In the word of Jim Stephanie Stirling, “They don’t just want a lot of money. They want all the money.”
Comment on You Used To Be Cool. Pfft, Sell Out
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 8 hours ago
I mean, I get it, servers cost money, traffic costs money.
But there’s a little gray zone between going broke and sucking out every cent possible. Isn’t making enough money enough?
tabris@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 7 hours ago
See, this is why I would suggest to switch to the post-scarsity model of Star Trek. Then they can have all the money, but it’s completely worthless.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
When you’re a Trillion Dollar company, you don’t need MORE money. You make enough to make everything run without additional income.
But obviously a trillion dollars is still not enough. We need more.
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Shareholders need ever increasing value or they will sell their shares. In the US at least, it is illegal to not provide shareholders with value. The only way to reliably get value is to fuck over your customers at every turn and fire half of your employees every few years
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 7 hours ago
That’s the reason we should get rid of publicly traded companies.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
Then you would still have private equity firms fucking everyone over, but with even less regulatory oversight.
I think publicly traded companies should be nationalized under an independent and thoroughly-audited oversight body accountable to the taxpayers, and any profits generated should be distributed to fund public works, social services, welfare benefits, and civil sector orgs.
And the idea of infinite growth needs to be abandoned entirely. These major internet companies need to be viewed as a public utility, and their goal should be to provide stable, reliable, quality services rather than churn an endless profit. This can only be done after nationalizing them though.
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 7 hours ago
One step after another, and don’t look down.