The longer I'm alive, the more I feel that people make things complicated to feel important.
Especially when it comes to business. I just got off of a meeting with a company that focuses on “monetizing the user experience journey” and the amount of jargon that was used just left me yearning to go tend a field instead.
The entire concept of capitalism rests on selling something for more than it’s worth. This includes your own time and physical labor.
The problem is that we all got indoctrinated to believe that capitalism is a meritocracy, instead of a snake oil selling competition.
We’re instead to believe a high paycheck means you are high in importance. But in reality, since this is capitalism, it just means your high paycheck is now a great reason to waste people’s time to feel important. Selling your time as valuable while actually wasting it as much as possible for profit.
Which is now the only thing that trickles down. Well paid, but ultimate skilless idiots all making decisions to massively waste their time and everyone else’s so they can feel their paycheck is earned.
People who want to get shit done, don’t get these kinds of jobs simple because they’re too good at finishing them. Making all the other idiots they work with look like idiots. So actual skills are seen as a detriment to holding these positions as they quickly reveal how much time is being wasted by every single Csuite whose paycheck is bigger than their abilities. (Which is from my experience damn near all of them).
Worked with Apple, Google, Sony, and more. All have the same problem at the top: idiots delegating impossible promises to people that have actual skills then making them take the fall when it inevitably goes wrong.
I’m a socialist so no big fan of capitalism. That said, I don’t think capitalism is just about selling things for more than they’re worth.
We add value through our labor. Think of a log, it has some value as raw material. A worker might cut it into planks, and another might make a table out of it. It’s now worth more than when it started. The value came from our labor, and we should be compensated for it.
The issue with capitalism is that the few benefit off the work of many. Based on the rest of your comment I think we’re pretty much in agreement, but just want to highlight that as a worker-owner (vs robber baron) there’s nothing wrong with charging for what you’re worth.
The entire concept of capitalism rests on selling something for more than it’s worth
To an extent yes, but mostly no.
In a free market prices are naturally driven down to the cost of production, to where you’re barely able to keep the doors open. The only way capitalism reaches the state that you’re describing is with government regulation and overreach.
Not true at all. In a free market competition drives the creation of better and more profitable products. Companies that can’t improve fail.
The way we reach the end state of capitalism we’re now in is exclusively and only through the removal of fair and equal trade. Deregulation is how Capitalism got this bad. What youre saying is nothing but provenly false propaganda.
It’s only without regulations can the formation of monopolies and oligopolies even happen where there is no competition and both price and quality are captured and frozen. Companies in these positions then artificially leech from the societies they’re in through corruption to survive instead of collapsing to dust naturally.
That’s 100% where the US is now. In an unregulated monopolistic billionaire playground where the best performing companies in the stock market haven’t made anything of value in over a decade, and have done nothing but raise prices on worsening products and leech value from the society theyre in in place of giving anything of value back.
In a free market competition drives the creation of better and more profitable products.
Yeah… And then through competition they’re all driven down to a price that’s near production
It’s only without regulations can the formation of monopolies and oligopolies even happen
You don’t seem to understand the difference between laws that prevent the creation of anti-competitive practice and regulation that increases the cost of product and decreases competitiveness.
The first is good. The other two are what’s resulting in your “late stage capitalism”.
then through competition they’re all driven down to a price that’s near production.
The creation of “better” products means improved production methods as well. There’s an incentive to improve processes to be more efficient if it means you can earn more profit than someone else and stay in business longer. That’s how we’ve gone from hand copying books to printing presses to free digital libraries. Better doesn’t just mean making better books, it also means better methods in making books.
you don’t seem to understand the difference between laws that prevent the creation of anti-competitive practice and regulation that increases the cost of product and decreases competitiveness.
You don’t seem to understand that both of those things are essentially the same. Regulations are just interpretations of existing laws. Without laws, there are no regulations. That’s why breaking them has legal consequences, and 3rd party agencies that enforce them.
Also, you don’t seem to understand how regulations clearly protect the cost of production at a sustainable price above exploitation within that market. I find it fascinating that on one hand you say competition drives prices to near production levels, but on the other complain that regulations increase the cost of product. Do you not see the very obvious mechanism that regulations have in making sure competition is sustainable by keeping market costs fair and safe above exploitative practices? You literally described both cause and effect as problems then complained as if they don’t clearly relate.
You don’t seem to understand that both of those things are essentially the same.
No, they’re not… one is law about how you make your product, the other is law about not harming your competitors. While they may share a name, “regulation”, it’s night and day difference. You seem to be looking at a chocolate cake and a cinnamon roll and then are saying “They’re both deserts, they’re essentially the same thing”.
Do you not see the very obvious mechanism that regulations have in making sure competition is sustainable by keeping market costs fair and safe above exploitative practices?
It sounds like you’re trying to describe price floors or something, but doing it in a confusing way that attempts to lead to some kind of gotcha? But I’ve already said I’m okay with regulation against anti-competitive practices, so I don’t really know where you’re going.
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