Yep. And boot-lickers of that kind of business ethics will always say “Well that’s capitalism, baby!”
But it’s really not. Capitalism as an economic theory IS those small businesses that are being driven under. It’s human beings making a living from their own labour." Even if that human being is the person in charge and doesn’t set foot on the sales floor (for example), it’s still a human being at the helm.
My goto example for some reason is always furniture, I don’t know why. But someone making bespoke wooden furniture out of his garage because he enjoys it and other people want to purchase it. That’s capitalism.
If that same guy’s product gets so big that he starts a company, get’s a factory, and now has employees making the furniture for him, it’s still capitalism because he built that company with his own sweat and he deserves to reap the benefits of such.
What’s missing from what the bootlckers call capitalism is the human element.
When the human equation is taken away and everything is at the whim of a stock price, it’s not capitalism anymore, it’s called a Corporatocracy. Humans themselves become just another metric on a spreadsheet called “labour”. Something to be accounted for, controlled and minimized for the sake of the share price. Those shares aren’t owned by humans either (for the most part), they’re owned by other corporations and hedge-funds. Humans are so far removed from modern corporatocracy that there’s no room (or even understanding of) empathy.
Angrydeuce@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Dude, as someone that worked, briefly, in retail at a corporate level, the agreements between the major players like Coke and Pepsi and the big boxes are like some Van Halen “no brown M&Ms” level shit on both sides of the equation.
I have seen emails describing what happens when a coke representative walks into one of those stores and finds that their product is not merchandised within X feet of X aisle or is out of stock on the shelf and there are serious financial sanctions for that shit. Something is minor as a customer setting a 12 pack of 7-Up on top of the stack of Sprite has gotten escalated to levels that would be ludicrous to a layman.
Everything, every single shelf or peghook or rack in that store, has a dollar amount attached to it, and the sums of money being exchanged over whether your product is placed at eye level or down on the bottom shelf is unreal.
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
At least the brown m&ms we’re to see if people read the contract. That’s just asinine