Not even this, it’s increase profits next quarter.
Corporate behavior would be ridiculously different if they weren’t so short term.
Corporate behaviour would be different if they were treated like the citizen they claim to be.
The prison would be filled to the brim, and we could release people that were imprisoned for smoking pot or something to make place for people destroying the planet.
Where companies will sacrifice the next 2 years for a good “next quarter”.
This is pretty ignorant actually. Companies pay millions to have CEOs that are invested in long term strategy. How you ask? With stock bonuses that will perform better if the company does well.
Many do, but many seem to not. I didn’t mean to generalize them all, but I see way too many decisions that boost the next quarters or few quarters at the expense of long term health, and these decisions get rewarded with stock price bumps. Then the decision makers eject when its time to pay the price.
I own or used to own some of these stocks, and it annoys me when they do. I want to hold these companies, not pump and dump them.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
As a hypothetical investor, why would I invest my money in a company that promises profit in 10 years, when I could invest in profits for the next quarter, then take back my investment + profit, and invest somewhere else with profit next quarter?
Tesla is a a great counter-example. Before Musks true colors came out, Tesla stock went on a wild ride long before the company made a profit, and is frequently priced way above anything justifiable by current income or profit. It’s all based on hope for a long term plan to change the world and eventually make huge profits, rather than short term goals.
As a hypothetical investor, if you stayed away from companies like Tesla, you would miss some stocks with the highest returns
A stock-price bubble is the opposite of a good example in my opinion. Dumb techbros hyping a company to the point where it has a higher capitalization than literal Volkswagen group, because the stock price kept inflating. What percentage of the stock owners of Tesla 4 years ago are the same as nowadays? I’d bet it’s low
Are you actually this stupid or are you trolling? I just cannot imagine that someone could actually be this ignorant.
Do you also explain yourself or are you just insulting people?
Don’t forget:
The problem is not that they choose to do this, it’s that they’re allowed to do it.
It’s not that CEOs just happened to be evil. It’s a material conditions problem. Anyone who becomes a CEO has tremendous pressure to become evil. You could even argue that the steps you would have to take to become a CEO are morally problematic. So the pressure to become evil starts early. As soon as you enter the job market.
Same for high politics btw.
Yes, but the difference is with politics things are more transparent and we have a choice. We can vote. With CEOs, we don’t get a choice and no one really knows what goes on up there.
Which is why we normally argue for democracy. If everybody acts collectively in their own interest, we all win.
Yeah, it’s a ‘trade’.
The hand fits the glove
More than allowed! The system (society at large, capitalism, etc…) forces them to think this way!
“If the customers are buying and the money multiplying and the PR people lying and the lawyers are denying, who cares if some things are dying!”
That song went too hard for Illumination Entertainment to greenlight it.
Ed Zitron’s podcast, Better Offline, has been discussing the rot economy for multiple episodes. The idea of “number go up” being the only metric that matters makes a lot of sense for how we got here.
It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
Or, y’know… Vote Democrat and have a chance to save your children from climate Armageddon.
I feel like “Vote Democrat” is 0.5 step forwards while “Vote GOP” is 50 steps backwards. Really wish we had ranked choice voting and a handful of viable other viable parties like other democracies around the world!
Sure…we are not at all at fault. Our demand for disposable tech junk and cheap Chinese trinkets is the corporations fault. Tech corporations made cryptocurrency and set up crypto farms?
I’ll give you oil corps all day long, but most of the rest is on us. We did it. We fucked ourselves. We demanded that the planet burn while we meme about climate change on Twitter, as it single handedly eats enough power to run a town.
Let the downvotes commence. Lie to yourselves all you want, but that doesn’t makes us less guilty.
A lot of this can be attributed to corporations and the (b/m)illionaire class forcing us all into a position where we too have to try and find a way forward, and a way to get wealthy. Those needs lead to things like people working multiple gig jobs like Uber Eats; trying to monetize crypto or basically any hobby we can think of; distracting ourselves with junk because we can’t come to terms with the fact that our lives are all lacking because the ruling class is constantly draining us dry.
There is always a link back to the ruling class with these things.
Why are minority neighborhoods fucked? Because the ruling class doesn’t see them as profitable; because the landlord class sees their land as a commodity and drives them out, or takes over and continues to gentrify.
Why can’t anyone afford rent? Because the landlord class drives prices up simply because they can. What do people in desperate times like this do? They seek out what they consider “easy money” such as crypto, selling hobbies, etc. Drop-shipping junk on Etsy and even buying it for themselves.
We live in a country that forces downward pressure on everyone that isn’t swimming in money.
“But what about people in tech that get paid well?” — they are still trying to seek their own shortest way out due to constant burnout because of layoffs and “line go up” pressure. Yet again, the ruling class is at the root of the problem.
For your last part in tech jobs being paid well. You might wanna mention how the tech companies worked with each other to keep salaries down by not hiring other companies ex-employees.
I would post a reference but I can’t find the news article I read, this was sometime in the 90s and 00s. I’m sure there is some fuckery still going on. Google has really gone downhill since I can’t even find it…I used to be revered at my old job for my “Google Fu” and now I feel lost…
I’m in tech myself and am curious to check that out. It’s really become a rough and chaotic field. I was laid off myself for 3 months and have had to deal with all kinds of wild fuckery.
I don’t disagree with that at all. What I dislike is when people try to fully “pass the buck” and play the victim when they are also part of the problem. Ultimately we agree at the core level. As I said, the problem are not corporations, the problem is the core concept of capitalism that puts us in a rat race and in desperate need for something, anything, to make us feel better about a miserable existence, as well as the oppression of a ruling class who’s only interests are their own.
I understand your point. But I also feel that it needs to be taken in the wider context that our consumerist lifestyles were manufactured by those same corporations in order to sell more stuff. A good article about this. The individual can always try to consume as little as possible, but to truly break this vicious cycle at the societal scale, drastic measures would have to be taken in order to limit advertising (which is quite literally just propaganda to convince the masses to consume more) and other forces perpetuating the current situation. People can live without consumer capitalism, most corporations cannot. That’s why they’re hell bent on keeping the populace thirsty for their products through whatever means necessary.
The companies selling you junk are using psychology to make you buy their products. They have boiled down what makes you consume more, and what doesn’t to a science.
You are bombarded 24/7 with ads and pressured to buy shit you don’t need all the time so that the profits keep growing. This is 100% the corporations’ fault
This is why nowadays, you see the same budget for marketing as the development of a product or service.
Remove the ads everywhere, and you will see consumption decrease.
Our demand for disposable tech junk and cheap Chinese trinkets is the corporations fault.
Yes, it is. With wages being paid by corporations so low and absolute necessities such as food, shelter, and medicine so expensive, most of us can’t afford anything better.
Tech corporations made cryptocurrency and set up crypto farms?
They literally did, yes.
most of the rest is on us. We did it. We fucked ourselves
It’s not every day you see delusions of grandeur, victim blaming and a mea culpa in the same sentence. Probably because that’s ridiculous.
We demanded that the planet burn
[Citation needed]
we meme about climate change on Twitter, as it single handedly eats enough power to run a town.
Nope. No real person uses “enough power to run a town” to meme. That’s corporations and billionaires you’re thinking of.
Lie to yourselves all you want
Nah, no need. We have you for that.
Magical thinking peaks somewhere around blaming natural disasters on the profit motive.
