like I went to taco bell and they didn’t even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.
That’s the end result of a capitalist system once corporations have superseded governments in power. It will only get worse.
Yeah, we may be at checkmate. Unlike the end of the age of the robber barons, when we reformed capitalism in the late 1800s / early 1900s in the US… this time the capitalists have purchased enough politicians to stop reform completely and forever.
What’s funny is that this is entirely unsustainable. If they were in any way a real “capitalist” they would realize that the creeping authoritarianism they’re pushing destroys economies long-term. They’re laughing all the way to the bank right now because they’re not concerned with the future.
However, they should be, because this House of Cards can easily collapse with the right push. They literally can’t see past the profits at the end of the next quarter.
They literally can’t imagine that all of them choosing to undermine capitalist principles at the same time will result in capitalism failing completely. The only reason it even functioned as well as it did for so long was 1. regulation and 2. raping the third world for resources.
I mean, I’m a fucking leftist, and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills that things are so far gone that I’m actually arguing “if we’re going to do capitalism, we may as well do it in a way that it actually functions properly” as if that is a fucking fringe idea here.
The wheels are about to fly off this fuckin turkey.
Unfortunately their house of cards is built on a foundation of wealth…and not just fuck you money, but literal centuries of fuck you money.
The fortune 50 I worked for could literally stop doing all business and maintain their current spend for a century and still be solvent.
This isn’t unstable at all…it’s built to last for 100s of years…the current leaders to their grandkids will be safe.
To further that…the 1% have private armies and well stocked bunkers to ride out any social uprising. That’s the really scary stuff.
We are all fucked though. Enjoy the hunger games.
Yep! And their short-sighted greed is going to drive us right to the brink of annihilation. We’re staring down the barrel of environmental collapse and our leaders are generally either old enough they assume they’ll die before it gets “that bad,” and the others stupidly think money makes them immune to the destruction of the biosphere. Anyone under 50 right now is going to live through some incredibly dark times. We are all dogs in a car with the windows closed and the heater on in a Texas parking lot. Business as usual is going to get really ugly, really quickly, really soon.
That’s the thing, though, they don’t care about the future. They only want to maximize today’s profits.
Tomorrow is someone else’s problem.
I don’t know how to solve this problem without a massive peiod of hardship for everyone until the societal parasites finally feel the pain , but the cause is pretty obvious.
Thank you! I’ve been reading the responses and many of them hit the mark, but yours is the only one mentioning the sbortsightedness of it all. My brother and I have had many conversations about this subject and agree that part of it has to be some kind of collective brain misfire for the lack of a better phrase, that happens to organisms that get to the level we’re at, since everything that we build moves faster than evolution will allow our brains to adapt to, and while we see all of this as a mistake we’ve made or a small subset of us being greedy and upsetting the apple cart, I posit that it is just our species finally reaching a bottleneck that all species eventually face. We just artificially pushed the ceiling further and further upward so we didn’t see it. I think we are starting to see it though and it’s unlikely that we can do anything to stop from hitting it now.
Uh, didn’t the rich rather famously buy political influence back then as well?
Yes, but not at the same scale. They’ve become masters at it in the modern age.
I mean, hypothetically. That is the end result of the neoliberal, or late capitalism economic philosophy if applied on a model. But economic systems in practice are never the philosophy, and are only there in the first place to support the governance of a nation state. I spend half my time in Italy, for example, where the laws protect both the big international brands and the mom and pop shops.
My point is that we are the citizens that make up the government that designs the governance rules for our nation-state. Capitalism is not a government, or people, or the entire story when it comes to commerce and trade systems. We can shape it and use it, like any other framework.
Likewise, regardless of your economic system, greedy people will try to accumulate power, bend the rules to benefit themselves, and extend those benefits across borders if they can. Powerful egos will warp people and rules around them like gravity. All governance systems that strive to be just, collaborative and promote the quality of life of all its citizens have to both put strong rules in place to check the power-hungry, and constantly monitor and adapt to keep them in check.
“…we are the citizens that make up the government that designs the governance rules for our nation-state.”
No we’re not. We only have the illusion of control where we are allowed to vote on how to tinker with the outer edges of a system that is in reality controlled by 0.1% of the population.
So don’t shop there! They’ll do the bare minimum that still brings people in; the only remedy is to show them they’ll lose customers.
Wile this is something that can be generally applied to fast food restaurants, this is a problem with basically all industries, many of which exist in a space where their customers are stuck with them. EG a lot of people are stuck with walmart because they are often literally the only place around or the only place around people on the lower half of income can afford.
Same with those dollar stores. They come into poor areas and drive out the small local grocers, then you get a worse product and it’s your only choice.
For the masses Dollar General is not a dollar store. That place blows.
Dollar Tree is the closest large chain that still adheres to cheap as fuck goods but the quality is super shit as expected often with quantity reduced to essentially match regular goods when bought in bulk anyway.
Family Dollar next best with discounts but not great.
Dollar General is often more expensive than regular stores.
I’m in Canada. I’d love to be able to say I can totally ditch Maxi or Super C and stop supporting Loblaws and the Weston family, or Metro or Sobeys, but that would mean choosing either buying shittier produce from one of the large discount alternatives (Walmart, Super C, or similar) meaning I’d be encouraging another of those large super vertically integrated grocery chains that are driving up cost regardless, or accepting to pay 1.5x the price for all of my groceries.
Fresh produce I can get for not too expensive from farmer’s markets while in season, but for the rest, I have to choose between expensive local grocery, expensive grocery chain, or budget grocery chains that are owned by one of the expensive chains anyway.
My local grocery chain is a lot better quality than Walmart in some respects. But, the price tag is usually much steeper. Thank God for Aldi’s.
I like to support the little guy when possible but when it makes your monthly grocery bill $1,200 instead of $900, that’s a tough pill to swallow. That $300 wouldn’t necessarily break the bank for me but it’s a lot of money to a lot of people.
This is also a big reason that many Americans have poor nutrition. Processed junk food is cheaper than healthy food. Presenting better lifestyle or diet “choices” is an illusion when you have to have money to make those choices.
It’s past Thanksgiving and I don’t even celebrate it, but I’m so fucking thankful to live in a European suburb. There is a small general store just down the street, two bakeries, a butcher, a car mechanic, a tire service shop, a bike service shop, two schools, two playgrounds, and too many smaller businesses to count. All within ten minutes on foot. Also three stops for six bus lines, safe sidewalks, and safe bicycle paths, so basically /c/fuckcars’s wet dream.
More importantly, don’t work there. Giving your labor to these businesses is just as bad, if not worse as spending your money there.
These are both really easy sentiments to have. In the real world, we eat the food we can afford and work wherever will hire us.
This is why we need UBI stat if we want to reverse this trend. People everywhere are being backed into corners by the unaffordability of everything and their desperation is being exploited by places like Taco Bell, Dollar General, Walmart, Amazon and is effectively forcing people to panhandle and do crime. By having the leeway to look past how the heck you’re going to feed and take care of yourself and people close to you, it opens up opportunities that the middle class takes for granted and things that weren’t even a question to the upper and elite classes.
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Much as I love that song, it doesn’t really apply to the OP question, which is more about companies exploiting their customers rather than their workers.
That is what people miss. This is “the system”. It starts and ends with government and “we” chose this (I’m Canadian, we have similar issues but not as extreme, yet).
By continually voting in sociopathic narcissistic social climbers as both public and private sector policy makers (think of shareholders and corporate governance boards) we ensure the system is rigged for the top dogs.
The truth is the system could work in the average person’s favour very easily but it would mean limiting some personal freedoms; mostly of very, very rich people. It also would require the average person to get off the “everyone is exploiting me, so I need to do that to them first” treadmill.
Many people have never been on that treadmill (never had the chance or donate excess income or time to local food banks, etc).
The very, very rich don’t care. They simply maximize the profit in any situation. Put them in prison and they’ll give out legal advice for cigarettes and turn that into a burner phone they use to call their Cayman Islands broker.
It’s the upper/upper-middle people who will feel the pain as income is redistributed to poverty stricken people. And if we just impose ubi without fixing the “CEO problem” it will simply lead to inflation. Sucess of ubi programs is entirely due to it happening in a local market. Expand globally without fixing capitalism and you get inflation.
A socialist approach that still allows significant room for upwrd mobility (e.g. CEO can make up to 10x minimum wage, as a non-expert guess) with some type of employee representation on the board of large businesses (state imposed labour union) would probably do it.
Then make ubi contingent on minor public service with free daycare that you can use when performing said services (exception if you have more than 2 kids under 12, or are disabled in some way) say two days a week (networking, activity, build resume) would be a brainstorming idea to workshop.
And it seems that “our corporate masters” don’t understand that underpaid or laid off people don’t have the purchasing power to buy more stuff.
In their relentless pursuit of profits, they are killing off the ability of people to be customers.
I think what this comment is trying to say is that we’re headed towards an age that resembles what that song talks about: An age of unfettered capitalism, with a small number of corporation owning so much of the market that they can do what they want with no repercussions.
the song was about company towns where the laborers were paid in store credit instead of wages. you’d work, but never pay off debts, since it all went back to the companies who set the prices for everything you buy, and so they were able to keep you on a tight leash.
That’s how it feels like things are going now. a few companies own everything, pay our wages, and set our prices. we cannot get ahead.
oh no, OP had to ask for napkins. Consumers are treated shitty because you are shitty.
Yep.
Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They have to make money. And how much money do they have to earn? MORE.
To grow, they offer good food at a reasonable price. It seems cheaper to put the drink machine out for customers to make their own drinks choices… but then we need those extra pennies, so behind the counter it goes, so customers don’t get free refills… then how can we source cheaper stuff, beef beans etc. there will be c constant demand to squeeze every penny from the system… Bob is making too much; better fsck his schedule until he quits so we can hire Alice as she make only minimum wage.
I’m not sure where napkins fall in the chain but yes the quality likely will continue to spiral down.
There are very few companies who recognize that there is a quality floor they should not go below. Where they acknowledge that we can’t get any worse, but they have to raise prices. And depending on the managers this cycle will continue back and forth
Dumb question: did the laws change or was it a change in trends to maximize shareholder returns?
There was a cultural shift in the 1970s:
From the end of World War II until the late 1970s, a retain-and-reinvest approach to resource allocation prevailed at major U.S. corporations. They retained earnings and reinvested them in increasing their capabilities, first and foremost in the employees who helped make firms more competitive.
A shift in corporate mindset to maximize growth and profit. Go research Jack Welsh.
Can we stop with the myth that “corporations/board members have a fiduciary duty to share holders for maximum profit”
It’s not true and never has been! It’s just some bullshit that was said in the 80s that sounds good but has no basis in reality
I mean, they do though? I’m totally against that, but hear me out: if we infiltrated for instance, and tried to do the opposite approach of only screwing the shareholders while providing maximum value to workers and consumers, we wouldn’t last long enough to bring it to a vote at the corrupted board. If you don’t provide a solid plan on how you’re gonna fuck consumers in the coming quarter, they won’t even let you stay on as CEO. It’s literally not possible to do good in this system, you can either not participate and keep getting fucked as consumers/workers, or you can trade class and provide value for shareholders, there is no in between anymore. The only option that will change this without another Teddy, is revolution. Hopefully a peaceful one.
According to your statement there must be someone getting fucked. An trade where all parties are satisfied does not seem possible.
No?
As long as upper level management receives bonuses based on share price, and the board reenforces that…
The stock market is a voting machine not a weighing machine.
I simply disagree Management generally must keep increasing ARPU average revenue per user or else the market punishes the stock price
