Comment on Something something far-left
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks agoPrice - Cost = Profit
Shareholders take their cut from the Profit side. Under the capitalistic owner-worker relationship, workers take their cut from the Cost portion. Customers want to minimize the price.
The shareholders and the workers are directly in conflict, and the shareholders are the only ones who get to appoint the board of directors. Shareholders want to maximize Profit, which means they want Price to be as high as the market can bear, and Cost (including workers wages) to be as low as the market can bear.
This directly, mathematically, incentivizes shareholders make things worse for workers and customers, and then roll those profits into the next business venture. Clever lawyers can justify their Cost by saving bigger Costs, as can lobbyists. Heck, if you’re clever enough you can get legislation drafted to specifically target your competitors. Every antitrust law just invents a new fun little puzzle for clever lawyers.
The difference between a government and a company, is that I can vote out the greedy people in my government. I can’t vote out greedy shareholders. Both will eventually become corrupt, but only one is built with countermeasures.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
you do it by boycotting them
then make better laws
No? Have you looked at the news in the last few months??? You clearly cant
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
No, you don’t. “Vote with your dollars” does not count. So long as some people have more money than others, that gives some people more vote.
Then better lawyers, repeat ad infinitum. There’s no such thing as a perfect law, there’s always some loopholes. If you can’t lobby your way around it, that is.
Certainly. But it’s even worse when it comes to private companies. As weak as the countermeasures baked into government are, they’re ironclad compared to the countermeasures in capitalism.
No system is perfect. The goal is to find one that’s least bad.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
its a weighted vote based on how much money you are willing to spend. If you want a larger impact orginize a boycott
Then if they get better lawyers you make better law. There are several examples of an eternal cat and mouse chase in the modern world
I want to own my own things and I want to own whatever factories I spent money constructing. My personal property. And to stop me from abusing my workers or whatever there can be laws that stop me
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Correct, which means capitalists with orders of magnitude more money has more influence than a boycott. A company with lots of money can weather a boycott longer than people stay committed. A company with massive market share cannot be effectively boycotted. Look at Nestle, constantly being boycotted but they’re rich enough and diversified enough to ignore the boycotts. This isn’t a lack of conviction of the consumer, it’s a fundamental property of the system.
You keep trying to put bandaids on a gushing wound. We’ve shown beyond any doubt that the bandaids are incapable of keeping up.
I want my own things and don’t want anyone to siphon enough money from the value created by others to afford constructing a factory. No one earns that much money. Those fortunes come from being a parasite.