Also what is not shown here are the millions of people that were able to eat fish due to its drastic drop in price. The omega balance raising IQs and resulting in more eco-scientists, sociologists, and general income for the government or charities for retooling of bronze-age fisherpeople.

In the end, a lot of people are getting cheaper food, and more fish is being produced with fewer workers. The suffering is caused by unexpected change, not because the corporate fishing fleet is inherently bad.

I would argue that the poor working conditions are caused by the temporary oversupply of fisherman, not by anything inherent to the job structure. Once that oversupply is corrected, you end up with fisherman working for a good wage to provide cheaper food to thousands of people. The community as a whole can work fewer hours and enjoy more of their life.

So capitalism ruthlessly exploited the people it pushed out of a niche, a one-time cost to a small group of people, in exchange for permanent good effects for everyone.

Obviously it would be better if the company was giving good wages from the start, and a social safety net kept that small group from suffering at all. But even with that terrible side effect, the search for efficiency was a good thing.

That's pretty much the definition of totalitarianism (the end justify the means, like in The Prince).

> Obviously it would be better if the company was giving good wages from the start, and a social safety net kept that small group from suffering at all. But even with that terrible side effect, the search for efficiency was a good thing.

Our moral compass should tell us that if achieving efficiency without exploitation is possible then it must always be chosen over achieving efficiency with exploitation.

There's another subtle thing to consider here: the capitalists seem to justify and enforce the means when the terrible side effects only apply to others. The line between socialist despotism and liberal despotism is a bit blurry.

So what's left? Oh I got it: CAPITALISM IS BAD.

I don't get your point. Clearly here "capitalists" refer to the group the businessman represents in the story. I didn't pass any judgment on the capitalism doctrine here. I passed judgment on the doctrine "the end justify the means", which has nothing to do with capitalism.

> There is no consensus on the directions of moral compass.

In today's western society (let's just assume you are living in a western society), it is now commonly accepted that slavery, for instance, is badbad. This is a moral compass. Of course it hasn't always been like that. And it might change again. But this is still a moral compass.

> So what's left? Oh I got it: CAPITALISM IS BAD.

Are you trying to put words into my mouth ?

I don't understand your argument here. As far as I understand it, totalitarianism means that the government has total control. Whether they do good, or bad, or both, justification doesn't play into it because they are beyond needing justification.

I hope you now better understand my reasoning.

The term 'tragedy of the commons' was coined at the time of the biggest transfer of land from common ownership to private interests in the history of GB. It describes the very benefits the businessman in the OP describes - the profit motive of efficiency due to privatisation. It is in itself capitalist fodder.

Over time it has may have come to signify anti-capitalism. Perhaps the only thing that kept the tragedy of the commons in check was social responsibility. Which, by virtue of remote capital, has been decimated - once again, as the OP describes.

Your argument about feeding the millions is both common and fallacious. The world population has increased more than sevenfold from that time.. the increase in population much more closely mirrors the increase in production, than production does the increase in need.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing#Instances

or... do, do that

THE SOLUTION IS TO REGULATE, except that capitalists use their enormous wealth to lobby against any and all effective regulation, but that's not capitalism's fault lolz

But whose fault is it now that someone is trying to apply the system to public/common ownership ?

It's not like even die-hard supporters of capitalism claim that applying it to public property works well. From Mises.org:

  On the contrary, when the individual is merely a tenant, either of
  a farm or a dwelling or a business site, his interest is in taking
  out all he can to compensate for the cost of the rent he pays. This
  is true whether his landlord is a private person or a government.
  Actually, in those cases where government has become the landlord,
  the evidence abounds that tenants are even less interested in
  improving or even maintaining the property they occupy.

There is no homogenous group of "capitalists". Many regulations are the product of collective wishes of 99% and its absurd to blame some non-existent group for lobbying against "any and all" effective regulation.

I swear someday I will write browser extension to analyze and hide such hand-wavy arguments like this one.

But the owner of the fishery/cannery is lobbying against quotas, the owner of the fishing boat is lobbying against worker protections that would slow down the harvest, and the restauranteurs sure have a significant interest in keeping the price of fish as low as possible.

Heterogeneous groups, acting in their own interests, end up working towards the same goal - preventing regulation that would slow overfishing. That's the tragedy of the commons.

That naturalistic argument (don't blame it on the missing rain, that your crops died) is good for natural processes. But you are talking about a cultural/societal process here. So this system was designed in a special way. It could have been designed in a more ethical way. In a way to internalize externalities.

It was designed intentionally is what I wanted to say. And that invalidates a naturalistic argument.

In other words, don't blame capitalism (a natural set of incentives aligned around gain from profit) for the disruption of the fish supply in the small town. Blame the Mexican (per the parable) government for not either licensing the fishing rights to a single charter or regulating the amount of fishing in the area. Properly managed, either approach would incentivize business to reign in the take-all (free capitalism) approach for long-term sustainability (and thus, greater overall profit).

I also recommend the writings of American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen from 100 years ago on how it is remote capital that increases the likelihood of businesses to have terribly deleterious effects on the physical, biological and social environment. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/438 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen

Change happens, and often it brings benefits: but unless we are mindful, as say Elon Musk attempts to be, in our desires to improve the world with our technolgies, then dystopias will follow.

I can also recommend the various works of David Brin on the near to medium future, whose mind is quite as sharp as Musk's and other meta-systemic thinkers we know and appreciate. http://www.davidbrin.com/

It does make me wonder though, to what extent are we responsible for the repercussions of our actions? Where along that chain did it stop becoming the fault of the businessman, if ever?

Current ethics would probably say, it was never the fault of the businessman. The profits were ripe for the taking; under a capitalist worldview, someone would have taken them, whether or not it was this businessman.

As far as we can tell, the businessman did nothing expressly immoral- the consequences were externalities, and our moral systems are rarely developed to encompass anything beyond externalities of the first degree, because let's face it- externalities are damn hard to predict, understand, or even monitor.

If you deliberately avoid determining the results of your actions, though you have the capacity to learn, are you still responsible?

And I would argue the moral paucity in the story is more of a 'death by a thousand cuts' sort of thing.

Gimme a break - "someone else would have done that"? Is there really an ethics system that would score this above "shitty excuse"?

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

i.e., it was not ethical because no one else would make the step either.

Enter stage left: Sustainability.

As someone posted above, the Triple Bottom Line presents a different concept of capitalism that takes into account the limited supply of resources that make profitable life possible. At our current rate of growth, if we do not refocus efforts on sustainable consumption, we will all end up like the fisherman.

http://renewablewealth.com/the-parable-of-the-mexican-fisher...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Overpopulation

A vacationing American businessman standing on the pier of a quaint coastal fishing village in southern Mexico watched as a small boat with just one young Mexican fisherman pulled into the dock. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. Enjoying the warmth of the early afternoon sun, the American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American casually asked.

“Oh, a few hours,” the Mexican fisherman replied.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American businessman then asked.

The Mexican warmly replied, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.”

The businessman then became serious, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

Responding with a smile, the Mexican fisherman answered, “I sleep late, play with my children, watch ballgames, and take siesta with my wife. Sometimes in the evenings I take a stroll into the village to see my friends, play the guitar, sing a few songs…”

The American businessman impatiently interrupted, “Look, I have an MBA from Harvard, and I can help you to be more profitable. You can start by fishing several hours longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra money, you can buy a bigger boat. With the additional income that larger boat will bring, before long you can buy a second boat, then a third one, and so on, until you have an entire fleet of fishing boats.”

Proud of his own sharp thinking, he excitedly elaborated a grand scheme which could bring even bigger profits, “Then, instead of selling your catch to a middleman you’ll be able to sell your fish directly to the processor, or even open your own cannery. Eventually, you could control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this tiny coastal village and move to Mexico City, or possibly even Los Angeles or New York City, where you could even further expand your enterprise.”

Having never thought of such things, the Mexican fisherman asked, “But how long will all this take?”

After a rapid mental calculation, the Harvard MBA pronounced, “Probably about 15-20 years, maybe less if you work really hard.”

“And then what, señor?” asked the fisherman.

“Why, that’s the best part!” answered the businessman with a laugh. “When the time is right, you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”

“Millions? Really? What would I do with it all?” asked the young fisherman in disbelief.

The businessman boasted, “Then you could happily retire with all the money you’ve made. You could move to a quaint coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, play with your grandchildren, watch ballgames, and take siesta with your wife. You could stroll to the village in the evenings where you could play the guitar and sing with your friends all you want.”

Sensing skepticism from the fisherman, the businessman moves onto the next boat and finds a more receptive fisherman. The two, sensing an obvious business opportunity, decide to go into business together. They raise a venture capital round and a year later, return to the pier outfitted with a dozen high tech fishing boats.

Immediately, the price of tuna at the pier drops threefold with increased supply, forcing the young Mexican fisherman to increase his hours at sea just to maintain his existing standard of living.

Shortly thereafter, all of the shallow water tuna have been caught and the young Mexican fisherman discovers his tiny boat is incapable of deep water fishing. Because of his limited savings, he does not have enough capital to invest in a deep water fishing boat and he is forced to sell his tiny fishing boat for pennies on the dollar as scrap because advances in technology have made it obsolete.

After discovering that there is limited demand for an employee whose only skills are watching ballgames, playing the guitar and taking siestas, the young Mexican fisherman finds his only option is to take a job working minimum wage on one of the businessman’s fishing vessels.

Several years later, the fisherman’s joints are shot through from the hard manual labor of operating on a commercial fishing vessel and an ill timed lift of a 150lb pallet of tuna finally causes his back to give way, causing permanent crippling. The fisherman discovers intensive lobbying from the businessman has weakened workplace protection rules and the fisherman is summarily let go with only a paltry settlement.

After years of expensive medical treatments and crippling bills, the fisherman is finally forced to sell his land, passed along to him from generation to generation, to a development conglomerate run by the businessman who is buying large tracts of the entire village.

Unbeknownst to the fisherman, the businessman has lobbied for the village to turn into a protected nature reserve, allowing for the rehabilitation of the environment and the restocking of fish in it’s pristine waters. The businessman painstakingly recreates the quaint, costal charm of the village he once visited, making it a paradise where the wealthy flock to when they want to retire into a life of easy indolence.

Finally, 15 – 20 years after the original conversation, the fisherman and his wife are found dead in a homeless shelter. Meanwhile, the businessman retires to the village having made two successive fortunes first in fisheries and then in real estate development. He spends his days sleeping late, playing with his grandchildren, watching high def ESPN ballgames on a 70″ TV, and taking siesta with his wife. He occasionally strolls down to the village in the evenings where he regales his fellow millionaires with the story of how he found an unexploited niche in the marketplace and then took full advantage of it to make the fortune that got him to the comfortable retirement he enjoys today.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2013/07/violence-in-acapulco-i...

The success story ? The happy ending ?

What do you refer to a story like this? An Epitome? ANecdote? Vignette?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

-- A fellow Hacker

It's about just what it says it's about: the businessman crushing everyone else to satisfy his own greed, and destroying the quality of life for anyone that's not rich.

You know, like real life, as oppposed to the self-serving silicon valley fantasy where getting rich is somehow socially beneficial.

The problem is all the wealth created from this went to the businessman alone and the fisherman was left with nothing. Because we stupidly live in a society where everyone depends on the value of their labor to get by. When technology makes your labor obsolete, as it should, then you have nothing.

I'm all for a more equitable distribution of wealth though, through a combination of a much more solid web of social programs and higher taxes levied on top recipients of income (I dare not confuse those with "earners").

unless we humans decide to harness greed, and quickly, we will shortly follow all of the other large mammals to the mass extinction which we engineered ourselves.

-bowerbird

Also http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/misc/patfitty.gif