Society is collaborative, the private sector of society is not. Its a flawed incentive model that most of society periodically navigates through. These are different things than society as a whole. It is aspirational to want something else and be in an environment to rely on different advice. You are either conflating society and the private sector or projecting something I have no idea about. (I dont really understand who the “you shutting off opportunities” is about. What specific thing am I doing exactly?)

Innovation rate in a society is roughly proportional to the branching factor of the possible futures that that society engenders. One way to reduce the branching factor is to consume (or store) resources that others may use to innovate.

"Taking up space" in society corresponds to collecting and storing resources beyond the share which makes you productive, such that an opportunity cost is incurred. Insofar as there is a teleology to capitalist economic organization, it does not include a distribution of resources which optimizes opportunities. The profit motive ensures this.

Delineating the private sector from society at large is an artificial distinction that does not reflect the material realities surrounding resource distribution and utilization. We are all part of one big network, and the boundaries described above are not obeyed by the chaos of self-emergent organization at these scales.

The for-profit corporation can survive with “mercenaries” coming and going, compared to the risk averse co-dependent people married to their fake corporation family, the largest and most profitable ones have very high actual and expected attrition, tech workers finally normalizing 1-2 year stints and being okay professionally for the next stint.

For the people who don't know they can operate this way, now they have advice on how to.

Society wont be worse off because more employees are looking out for themselves instead of falling for company rhetoric. Just as the article said, if you aspire for something else, support a unionization effort.

You seem to be implying that there is only one alternative to the current situation: that if you don't want to be a ruthless mercenary the only alternative is to become a sycophant, a simp for the corporation which pays your bills. How unimaginative.

Unions are necessary but insufficient. Why is there no discussion about further alternatives in your replies? Cooperative ownership structures are prevalent and successful by multiple metrics. Do you wish to limit the conversation to only those defensible by your preconceptions?

> Why is there no discussion about further alternatives in your replies? Cooperative ownership structures are prevalent and successful by multiple metrics. Do you wish to limit the conversation to only those defensible by your preconceptions?

Sure, no, I don't like false dilemmas and am only pointing out that everything you're talking about is aspirational. It means, it doesn't currently exist in the US in any reliable fashion so a current employee that isn't a labor rights activist cannot assume they'll encounter those environments.

I'm a fan of things I've seen in developed countries, such as the employee union having a board seat by law, which also relies on such union existing, this thread isn't about those structures.

In the present, in the US, the dichotomy you summarized is what I perceive.

Seems like you've dug deep into the lexicon of grad-school postmodernism without saying anything that makes any sense.

I invite you to cite one postmodern philosopher who has used the phrase "branching factor". I am a systems theorist by training.

> Would you act differently knowing that giving someone else a chance may lead to the development of a medicine that will save your life a few years down the road?

A counterargument to this is that I’d personally pick today over tomorrow almost every time. So yes, not gambling on the future, but doing what’s right for yourself today is +ev.

Society benefits when the mercenary and competitive urges of high achievers are channeled rather than opposed. That's the secret behind the success of modern market economies, and the alternatives are clearly worse for everyone in a society, including the poor.

Even the Nordic so-called "socialist" countries are actually market economies, with private ownership of the means of production, and they channel the results of capitalism rather than opposing it. They channel it into a somewhat larger safety net than the USA has, but fundamentally they are doing the same thing, because they know that's the only approach that really brings prosperity to a society.

This not a zero-sum game either. Underutilized talent now has more opportunities to be recognized and contribute than ever before. One person's success does not prevent another person's success. We are not just dividing up a pie -- we are growing the pie too. Who is closing off other's opportunities by pursuing their own success?

> Society benefits when the mercenary and competitive urges of high achievers are channeled rather than opposed. That's the secret behind the success of modern market economies...

Big statement, unsubstantiated.

> the alternatives are clearly worse for everyone in a society, including the poor.

Big statement, unsubstantiated.

> they channel the results of capitalism rather than opposing it

This perspective is conspicuously self-serving, but it doesn't seem to be a very clear or elucidating one. What parts of capitalism are being "channeled"? What outcomes are you referring to?

Certainly the poor don't see benefits except where the rich are forced to pay back into public funds for redistribution. It seems to me that the results of capitalism are tempered by more regulated economies, considering the natural end state of capitalist pursuit is feudalism if left unchecked. The profit motive guarantees this.

> that's the only approach that really brings prosperity to a society

This was the popular narrative for describing the failings of Soviet-style communism re: economy. But it stinks of essentialism. Actually, your whole argument does. The reason the CCCP crashed has been studied in more detail now that we have the benefit of hindsight. The rest of the global economy was capitalist, and furthermore, was shaped and organized by a select few power players to engineer the demise of CCCP by creating conditions of brittleness, so that relatively small disruptions (eg localized famines) would cause knock-on effects. There is a direct throughline to today: see all the talk of sanctions vs "the West's" enemies, which amounts to nothing more than exactly what is described above.

> One person's success does not prevent another person's success.

An unqualified notion of "success" seems to be used here. It is not clear even what you think is "success". Seems to be some abstract Enlightenment-style ideal that has a murky-at-best connection to material reality.

One person's consumption prevents another person's consumption because we are limited by the law of conservation of mass-energy. One must consume to innovate. Hoarding and asymmetric investment limit the distribution of these resources to those who may be able to utilize them more effectively, because they can contribute their own IP. This, in the language of basic economics, is called an opportunity cost, and the point of economies (insofar as there is a point) is to minimize that cost. Seems pretty obvious to me, interacting with people from varying levels of class and societal rank, that this cost is harming our progress.

To think we have reached any kind of pinnacle of societal organization demonstrates a depressing lack of imagination. Conservative philosophy has a long way to go to properly argue its side -- and unfortunately for conservatives the work done to advance systems science over the last couple decades has done a lot to tear down the fundamental tenets thereof.