald.com/sports/bros-booze-and-balls-why-yale-
athletes-join-frats/)

------
RamshackleJ
That is a terrible title to use for that essay.

I'm guessing most people didn't read it through, everything was well written,
cited and not vulgar. Ultimately it touches that we need to adjust our values
as a society and move away from just raw wealth to more intangible things that
are not currently modeled effectively in economics. Things like family,
community, feelings of respect and dignity for your self and others.

The title might be off putting but the content of the essay is solid

------
pmarreck
Someone could, perhaps, simply _ask_ Jeff Bezos to create and maintain a
sustainable healthy working environment throughout his company, based on
metrics such as days called in sick, workplace accidents etc. Or perhaps we
need more regulation demanding such.

------
tim333
Bit of a clickbait title.

His conclusion seems to be that in discussions of things like Obamacare, the
gig economy and Greek austerity people don't focus on the human impact as much
as he'd like them to. Which is fair enough I guess but doesn't really justify
the title.

~~~
tamana
See _Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered"

------
galfarragem
_It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both._ \-- Machiavelli

"The prince" is the best book I ever read on business.

------
gglitch
Humanity is the species that will never stop producing psychos who will throw
people under the bus to get ahead. Moloch does it.

------
oldmanjay
Assholes always win, because people who don't win consider the winners
assholes. It's a tautology of human nature.

~~~
JackFr
I'll assume that you just read the headline, since the article basically
posits exactly the opposite of what you claim. Your claim would make sense,
but what we find in the wild is that outrageously bad behavior is ignored or
explained away when the actor is sufficiently rich or successful.

~~~
im2w1l
Think about the press. How often do you see "joe schmoe did something stupid"
vs "celebrity did something stupid"?

Now, if you are rich and powerful, but not enough so to be famous, then I
could see your point.

------
draw_down
"Vulgar Marxism explains 90% of what goes on in the world." -Bob Fitch

------
ck2
If you think about it, the more money you have, it means you've extracted
money from more people.

More wealth means you've taken more from more people.

It also means you didn't have to take quite that much but that is a different
argument.

I also laugh at how people think we won't have to work someday because robots
and automation. Who do you think is going to own all those extremely expensive
robots? People with the most money who've taken it from the most people.
Certainly not the average person. Now where are you going to get your money?

~~~
WalterBright
That's the zero sum theory. Fortunately, it's false, and easily shown to be
false. If a famous artist sits down and paints a picture, he creates wealth.
It is not taken from anyone.

~~~
dota_fanatic
Is this actually true if, instead of saying the context is an artist in a
room, the context is an artist on planet earth? A man has to eat, where did
that energy come from? It definitely wasn't free, popped out of thin air. I'd
say until we have a much more advanced handle on the application of physics,
wealth is taken from others (and I'm not saying that's wrong persay, it's
impossible currently to have it any other way).

Having said that, it's all too easy to find instances of wealth 'created' on
the backs of other people, or on the back of natural resources that will run
out. I've seen way too many people with college educations get taken advantage
of, fresh out of school, just because the employer could. Why not?

~~~
cturner
Your musing poses an interesting question. But I'm writing just against the
bit where you say we should default to accepting the zero-sum perspective
given a lack of understanding of physics.

The evidence against the zero-sum perspective of wealth is overwhelming.

You can go and harvest the wheat. Or, you can let the wheat rot, and spend
your day digging a hole and filling it in. Same energy spent. One creates
value, the other doesn't.

You can light the gas under your stove, or you can set your curtains on fire.
One destroys value at speed, the other doesn't.

You can sew something with a needle and thread. Or you can use a hand-wound
sewing machine you inherited from a relative. Same outcome, one is far more
energy-expensive than the other.

~~~
AlainODea
Indeed. This is the essential difference between capitalism and corporatism
(sometimes called crony capitalism). Corporatism is insidious. It enables
established players to control markets by manipulating regulations through
political favors and disabling competitors through predatory positioning or
pricing. It's very unfortunate that many people (including myself in the past)
throw out the entire history of prosperity building that capitalism has
enabled by conflating it with corporatism. Much of the sentiment driving the
distaste for disruptive innovation thinking it will cause a race to the bottom
directly supports incumbent large corporations and corporatism. It's easy to
fall prey to this, because the narrative can easily have compelling stories of
the human harm caused by technical innovation.

~~~
cturner
Right - there's a tendency to see bad things that are done in crony
capitalism, and then - in reaction to that - to entrench at the zero-sum
fallacy.

I'm interested in this topic - what to do about corporations. Something I
think about: if we don't have corporations what replaces them? How do you
implement business that require commitments that are larger than family?

For example. Consider a digital social network that was oriented around
commercial arrangements. You could form complex contracts in a group, and
produce a reputation system formed from sets of people. There would be a
deposit system, and an opt-in judiciary for dispute resolution. Could this - a
digital upgrade of the icelandic commonwealth - be a more powerful mechanism
than The Corporation?

There's a big difficulty in wanting to get rid of corporations, and that is
that they emerged from a process of true evolution. The Dutch and then English
East-India companies allowed humans to do things that had just not been viable
previously. In fact, they were so successful that they could have obsoleted
nation states. Certainly the East India company could have, and was reined in
only because its shareholders and employees continued to show deference to the
crown. Nation-states got scared at that point, and imposed significant
political controls - corporations are not allowed to maintain standing armies.
So I think it's important to appreciate what powerful tools they are. Any
discussion about getting rid of them needs to consider - how do you implement
large-scale projects in a hypothetical world without corporations?

~~~
AlainODea
Well, I'm not really against corporations per se. I work for one I quite enjoy
and whose aims I think are good and in the general interest.

The challenge, as I see it, is to have governments with a spine, but
governments not so big that they stifle freedom or crowd out opportunities.
Governments need to be powerful enough to overrule the biggest corporations so
that corporations can exist without the cronyism. Power alone is insufficient
though because even a powerful government is peopled by individuals who can
sometimes be bought cheaply.

The East India Company is a somewhat terrifying example of what is possible
with unbound power for corporations. It's an equally bad and unsubtle endpoint
as an all government central economy. Diversity of thought and composition, as
in many places, yields better results than homogeneity.

I think corporations are necessary for large-scale, long-term commercial
endeavours. Certain classes of services to both individuals and businesses
need continuity and corporations are well-suited to providing that kind of
continuity.

Where we are today forgives incumbent large corporations too much and
(certainly in Canada) makes it far too difficult for entrepreneurs to start
small businesses.

