Was just trying to explain to someone why everything is going to shit, specifically companies, and realized, I don’t fully get it either.
I’ve got the following explanation. The sentences marked with “???” are were I’m lost. Anyone mind telling me, if they’re correct and if so, why?
The past few years, central banks were giving out interest rates of 0% or even negative percentages. Regular banks would not quite pass this on, but you could still loan money and give it back later with no real interest payments.
This lead to lots of people investing in companies. As long as those companies paid out more money than those low interest rates, it was worthwhile. But at the same time, this meant companies didn’t have to be profitable, because they could pay out investors from money that other investors gave them???
This has stopped being the case, as central banks are hiking interest rates again, to combat inflation???
Literally money. More specifically, the financial need under a capitalist system for businesses to constantly grow and increase profits, and to focus on shareholder profits over making a good product. Most businesses on any sort of large scale today aren’t in it to do a good job at making whatever it is they make, they’re in it to make money. Their actual ‘business’ is just an incidental stop on the way to making more money.
You see this literally everywhere. Remember Odwalla? They made these great, super-thick bottled smoothy-like juices. Easily the healthiest thing you could find to drink in most of the places they were sold. Then Coca-Cola bought them out, changed the name to Naked Juice, and watered them all down. What we have now, as a result, is a pale imitation of what we once had.
Why? Because Odwalla was profitable, so it was profitable for Coca-cola to buy up a competitor for shelf space. But once they were bought up, there’s no incentive to deliver the same quality of product. They have no remaining competition, so they can release a shittier version and we’ll basically just suck it up because it’s still healthier than soda.
Our reward for worshiping currency is for everything ever made out of love of a craft or an art to be exploited and turned into a shittier version of itself.
The solution, to my reckoning, is to start making things you love because you love to make them and to refuse to sell out when they come knocking.
There’s only one thing I would alter in your statement. You said:
I would say, "and to focus on shareholder profits over
making a good productanything else, including life itself.It’s more profitable for a health insurance company to deny someone’s claim than to pay for their healthcare in the US. The insurance company won’t care if that ultimately leads to the person’s death - they have to answer to their shareholders.
It’s more profitable for Nestlé or Google to siphon water from countries in the global South than it is to have sustainable practices that don’t exacerbate climate change. So what if that means that millions of people will die in the years to come? That’s their problem for being poor.
We need to bring about the kind of change that has politicians recognize that there is more to human life than a dollar amount, and that poverty is not a moral failing on the part of the individual. But until that happens, poverty is akin to a death sentence.
Ok but what you are asking is to crash the market, that will lead to more harm than good. Any better less drastic idea?
If the market can’t survive without being detrimental to human life on a large scale, it deserves to crash.
Sounds exactly what an evil super villain would say.
Is it evil to prioritize human life over the state of the market?
Is it good to prioritize the economy over human lives?
I wouls just add that it’s all about making profits and increasing them year per year, but always focusing on the short term. To the CEOs, shareholders and other directives, it doesn’t matter if the company goes bankrupt 10 years from now, as long as they suck in all the profits they can now.
Even if the company is very successful, with a very good product(s) and they could just go into easy-ride mode continuing to provide those products. They only want to make as much money as quickly as possible and once they get their hands on the company, the enshitification for the sake of quick profits ensues.
This is why I feel bad about any company releasing their “best product ever”, because it’s all downhill from there. The only thing left for the shareholders to do is cut costs, worsening the product.
I mean, sure, that will solve some things. Not climate change, though. I think we can aim for a little higher, but when I say that perhaps seeking infinite growth in a finite planet might lead to an environmental catastrophe that’s somehow controversial.
Human greed is infinite.
That’s why Elon musk wants to go to Mars. The galaxy is virtually infinite.
Ohhhh Naked is watered down Odwalla. Can’t believe I never made that connection but it all makes sense now. Used to love Odwalla, kind of like Naked if I missed lunch or something
Odwala and Naked are different companies. Odwalla was bought by Coca Cola and then closed in 2020. I think full sail bought it and is reopening it. Naked was started in my hometown and eventually bought by Tropicana, still up and running.
It boils down to companies only trading on their value and not paying a dividend. Without a dividend, a company has to grow to provide value to its shareholders - with a dividend a shareholder would profit simply from the company making money.
See also: craft brewing
Almost every single time.
I have a couple of important exceptions but I dare not mention them by name lest they be bought and ruined tomorrow.
If they don’t get bought out, they’ll go the way of Anchor, I fear…
Anchor happened because Sapporo bought them.
Oh wow I had no idea.
Seems the employees may re-open as a co-op, thus making my above comment even more incorrect
What you describe is the basic structure in our economy that drives this, but the answer to why the enshittification has been accelerating, is technology. Advances in technology, particularly information technology, progressively enable corporations to be more efficient at all this, including more efficient at gaming the political system and manipulating users and customers.
If you look back nostalgically at some time decades ago when things were less bad, it’s because things were less efficient and humanity was more likely to sometimes get in the way of the machine that we’ve built having it’s way with us.
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Thank you for the nostalgia blast.
I do remember loving odwalla, specifically the carrot juice. But this was more than a decade ago, when I was still in high school.
Never remember them rebranding as naked juice. Although I do remember picking up naked juice on two separate occasions wondering how the taste would be. Two times was enough to learn the taste wasn’t worth the price.