I’ve been here for a week or so now and my experience here has quickly shown me that there are a lot of very shallow-minded leftists here (I’m not a Republican/conservative) and a lot of people really quick to just sling profanities and slurs around if they don’t agree with something you have to say.

I would argue that you’re thinking about contracts wrong. I’m not talking about a piece of paper. The piece of paper is just a way for us to write down something that at least two consenting parties agreed with.

“Same bullshit argument like with terms of service.”

How it that a bullshit argument? I will reject a service based on its terms of service. Do you just agree to every terms of service provided to you? You’re not entitled to any services. None of them. I would go as far as to say that if a company is writing out a terms of service that’s too long, too complicated, or too one-sided, then that should be an immediate red flag that you shouldn’t be giving your money to that business.

Apple. I don’t buy Apple products because I don’t like the way that company does business. I worked consulting for years in large companies where part of what I did was consult surrounding cellular devices. I used to advise clients not to use Apple products - that’s how far I went.

You can’t control the world and chances are your vote on anything is insignificant - and so be it - but if you have principles, you should follow them. Don’t complain because of your own weakness on your own principles.

And remember: Any business committing fraud isn’t acceptable.

And another thing: One of the big problems we have with businesses in the US (and most places) is that we don’t hold the actual owners of businesses personally accountable for the actions of a business. If some company poisons a river and a little girl dies because of it, our government fines the company. What SHOULD happen is the CEO and everyone else at that business who knew the company was committed to actions of which they knew might end up taking the life of a child should be thrown in prison for life as murderers. The fact that we do not do this is a failure of our government and transforms the entire paradigm of how companies DO business in the first place.

I can tell you the issue, but it won’t be what everyone else is telling you the issue is.

The real issue is that there are votes at all. You cannot be born into a system of consent, so you cannot be born into a system where by default, some huge organization can steal your income and use it to produce things you never asked for, probably mostly don’t use, and even blatantly don’t want.

You shouldn’t need an ID to do anything that isn’t something you’ve not already consented to, and the only people you would ever need to consent to would be those who own property you wish to utilize.

Why can’t you bundle any number of things into a single contract? If my neighbor and I want to bundle 300 things into a single contract we both agree to, who are you, as a third party, to tell us we can’t?

This is the problem. You have to let adults make their own choices. There’s no such thing as the wiser of two people. To say there is implies that someone has answers about the universe that the other does not. Even human life holds no objective value. All value is relative to the subject.

If you don’t like how a contract is written out, you just don’t consent to it.

What do you mean, why? What is moral is fundamentally just what isn’t immoral and what is immoral are just those actions we shouldn’t take. The only way to know that and not have that be entirely arbitrary is to utilize logic. Logic would mandate that since you would not desire the violation of your will, you cannot choose to violate the will of another.

But all human conflict creates will violation, so this means you just need to decide which will is actually initiating the violation of the other will and then side with the individual who’s will is being violated by the other’s.

For example, let’s say you own a car. It is your will to own that car (hold exclusive authority over it) and for me not to take it from you. If it is my will to also hold exclusive authority over that car I will need to take it from you. If I try to do this, my will is such that it desires the violation of your will which already existed prior to my desire to rob you.

This is actually what murder, rape, theft, fraud, etc. all are. Rape for example is only rape when there’s no consent. In order for the idea of rape to be made manifest, at least one “participant” must have not desired to be violated in such ways while another’s will must have been made manifest after the fact to do the violating. If this does not occur than the output is simply a consensual sexual act.

The same goes here. If a landlord asks you to consent to an idea where they can enter the place you rent anytime they like and watch you under any circumstances, then he isn’t violating your will because you consented to it. If the government (which is simply a third party utilizing violence) tells either party that they cannot engage in this consent then that is just the thuggery of the state telling people how they can or cannot consent.

Which makes the law immoral.

If your renters signed something like that they deserve no privacy.

The mere aspect of voting for a ruling class is sinister.

I’ve actually fought my entire life against the “game” of business. I don’t like the lingo, I don’t like the corporate nonsense, and I don’t like how business in general is conducted. I mostly work by myself. I’ve simply learned some skills that let me produce value for businesses so they want to give me a paycheck, but even then it’s always an ongoing challenge because anyone can be removed from a role at any time and for any reason.

I work high up in large business, so I know how it works.

Let’s say you’re correct, so what? Let’s say I have $10,000 to invest. I notice that the electronics sector is a good place to invest based upon recent trends, so I want to invest there. I do some research and conclude I will either invest in Apple, or Samsung.

If I choose Apple and they give me a 5% return on investment but Samsung gives me 8%, I will invest with Samsung. My money isn’t a charity, it’s an investment.

I am relying on the company to do the best job that they can to provide me with a return on my investment because I would actually LOSE money on my investment, and if I keep losing money, that would be quite irrational of me to keep investing, wouldn’t it?

And if Samsung ends up getting 70% of the investment and Apple only 30%, Apple is going to go out of business, and it should. This would fundamentally mean that Samsung is the superior business in that sector and Apple is doing so poorly that it should not exist.

Investors by the way do not obtain a fixed percentage of profit from a company’s income statement. What they receive depends on a myriad of things like earnings through dividends, equity appreciation, interest rates, type of investments, etc.

Publicly traded companies have benefits over private. They for instance, can produce large amounts of money through selling stock or bond issuing, and shareholders being able to easily buy/sell shares gives good data on company value. Private businesses on the other hand often have more limit on raising funds, so it can make it very challenging, if not impossible, for private companies in some sectors to compete with publicly traded ones. Keep in mind it’s also more complicated than that.

I can give you an example from my business life as well. About 5 years ago a mid-market business (let’s just say around 5 billion in annual revenue) was bought by a private equity firm. The reason was the business was failing. If not for private equity, the business likely would have died.

Through private equity and their investor base, the business is still afloat and doing even better. Private equity was able to invest in the business to make it more profitable, but they don’t want to do that with nothing to gain. The goal in that investment is they make enough of a return in the future that they made a profit off the endeavor. It’s a risk - the firm could have invested billions only to see nothing but a loss. Do that too often and the entire firm would fail and thus, close.

A lot of terminations were done too, but new people were also brought in and a lot of changes were made.

But without giving to that investment, the business would have failed and 100% of its employees would have been without a job. This business currently employs over 10,000 people, mind you.

This isn’t quite how it works. Generally in medium to large businesses - meaning at least a billion a year in annual revenue - oftentimes how it works is a given business unit (BU) will be given a budget. This is usually based on analysis and projections based on the previous fiscal years as well as projections on growth goals.

The VP of that BU will need to spread that budget across their unit as best they can. This will include everything from promotions to new hires. Keep in mind that it could cost a business $160 an hour to hire one full time employee who only makes $50 an hour, all things depending. In many roles, it can take a year or more to get a new hire up to speed in their new role. At $160 an hour, that’s $332,800 against your budget and that first year will not recoup 100% of the potential output of that new hire who will likely not be putting out their fullest until around a year or more, so you’re looking at what more or less accounts to over a quarter of a million just to train a new employee for one year so they can start putting out the same level of work as someone of their level should be.

Then consider if you’re an international company. The business I work for for example is in 60 different countries. All of those countries have different regulatory practices that require a lot out of the HR business unit(s). Some countries have regulatory requirements that force the business to utilize software that can account for those regulations that cost millions annually and aren’t even very good, but there isn’t a good alternative, so it’s either pay that or fall out of compliance, which is not really a viable strategy.

If you have 100 employees in your unit and you want to give them all a 3% annual raise but you’re not given a larger budget unless you grow that side of the business (in other words, you self fund), then where are you getting that revenue stream from?

In many cases you have to set up projects yourself from the top-down, such as requesting from your directors that they begin brainstorming ways to generate revenue. This could be through efficiencies, for example. If you were a director in HR for example, maybe you want to take a look at your team’s processes and see what could be automated. That project alone requires expertise, and those kinds of analysts aren’t cheap. Then you need engineers to perform the automation, which are also not cheap, and you need a surefire return on investment there because the end goal might be to free up 25% of your team’s labor through automation of their current processes, but you may not see a return on investment for 2 years, then by the third year the return isn’t even enough to hire an additional 3 people, let alone give an entire team of 100 a 3% raise.

So you might argue then, “well why can’t the business just give that BU a larger budget?” And there are a few answers. I won’t list them all here, but some examples would be is there something your team could be doing to increase their value to warrant taking budget from elsewhere to funnel into your team? Or every year is it just expected that 3% of the budget go into the employees without an ounce of those employees providing any additional value? To seriously simplify, if the business makes $100 and they pay $50 to their employees and $30 to their shareholders and $20 is reinvested in the company, why should the business pay the employees 60%? HOW do they pay them 60%? They have to take it from the shareholders or the reinvestment, and take too much from the reinvestment and your competition will put you out of business, and take too much from the shareholders and they will invest with your competitors - see the problem?

Many employees don’t understand that they have to increase their perceived value to warrant more, and few do.