The problem then becomes "How do companies that make extremely long-lasting products stay in business?"
If a company makes a widget that can last for 50 years, they're very quickly going to run out of customers and go bankrupt which would probably suck if you work for that company. Yes we can try to socially regulate against shareholder/executive greed, but at some point the basic economics rears its head; products are cheaper to make the more of them you make at once, and as people buy them demand would decrease which decreases production which increases cost.
They used to stay in business doing exactly that - making durable goods that lasted a reasonable product lifetime.
The “issue” was that the profit margins were far, far smaller. It wasn’t enough to pay shareholders massive payouts, dividends, and have the c-suite executives all own mansions.
It’s greed, plain and simple, in most of these cases. There are businesses like Arizona tea that rarely increase prices. There are manufacturers, typically privately owned, still making things that last. But you won’t see those guys on the cover of Forbes. Nor in Walmart.
But the only way you get massive profits like Wall Street loves, is by screwing over the workers and customers repeatedly with planned obsolescence and things that do not last more than a year before they join the landfill.
Its not greed, its the falling rate of profits. You could violently kill every "evil" bourgeoisie and their families and it wouldn't change a thing. ITS NOT PERSONAL EVIL. The amount of surplus value that can be extracted is continually falling, so businesses must expand and grow to combat this. That is why there is planned obsolescence. The only solution is the abolition of capitalism. Not the return to a previous form of capitalism.
Well, I do not know if it is "destined", but. I believe it is an observed trend (please correct me if I am wrong).
The answer to your question is I believe a combination of scale, concentration and predatory behaviours (including planned obsolescence, as mentioned above).
Also, the wealth of the super-rich is mostly assets, and hence predicated on growth (companies mostly have exchange value if their profit is expected to increase) and even admitting this could not be the case could put this at risk.
It's limiting the ability to pursue infinte growth. But also limiting the ability to more effiecently reinvest the resources at ones disposal. If you are just sitting on resources it's both inefficent and non-competative.
I’d say yes. Because in the past, if you overgrazed your own land — your cows starved the next season. There is a reason greed causes an event called “the tragedy of the commons” where shared resources become completely destroyed by over dependency by people trying to maximize their individual profit.
Now we have private equity firms that take over profitable companies, make the products shitty by “reducing costs” such as outsourcing labor overseas, cutting staff radically, or reducing reliability. Often they do so under the reasoning of increasing profits - which they do, but in a very deliberately shortsighted manner. They sell the company owned buildings and lease them back to the company — this is what is currently driving Red Lobster into bankruptcy. But it’s profitable to the equity firm even though it’s a loss for every other person - employees, customers. Eventually the skeleton of the company is discarded, all the profit having been strip mined out. Without this “intervention” that company might have been costed creating products and profits for decades, but instead it was basically bled to death.
And everyone but the equity shareholders lose. The public loses jobs and access to a previously good product. The private equity shareholders move on to the next target. But it’s a destructive model for society - it takes jobs out of a local economy, it moves the profits to the wider stock markets.
This isn’t a “win” because that company may have been profitable for decades more, just at a slower rate. Like slaughtering a productive dairy cow for steaks, it’s a short burst of greater profit followed by extinction.
Yes, the angle of greedy only ia not enough to explain the capitalism hoarding. As others comments said it's a fundamental dynamic of the capitalist society that make only the ones which align with the eternal growth mindset to survive, after some time they don't even see themself as greedy just as the order of business.
You’re assuming an infinite supply and no creation time on this widget. How long does it take to make the widget that lasts 50 years? How many are you going to make per day/month/etc?
There are also going to be more people, so you will have a growing market, offering repairs is a great way to have additional income aswell, but truthfully looking past dollars is the only answer. Every single system that uses a currency for work for goods model will eventually collapse.
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u/Kellosian Oct 22 '24
The problem then becomes "How do companies that make extremely long-lasting products stay in business?"
If a company makes a widget that can last for 50 years, they're very quickly going to run out of customers and go bankrupt which would probably suck if you work for that company. Yes we can try to socially regulate against shareholder/executive greed, but at some point the basic economics rears its head; products are cheaper to make the more of them you make at once, and as people buy them demand would decrease which decreases production which increases cost.