Rich companies are totally jerks.

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funeralxempire
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13 Dec 2020, 12:02 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

funeralxempire wrote:

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

Is there a name for this sinister vicious cycle?

I think it's called capitalism. :nerdy:

Yeah, but when said businesses suppress wages by claiming raising pay will only cause prices to rise, but raise prices anyway, it's clearly a case of capitalism becoming corporate greed.

Agreed, but that's why unregulated capitalism only works well on paper. It has no built-in mechanism for dealing with these sorts of vicious cycles and the state ends up having to step in and intervene at some point to keep the system from collapsing in on itself due to inefficiencies.

An economic system that fails to provide enough to the people doing the bulk of the work and the bulk of the consumption can't sustain itself if suddenly those consumers can't afford to participate adequately as purchasers. Even Henry Ford understood this.

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The_Face_of_Boo
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13 Dec 2020, 12:02 pm

hurtloam wrote:

But there are companies like Timpsons that treat their employees like human beings, so it is possible to turn a profit and be a decent company

https://www.timpson-group.co.uk/working-for-us/benefits/

**Browsing** Do they hire non-national programmers?

techstepgenr8tion
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13 Dec 2020, 12:10 pm

Fnord wrote:

↑↑ I really cannot see how your post addresses my post. Would you please re-phrase your post in a more concise and orderly manner? Thank you.

Sure.

Differential success is not a selection of basket between responsible people vs. mooches. It's way more complex than that.

Our social values best approximate economic values in the format of cliquishness and snobbery.

If we train our kids to be cliquish and snobbish then all sorts of social structures that we depend on will be 'too low' for our kids, ie. we won't have them. From there our capacities and choices for solving problems diminish.

You might want to look into arms races as autopoietic forces and that, because of their extortive value, those pulled into them lose touch with what makes the species viable long term because they're fighting for their lives with a handful of competitors. We can survive some amount of arms races but when our whole culture becomes something like a genetic sorting machine via economics - it's a system that can't care whether we continue as a species or go extinct because it's not 'from God', it's not the 'collective unconscious', it's just math.

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CockneyRebel
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15 Dec 2020, 3:34 pm

Rich companies are also less likely to hire people with disabilities.

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thinkinginpictures
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15 Dec 2020, 3:58 pm

A: "It's capitalism"
B: "Let's abolish capitalism"
A: "Look at communism. That's worse!"

But what about:

C: "Let's regulate capitalism for the benefit of the workers and shareholders alike"

Shareholders gets screwed just as much as the employees. The only winners are those who inherited the company, who need not to work and can relax and leech on everybody else. Let's abolish that system as a start and tax large incomes alot more than today, put a tax on inheritance of millions of dollars and tax the means of production to help establish an Unconditional Basic Income right for every citizen.

Also, there should be more consumer rights in this world.

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15 Dec 2020, 8:06 pm

thinkinginpictures wrote:

C: "Let's regulate capitalism for the benefit of the workers and shareholders alike"

Yes. Individuals are subject to rule of law yet corporations are trying to get out of it. We wouldn't want individuals who aren't bound by law, who can steal and murder without consequence, so we shouldn't want to corporations that aren't regulated.

The political groups of Facebook are turning into a real s**tshow. It's usually a debate between lazair-faire bootlickers who want absolute freedom for corporations and communists who think the solution for 1% of the population having too much power is to give even more power to an even smaller group of people.

I try to tell them that we need a solution between lazair-faire capitalism and holodomor denying stalinism but then they just call me a centrist and say I only want to murder puppies half of the time.

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Fnord
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16 Dec 2020, 10:09 am

I often wonder why some people seem to believe that being employed is a right, and not a privilege.

I also wonder why the same people who eagerly accept a prevailing salary will later complain their pay is too low.

Then I wonder why the same people who once complained about being jobless will later complain about their jobs.

People are weird.

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16 Dec 2020, 3:07 pm

Fnord wrote:

I often wonder why you complain about people who complain.

Who was complaining here other than you btw?

The_Face_of_Boo
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16 Dec 2020, 3:13 pm

funeralxempire wrote:

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

funeralxempire wrote:

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

Is there a name for this sinister vicious cycle?

I think it's called capitalism. :nerdy:

How would a non-capitalist system solve this tho? A shared income system?

In the current communist countries we see all their people are poor except the leaders. :lol:

In socialist countries like Canada.... well, their economy is capitalist too, no western country is purely socialist.

Canada isn't a socialist country by any reasonable definition.
.

I've heard they borrowed a lot of socialist concepts when it comes to healthcare and welfare. But that where it stops.

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16 Dec 2020, 3:31 pm

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

Fnord wrote:

I often wonder why you complain about people who complain.

Who was complaining here other than you btw?

First, I was not complaining, only stating my "wonder" at other people's behavior.

Second, the people behaving in these ways are all around me -- at work, at church, on-line ... everywhere.

Third, I often wonder how people can perceive complaining in simple observations on human behavior.

funeralxempire
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16 Dec 2020, 4:14 pm

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

funeralxempire wrote:

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

funeralxempire wrote:

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:

Is there a name for this sinister vicious cycle?

I think it's called capitalism. :nerdy:

How would a non-capitalist system solve this tho? A shared income system?

In the current communist countries we see all their people are poor except the leaders. :lol:

In socialist countries like Canada.... well, their economy is capitalist too, no western country is purely socialist.

Canada isn't a socialist country by any reasonable definition.
.

I've heard they borrowed a lot of socialist concepts when it comes to healthcare and welfare. But that where it stops.

No more than is typical of western liberal democracies. If that makes a nation socialist than the reds won the Cold War because America is socialist too (which obviously isn't true).

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20 Dec 2020, 4:07 am

Why is any of this a surprise or revelation?

Corporations have one objective: Making profits. In fact, they’re legally obligated to make as much profit as they can - which makes the decisions of their boards of directors very predictable.

They’re in the business of making money, not enhancing their employees’ wealth & lives.

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Deltaville
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20 Dec 2020, 4:17 am

goldfish21 wrote:

Actually the reality is technically different. The goal of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value.

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20 Dec 2020, 4:17 am

goldfish21 wrote:

Though by providing good enough wages to guarantee dispensable income, as well as medical coverage that provides security from financial ruin, those companies would be providing a means for working people to buy even more products and keep the engines of capitalism chugging forward. In other words, it's an investment for the future by employers.

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goldfish21
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20 Dec 2020, 2:45 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

goldfish21 wrote:

Why would company A give a s**t if their employees had money to buy stuff from company B, C, or D?

That doesn’t make them profits nor increase shareholder value.

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20 Dec 2020, 5:16 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

goldfish21 wrote:

It is almost like capitalism is a self-destructive system that will eventually eat itself by hoarding all the wealth into a few places, and screwing over the people that are meant to be helped. This is why socialism addresses things like not having the need to tie healthcare to employment, and trying to ensure everyone could do well enough to have buying power.

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