this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] Kecessa 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Even if you pay your workers a good wage, the reason you are a billionaire or your company makes billions in profit is because you overcharge your clients which might not be in a good financial situation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As long as the profit margin isn't to right I think it is ethical for companies to make a slight profit

[–] Kecessa 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Slight profit I've got no issue with, but if you make a slight profit because the CEO pockets 100m a year then clearly there's a fucking issue, get rid of the CEO and make 100m more in profit that you can actually use to improve your product OR get rid of that CEO and make it cheaper for your customers to purchase your product and end up with the same profit.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Depends, the market for a high quality CEO is really competitive and they are at least for most companies still needed for the overall strategie and coherent direction. I understand your point tho in discrepancy between workers and CEO wage. A company usually doesn't do this just to make their CEO rich, they do it as shareholders because they think it is in their best interest

[–] Kecessa 2 points 1 month ago

Funny how you've got crown corporations making billions in profit with a CEO making under a million a year 🤷

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

the reason you are a billionaire or your company makes billions in profit is because you overcharge your clients

This is an assumption.

Costco's founder, who was also the CEO up until a few years ago, is a billionaire. And that's a company that is famous both for its very competitive prices on the customer side (insert infamous story about 'threatening' to kill someone if they raised the price of that hot dog), AND for how well it treats its workforce.

You can become a billionaire just by creating something that a large number of people find valuable, and continuing to own it as its value in others' eyes increases over time. Because that's what net worth fundamentally is--it's the price tag of how valuable everyone else thinks shares of that company are worth.

The implication that you HAVE to be ripping people off to acquire wealth (and when it comes to increasing one's wealth, 'billionaire' is just a distinction of scale) is just plain wrong, an ignorant talking point.

[–] Kecessa 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

It's not an assumption, the surplus generated to make someone a billionaire comes from the pockets of the customers, they don't make it appear out of nowhere. Just because something looks like a deal it doesn't mean that it is, if you're always paying 5$ for an orange, 3$ feels like a deal because you've gotten used to paying 5$, the truth is it's just not worth either price when you look at the actual cost to bring an orange from the tree to your house.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You are suggesting that $X in profit = $X of having "overcharged" the customer.

This is completely ridiculous on its face. No private entity will or should ever go to all the effort and time and resources to start a new business if there will never be any profit. Obviously.

And ironically, even if the government gets involved in providing X instead, without profit in mind, the bureaucracy is such that its 'no profit' price for X is invariably higher than a price a private entity can charge while profiting.

[–] Kecessa 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No I'm saying that if their profit didn't need to take a useless billionaire leech into consideration then prices could be lower.

That last part is complete bullshit as well and you would know it if you knew anything about crown corporations.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Have you ever considered people becoming billionaires of companies that haven't made a single cent of profit? Spotify never made any profit for example and is still valued at just 96 bn USD

[–] Kecessa 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Stock valuation has nothing to do with the current conversation but billionaires shouldn't exist at all whole homeless people exist, it's that simple.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think billionaires shouldn't exist necessarily, I do think homeless people shouldn't exist tho.

[–] Kecessa 2 points 1 month ago

One doesn't exist without the other, for someone to become a billionaire they need to take their money somewhere and that somewhere is in the pockets of people like you and me.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

if their profit didn't need to take a useless billionaire leech into consideration then prices could be lower.

You know the profit existed first, right?

That last part is complete bullshit as well and you would know it if you knew anything about crown corporations.

Yeah, they're totally not huge money pits, I was wayyy off, lol.

[–] Kecessa 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Profits are revenues minus spendings, remove the leech and you need less revenues to make the same profit. That's how companies manage to make their numbers look good by cutting staff, but they'll never cut upper management (the guys you're defending).

Ontario privatize hydro, rates go up

Hydro Quebec is a crown corporations and offers the best rates in North America

Saskatchewan has the best telecom rates in Canada through its crown corporation

Quebec and BC have the best car insurance rates because it's managed by crown corporations

The list goes on and on and on

The goal of Canada Post is to offer an essential service to all Canadians at the same low cost, you say private corporations would be better? Well there's no mail or packages being delivered to remote locations because they don't want to provide the service. So it's ok for you to let the private sector handle deliveries and let northern Canada end up being unable to receive mail? Hell, at the moment even in cities is hard to get stuff delivered and costs are much higher than they are with Canada Post, funny how it turns out it's the opposite of what you said that happens when the private sector is left to handle shit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Thats not how the net worth of a company works. You don't have to make massive profits for people to value your company highly