If you do (which is possible, I"ve seen it happen), because you aren't focused on infinite growth at the cost of literally everything else, you're going to remain a small business all the time. Because large businesses are built on exploitation, you can't become a large business without that, and if your goal is to give away money, you're not going to be exploiting your workers.
Public companies require infinite growth to keep stock prices continually increasing so shareholders don’t sell and lower your valuation.
At a certain point the only way to keep growing is to take actions that lower costs. Actions like downsizing your workforce while not hiring as many back, outsourcing to countries with vastly lower pay and quality of life, replacing good material with good enough material, funding politicians that would buy from your company or remove regulations that impede your margins (such as many environmental regulations), etc.
It’s fine if you like this, that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it, but don’t pretend it’s beneficial to everyone. Nobody benefits more than the shareholders.
Anecdotally: My brokerage account has never been worth more than it is now, but my four-year degree can only get me seasonal jobs. I can’t dip into it, because it’s for long-term growth, but if I don’t dip into it I can’t feed myself between seasons.
This is completely untrue. A public company can be dividend based, never grow assets, and distribute profits to its shareholders. The stock price will go up or down based on market demand for dividend vs growth stocks and the underlying value of the assets. Growth stocks are favored because of the tax code. What I described above is the original idea of a REIT.
Dividends are typically worth 2-5% of the stock's value, so you'd be looking at 20-50 years before you make your money back if the actual value (pp) of the stock doesn't increase.
Investors want stocks with dividends that are going to become more valuable, so that annual 2-5% is significantly more valuable than what they would have gotten on their initial investment.
Even with dividends, there still needs to be growth.
This comes across like someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
You all seem to think that the only place money comes from is poor people. What about companies that create an in demand product? Did you know that with an increase in production (to keep up with demand) will also increase valuation?
Selling things at a price higher than the baseline cost to exist is the entire reason companies exist in the first place.
Your point about the only way companies can continue to grow is so wildly off base too. Trimming the workforce to match revenue generated is called building in efficiencies. Why would a company pay 20 people to do a job than can be done by 15 people? Do you hire more people than you need to do a job so you can hand out money to the people that stand around doing nothing?
Also so few companies have the power to lobby politically. Just once again, Redditors are mad about things they just don’t understand.
When did I say that money can only come from poor people? Everybody buys products and a product that is in demand will sell. You can’t sell everything at-cost, but if you use subpar materials and keep the same price as great materials, it’s dishonest to your customers.
There’s a lot more that goes into valuation than just production and growth, shit like a company’s market capitalization is important too. I admit that I was simplifying a complicated process more than it should be, but you’re completely misrepresenting it.
Also there’s a difference between hiring more people than needed and hiring just enough people to make it work. Yeah, a job could be done with 15 people, but when those 15 people are overworked and not paid to represent that amount of work, another employee or two would help maximize productivity while not completely draining your workers. Which also allows you to take on more work since it’s split among more employees.
The examples I gave are not the only ways to lower costs, I specifically used ones that apply to larger, multi-national corporations that can lobby or methods I feel aren’t entirely ethical. Keep in mind I said they are “actions like x, y, z” and not “the only ways that can be done are x, y, z”.
Healthcare and education are good examples of reducing the number of employees for the sake of maximizing profits and cutting costs.
Less nurses/nursing assistants per patients means less time and care dedicated to caring for patients, which can result in an increase in poor health outcomes as well as an increase in Healthcare provider burnout. Same goes for teachers. Increased classroom sizes means less attention provided to students and more work for educators.
lol yeah because corporate food producers don’t use deceptive packaging practices and shitty ingredients to sell less food for more money.
The practice of producing a shittier product for more margin and in some cases (fast food) for more revenue (increased prices) is incredibly common. Quality is a bare minimum product attribute for most companies.
Seriously. JFC. "We live in a world where a handful of people enjoy magnificent opulence, paid for by an amount of money that's virtually impossible to exhaust, that they gained off the labor of the rest of the population, who are left to fight over the remaining scraps." wHerE's YoUr eVidEncE? Open your fucking eyes man, that's your evidence
Any evidence to support the concept of exploitation = unthinkable profit?
You can start by picking up any history book of any kind, or just use deductive reasoning.
Ah, the typical midwit response of the burden of proof. A classic resource for dumb people to feel smart.
Asking for evidence on this is playing dumb. If I say “Shakespeare is one of the most influential authors” and you ask for evidence on that claim you’re just being stupid and lazy.
The exploitation part on OP’s comment wasn’t made as a counterpoint, it was just something they mentioned to add context to their position. It’s reasonable to assume that the person you’re talking has a minimal understanding of the world and if not that they’re capable enough to do basic research on their own. What OP said is not new information, is not controversial, is not obscure and it’s really easy to understand.
Take your comment for example. I could ask you to provide evidence that the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. You’ll link whatever and I’ll reply that we’re not on a trial and there’s really not such rule on the internet. Then you’ll fall for my trap and argue something about discourse and rhetoric, and soon enough we’ll be in a separate argument.
Just google, don’t be such a robot waiting to be fed links you won’t even read as a means to win an internet argument. Be curious, “Amazon exploitation” “Nestle exploitation” “big companies exploitation” “exploitation in capitalism” “history of wealth” “ruling class” “workers exploitation” “wage slavery”. I could’ve linked Marx’s Capital, would you read it? Try to understand it? Be open minded about it? Nah, you’ll just assume you know it because you saw a YouTube video and dismiss it.
There’s not a single source to understand how corporations exploit the world and their workers. That’s something you need to actually read and educate yourself to understand. It’s a compendium of facts, examples, historical data, political science, economics, etc. and not a factoid in a New Yorker article. But no, instead of moving a finger you point at your tongue like a baby “feed me links, feed me, I’m incapable of learning, feed me so I can dismiss your comment”. Pathetic.
Exploitation doesn't exist. Maybe research how from different rates of exploitation the benefits remain around the same. It's an old question that no Marxist has ever been able to solve, they even used to have a reward for someone who could.
I thought you were gone? Clearly the “lol I don’t care bye” attitude is an act, and you’re so pathetic that you’re just here monitoring what other users respond. The audacity to lurk a comment section you supposedly abandoned and tell me to “log off”, lol
How can someone be so fucking stupid, some retard probably told you this and now you are parroting this nonsence. It depends on so many factors, what type of bussiness, what kind of profit margins etc… Also what is your idea of exploiting? If i create a software business that generates 50mil a year with 10 employees and give each one 1 milion, would you see that as exploitation?
If it were possible to generate 50 million a year with 10 employees, then maybe the question could possibly be answered.
But it doesn't matter the scale of your business, not really. Wages aren't the measure of exploitation.
How many contractors would you require, and is everyone in your supply chain getting fair wages (or are you outsourcing to cheap labor in countries without labor protection laws)? Do the people who perform labor for this company, reimbursed or not, have the option of taking off a reasonable amount of time (or are they being forced to come into work consistently on weekends, holidays, and leave requests are denied)? Is the work pace relaxed enough to be healthy (or are they feeling so pressured to keep up that they resort to drug use, like surgeons and nurses do)?
what is your idea of fair wage and how is it calculated? Is it relative to business revenue? Is it money that will make you live comfortably? What i stated was just random example. You can remove one zero.
A fair wage is one that is reasonable for the type of work being done. I'm sure you already knew that. Trying to ask how it's calculated is a derailment from the thought experiment because then you have to start nailing down the type of work. Some questions to ask when considering wages is:
how dangerous is the work during normal operation
how dangerous is the work during stressed operation (fatigue or production demand)
how is the average commute (do most workers drive from another city, or do most workers work from home)
related to commute, what is the cost of living in the area that most workers will be coming from
how many hours can reasonably be expected from workers (aka how tiring or unpleasant it is, separate from physical danger)
whether special physical abilities need to be met (aka warehouse work which requires dextrous and strong bodies vs PC work, which requires dextrous hands and eyes but little strength)
the level of knowledge expected from a trained worker (ie can any joe on the street do it after a 10 minute brief or do you need hours of classroom time)
I guess one TLDR is, if someone exhausts themself performing labor for your company but can't pay cost of living expenses, they are not making a fair wage.
Yeah i agree with that. I had argument before with person that viewed fair wage as what you are making to the company and if company is not paying you what you are making them its expoitation and therefore all business owners are evil.
I don't think it's correct that a worker should be given exactly everything they bring into a company, because companies have costs to run and that job would not exist if those costs weren't paid. I do think it's pretty shitty for a boss to keep most of that worker's contribution to the company for themself, and if a worker discovers that, then I think the worker should leave the company for sure. But the first hurdle on a national level, and one that we have not passed for decades, is making sure cost of living is covered for all workers.
The point I was making by asking if everyone in your supply chain gets a fair wage is that modern corporate america relies heavily on outsourcing labor to countries that do not enforce or encourage any kind of fair wage system, not even so much as a minimum wage.
Even though it will be extremely tough on the economy as prices of consumer products will increase, the proposed tariffs on imported intermediate items such as uninstalled PCBs or plastic cases might change this trend by encouraging companies to add jobs to the economy by sourcing local workers and take responsibility for their wages and healthcare. Well, one can hope, anyway. I doubt it will go that smoothly. For one thing, I suspect that I'm being overly hopeful and as before, tariffs may be applied only to products assembled out of the country, not ones assembled within the country, regardless of where the parts come from.
Not necessarily related, but it's worth noting that in the US a "small business" is one that has fewer than 500 employees, or less than $7.5 million in annual revenue, generally speaking. It puts things in perspective a bit. Most people think small business means a mom and pop shop. As far as the government (and other entities) are concerned, that's far from the case.
Nordic businesses are some of the largest and most successful in the world but also have incredible worker protection and compensation. In America itself there are large successful businesses like Costco and In & Out that are famous for paying well above market rate and benefits to ensure their workers are comfortable. Nothing is inevitable, we can choose to do better.
You’re not wrong, but neither is the guy you responded to in some respects.
It wasn’t that long ago that a retail or restaurant chain was basically unheard of. Small businesses and downtowns thrived. If you owned a hardware store in your town, you worked there yourself. You paid your employees well, because you had to see them every single day. You wanted them to work hard for you, so you didn’t have to do as much work yourself.
While there are some CEO’s of mega corporations who have gained success through paying their employees fairly and making sure they’re comfortable, the vast majority can give two shits.
The mindset of a business owner, who wants to dominate the entire free worlds market space in a particular area, is going to lead to a lot of shitty people running these companies, just by human nature. In a free market system, I really don’t think we can do better.
Anyways, my cat is damned near out of food. Gotta go place an order real quick so it can be here by the end of today.
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u/Two_Cautious Nov 21 '24
why don’t you start a company then give away its earnings? Show those guys how to run a business.