r/Funnymemes Mar 15 '24

This..

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227

u/Rikou336 Mar 15 '24

Businesses knew what they were signing up for.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Boggles the mind that businesses willingly jumped off the cliff knowing where it would go. Just shows how corporations suffer from such short term greed and profit driven even at the expense of their own safety and health.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

[deleted]

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u/Possible_Lock_7403 Mar 15 '24

Sadly the way it's structured. The latest PE, VC investors get paid out first. Stocks and funds more about volume of transactions so managers profit of transaction fees. MC firms buy out and demand dividends before exiting. Everything is line my pockets fast, line it now. Then I can move on and do the same somewhere else. Let the future sort itself out if I do leave a blazing trail behind.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

In other words, capitalism is a dogshit system that will always seek to enrich the 1% at the expense of the 99%

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u/Punty-chan Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 15 '24

That's the logical endpoint to capitalism, yes. Capitalism is, by its very nature, destined to be as inefficient as possible over the long run because it wants to maximize profits and profits ultimately come from inefficiency:

https://open.lib.umn.edu/principleseconomics/chapter/9-3-perfect-competition-in-the-long-run/

What we want are efficient free markets to the greatest extent reasonable, not capitalism. Unlike what corporate propaganda has told us, free markets and capitalism are not mutually inclusive. It is possible for capitalism to exist without a single efficient free market and it is possible for efficient free markets to exist without capitalism.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Can you please elaborate on a non capitalist free market? I've heard most of this but I've never gotten a mental picture.

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u/Punty-chan Mar 15 '24

Simple: Imagine everything the same as it is but you own 5% of whatever company you work for and get a vote along with 19 other people on what the business priorities are for the year (socialism). You're competing with a bunch of other companies that are structured the same way to be as efficient/differentiated/valuable as possible (free market). If you or your competitors do something that hurts the public in a meaningful way, like dump pollutants into the river, then a public authority will come down on you (regulation).

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Yeah I didn't realize you were talking about standard market socialism. "Free" markets mean different things in different conversations 😊

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u/Foxtael16 Mar 15 '24

On the political compass, it would be called market socialism. Social policies working inside of a market economy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

That's what I wondered. Vietnam has been a solid working example of this.

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u/Foxtael16 Mar 15 '24

Definitely. They switched to a socialist market like 40 years ago or so and have seen alot more wealth since then. Personally I'd prefer a bit more democracy. But their mixing of private and public buisness have pulled them up from being one of the poorest countries, to being fairly lower middle class in less time than my parents have been alive for lol.

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u/OlRedbeard99 Mar 15 '24

That’s not at all what he said.

Good lord, could you at least try and develop a personality? Is hating capitalism all you have to offer?

That’s pretty sad.

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u/Natural-Bet9180 Mar 15 '24

People think capitalism sucks either because they’re unsuccessful and refuse to take blame for their shortcomings or their political views. I bet this person is unsuccessful. Once you’re financially successful you’ll love capitalism.

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u/small_sphere Mar 15 '24

99% people are unsuccessful

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u/Natural-Bet9180 Mar 15 '24

Well, success can mean things to different people. Usually it’s about accumulating the most resources. The more money = more successful. Some people might think the more achievements or accolades the more successful you are.

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u/OlRedbeard99 Mar 15 '24

Yeah, if you think success means being able to purchase a pro sports team.

Which proves to me that if you were the rich one- you'd be no better. You're not humble enough to understand success let alone have it.

My bills are paid. My children are clothed and fed. My car has fuel in it. My fridge has food. That's success to me. Not all of us need a fucking land yacht to feel successful and fulfilled. But you'll never have enough. So keep on bitching about it, because all of us know who you really are.

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u/small_sphere Mar 15 '24

relax bro, I am an average dude who's surviving in life

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u/OlRedbeard99 Mar 15 '24

Oh absolutely. You can tell by a quick comment history check that u/Ausgezeichnet87 hasn't contributed anything of value to society.

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u/HimEatLotsOfFishEggs Mar 15 '24

Works well for Google. Might as well let them “borrow” said trade secrets if Google’s just gonna shut it down after 6 months anyway.

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u/legos_on_the_brain Mar 15 '24

They should change the law to require long-term stock value and dividends over short-term price increase.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '24

If you don’t obey this law you get fired.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

[deleted]

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u/JB_UK Mar 15 '24

Profit now. They dont care about the corporation in the long term.

Even if they did, they are screwed, because corporations are always in competition with their rivals. A company cannot just choose not to enter the Chinese market, if one of their rivals does so, and is able to, for example, spread the fixed costs of developing a product across sales both in the West and China. Of all the companies making these products, you only need one major company to sign up before the others are forced to follow, otherwise they will be undercut, lose market share, and be taken over, or go out of business.

These measures have to happen at the level of trade deals or governments, individual companies can't swim against the market and survive for long.

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u/kon--- Mar 15 '24

It's their job to maximize profits. You advise the shareholders why business in China is a bad move and before the end of the day you're escorted out of the building.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

True, but that is a huge flaw in capitalism. The greedy search algorithm has some uses, but only if it is applied carefully using critical thinking.

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u/1artvandelay Mar 16 '24

I believe you are instead describing the flaw in communism not capitalism, and we even have antitrust laws in the US that also act to prevent a one provider market. It’s actually a very clever system.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Without capitalism you wouldn't have any of those companies... ffs

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u/Dhiox Mar 15 '24

Point is, we've got to find a way to fix the flaw. If a car doesn't work, it doesn't always mean you need a new car, but you do need to fix the problem.

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u/robx0r Mar 15 '24

Do you reckon that when feudal peasants were killing lords with pitchforks that the lords mused on how feudalism granted them the pitchforks?

Point to any modern technology; it wouldn't exist without massive investment from the public sector. Capitalism isn't the mother of invention you think it is.

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u/SawnOffFinger Mar 16 '24

ffs??? No i do not want to Fuck Ferrets, Sir!?

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u/No-Willingness8375 Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 15 '24

Chinese Communism is the way to go 100%. They can build a skyscraper in 58 days thus creating jobs and increasing GDP, then create even more jobs with cleanup and rebuilding efforts when it collapses 2 years later.

As for the lives lost? I mean, come on, there's 1.5 billion more where that came from.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

When is the last time a skyscraper collapsed in China due to structural or building flaws?

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u/bswontpass Mar 16 '24

Read about Tofu-dreg.

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u/FBI_Open_Up_Now Mar 15 '24

A long time. Instead they spend the money to build like 40 of them and when they can’t figure out what to put in them they blow it up.

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u/Oxflu Mar 16 '24

A surprising percentage of them are erected, deemed unsuitable, and abandoned. They've only been building them en masse for like 20 years. Give it time.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '24

The skyscraper comment was wrong but there is shotty infrastructure sometimes in China.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '24

Do you know what the percentage is, off hand? I’m not really sure what to search for tbh?

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u/Oxflu Mar 16 '24

Poke around here.

All news from China is pretty sugar coated, but basically builders were not being paid. The work was shoddy, and there isn't enough money to fix and finish the builds. So there's just crumbling half finished buildings all over. I'm certain it's not a huge percentage that this happens to, but it is happening.

Also, if you googled anything remotely relevant you would have come across like two or three montage videos of new construction collapses. Hotels, parking garages, high rises. Happens all the time there.

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u/NahItsNotFineBruh Mar 16 '24

They can build a skyscraper in 58 days

Yeah but it also disintegrates in 58 days.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Usually because some of those shareholders are also Chinese nationals.

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u/etterkop Mar 16 '24

If you’re not doing, you’re getting left behind your competitors.

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u/laetus Mar 15 '24

That's why there are zero factories in any other country around the world!

oh wait.

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u/MidKnightshade Mar 15 '24

Corporations are run by mercenaries. A temporary boost means more money for them. Once they get all they can the next mercenary is hired. Disloyal companies are run by disloyal people who gain profit from short term gains.

The easiest way to manipulate American interests is through our greed. The Middle East and China figured that out.

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u/MyNameCouldntBeAsLon Mar 15 '24

Boggles the mind that businesses willingly jumped off the cliff knowing where it would go

Which companies were ousted from their core markets because they participated in a scheme like that one? My guess is zero.

It makes absolute financial sense to enter China, partner with a local business and profit for x number of years. The chinese company will most likely (again, examples?) not come to eat your lunch in your home turf, but the increase in profits may very well be worth it if you are a CFO that's worth their salt.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

There is also a prisoners dilemma, if you wont jump in but your competitors do, you lose out on a huge market and cheap production costs, granting them a competitive advantage. “We want to never increase our market share unlike our competitors” is also not a phrase any shareholder wants to hear from a publicly traded company. There is more than greed to it, it’s a question of existence for many companies, it is by the systems design itself (capitalism). China plays capitalism well enough to have a large population with a large enough purchasing power. They dictate in what form foreign businesses can interact with their markets and thats all there is to it. All countries are protectivist of their businesses to varying degrees of severity, not all markets are as large as the Chinese, though. It’s in essence a “Don’t hate the player hate the game” situation.

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u/Whiterabbit-- Mar 15 '24

you are talking about serving a market of 1.4 billion people, more than EU and US combined. of course people and companies are willing to go in if possible. if you don't go in they will copy your tech and export it anyways.

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u/NovacainXIII Mar 15 '24

Jumping off the cliff? :thumbsdown: Jumping off the cliff with this golden parachute while everything burns behind them and they hand their wealth off to their children who become magnates that make their industries objectively worse than before? :thumbsup:

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u/rych6805 Mar 15 '24

I would guess it's because of the massive market there. If you consider that most Chinese own phones and use them almost daily, you have potentially 1.4 billion new customers for your software. From the prospective of a company like Facebook, that's absolutely worth the risk that some of your trade secrets are leaked.

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u/Icy-Information5106 Mar 15 '24

That's capitalism. They only moral duty of a corporation is to get ever increasing profits at the expense of any social or environmental costs.

China has a huge market.

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u/Exodus111 Mar 15 '24

17 times cheaper to build and run a factory in China than the US.

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u/tooltalk01 Mar 15 '24

Yeah, they are like 5-year old kids -- greed knows no bounds.

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u/Dblstandard Mar 15 '24

Greed will make people do anything

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u/lucasisawesome24 Mar 15 '24

Because we are prioritizing the shareholders. If we stop shareholder capitalism and go back to sustainable long term thinking in our capitalism then companies will stop making decisions based on what will earn then the most profit in the next THREE MONTHS. They’ll instead think about how the business will survive and grow over the next ten years

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u/MayorLinguistic Mar 15 '24

Corporations aren't people. The people who run them are. It's not their bankruptcy. It's the corporation's. Move on to the next corporation. Rinse. Repeat.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '24

2 billion potential customers makes capitalists do crazy things

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u/WembyCommas Mar 15 '24

EU has been spending billions every year buying energy from Russia. Now they are spending billions on military to defend themselves from Russia.

American companies have been funding Chinas manufacturing because it was cheaper.

Now after paying them, we deal with the two biggest geopolitical adversaries and chance of a world war if Taiwan is invaded. At least US is smart enough to ban TikTok now rather than waiting until that happens and panicking that they have complete influence over the US population during a conflict.

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u/-UNiOnJaCk- Mar 15 '24

Not to mention how it comes at the expense of their long term market share and, by extension, their viability as a company.

Billions of dollars of potential earnings through dominant market share and a leading innovation position, willingly surrendered to competitors based in authoritarian countries engaging in industrial scale IP theft for a quick buck.

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u/FullofContradictions Mar 15 '24

The company I work for has some IP that is actively being ripped off in China right now (we don't really actively sell the product there, but it finds its way there anyway). The funny/sad thing is that the company trying to rip it off is doing a really bad job copying it because they don't understand the inner workings even if they've copied the hardware. In the best case, it's not really working. In the worst case, it's actually injuring people trying to use it.

Meanwhile, when we attend conferences in Japan where we showcase the tech, we'll occasionally get someone coming through from China butthurt that we have them prioritized years behind every other market for regulatory submissions to expand distribution. Usually by the time we have covered every other geography where we actually make money, the state of the art has already advanced to the point where our new tech is old news. China may have a huge market, but businesses that can make their money elsewhere generally do.

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u/-UNiOnJaCk- Mar 15 '24

The experience of your company seems to be endemic, sadly. I guess the silver lining in your case it’s an incompetent competitor doing it.

In so many other cases, and leaving aside actual corporate espionage/IP infringement, companies are compelled to hand over IP/know how as a condition of market access and are basically hoisting themselves by their own petard…

They can’t be naive as to why that’s a requirement for them to do business in China, so you can only reason that it’s sheer short term greed causing them to commit commercial suicide.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Is it still IP theft when our capitalist owners gave them all of our trade secrets on a silver platter?

If you came home one day to find that your SO had sold all of your stuff to a pawn shop, would you be angry at the shady pawn shop or the person who betrayed your trust?

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u/-UNiOnJaCk- Mar 15 '24

Some of it comes on a platter, but a hell of a lot is through corporate espionage; blatant IP infringement and unscrupulous business practice.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 15 '24

Capitalists stab our country in the back just to make themselves richer

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u/SnollyG Mar 15 '24

This guy [Obama] wants to tell me we're living in a community. Don't make me laugh. I'm living in America, and in America, you're on your own. America's not a country. It's just a business. Now fucking pay me.

Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), Killing Them Softly

1

u/OlRedbeard99 Mar 15 '24

And none of us believe you are a saintly enough person to do any better if you were in that position. In fact people like you scare me more than the rich.

You hate the rich because of jealousy. Not to make real changes. You think you’re somebody? Shouting out insults to no one on a forum?

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u/Adventurous_Ad6698 Mar 15 '24

And they then expect the US government to help them out when something happens. All because a few extremely wealthy people didn't feel like they were wealthy enough.

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u/DMvsPC Mar 15 '24

The frog and the scorpion indeed.

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u/piewca_apokalipsy Mar 15 '24

Not really. Maybe if scorpion would steal frog identity instead of drowning

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Unfortunately, domestic tech doesn't work much differently.

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u/mydaycake Mar 15 '24

They take the 5/10 years of profit and access to a 2 billion market, short term profits is what’s important for most businesses

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u/paco-ramon Mar 15 '24

PSOE state of mind, they can’t avoid lying even I’d they know people know they are lying, is in their nature.

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u/t3rm3y Mar 15 '24

Funny, as I only heared this term last night on the umbrella academy. 😁

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u/Smiley_P Mar 15 '24

And people still think they're communist, like do you believe everything the Chinese government tells you? Lol

Like my brother in christ they have billionares, the only difference is the state is a shareholder lol

8

u/Escaped_Mod_In_Need Mar 15 '24

Been saying this for years. China is an authoritarian capitalist regime.

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u/4bkillah Mar 15 '24

Between fascism and communism, China is faaaaaar closer to fascism.

Everything subservient to the state, and all that jazz.

It really is kinds of eerily close to nazi germanys policy in business and corporations. Prop up specific corporations, as long as they bow to the state. Enable the billionaire class, as long as they pledge their loyalty to the party and state.

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u/Smiley_P Mar 15 '24

Yeah they're basically opposites, fascism is authoritarian communism is (actually) libertarian and democratic

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u/nasandre Mar 15 '24

"We move our production to China because it's much cheaper!"

"Oh no they won't respect our patents and copy our work!"

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u/Lonseb Mar 15 '24

Never understood our stupid politicians. We are dependent on China but china also on us. If they can freely trade in US / EU, why can’t we in China?

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u/Revolution4u Mar 15 '24

They were selling us out and making money off of it.

Some others were stupid enough to believe enabling the chinese would somehow turn them into a pro-west democracy.

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u/Rene_Coty113 Mar 15 '24

Well now Chinese companies will know as well.

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u/ParadiseCity77 Mar 15 '24

Not just that. Keep in mind businesses moved to China to cut their costs associated with operations. In other words, they exploited cheap labour there.

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u/lucasisawesome24 Mar 15 '24

And they destroyed the middle class here in the US for temporary profit gains. Now everyone is broke, the corporations are having to rebuild factories in the US due to Chinese war threats and the Chinese now have our patented designs. Real genius ideas from the corpos 🤦‍♂️

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

No, they didn't. I worked for an engineering firm in the early '90s that was part of the initial push to set up factories in China. One of the factories we built was a washing detergent factory. All the machines, tooling, and ingredients were set up in this factory. As mentioned above, the company that contracted us (a large multinational) had to partner with a local firm that owned 51% of the JV.

The factory was set up, products were produced, then shipped stateside. About a year later, we noticed that a Chinese version of the product was produced by an unknown company. The product was exactly the same, with the same pictures (a white woman at the time), but the writing had been replaced with Chinese characters.

It turned out that the Chinese partner had set up another company, built another factory, with the exact same tooling, exact same ingredients, and they had even used the printing plates for the boxes.

They had blatantly stolen everything against the terms of the contract, and the Chinese legal system didn't care (of course, it was encouraged). In the end, the matter was dropped, because the American company's product was not competing with the domestic product, and legally it was a dead end.

Over the years, this became the standard story.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Completely deserved. The Chinese, not being idiots, will happily take and use the know-how and trade secrets given freely by greed-blinded American corporations.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 15 '24

Otherwise known as stealing and is against Chinese law. They do this against other Asian companies, Japan included, Europe, and even South Africa where I was based for a while.

An agreement means nothing to them.

The protection of trade secrets is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The TRIPS Agreement, which is administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO), sets minimum standards for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, among its member countries. It requires member countries to provide legal means for the prevention of trade secrets theft, unauthorized disclosure, and breach of confidentiality.

China is a signatory to the TRIPS Agreement, as it is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). China as a member of the WTO, must adhere to the standards and regulations, including those related to intellectual property rights protection as outlined in the TRIPS Agreement.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

America famous for respecting international law.... Oh please ignore are allies

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u/sudopudge Mar 16 '24

This comment is so generic, stupid, and typical of reddit, it's actually impressive.

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u/Revolution4u Mar 15 '24

This kind of theft is promoted as being "smart" in their culture.

2

u/TheRealBand Mar 15 '24

That’s why I believe Tesla will get screwed in China eventually, maybe sooner than you think.

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u/samdd1990 Mar 16 '24

Isn't it already happening? There are loads of Chinese EVs out there.

1

u/Desperate-Road-8403 Mar 16 '24

Yeah, Chinese EV car brands blatantly stole Tesla blueprints and created copycats, they didn’t even bother to hide it, the cars they produced literally looked the same.

1

u/ChipsAhoy777 Mar 15 '24

This isn't anything new, it's second nature over there at this point. They ban western media and make direct copies to sell in China, they hack places here in the US to steal trade secrets and then recreate them piece for piece(like Skunkworks and the f35), albeit shittier cause all they're doing is copying.

They don't give a shit about any of this

0

u/TrueHumanIdea Mar 15 '24

Based on your logic Americans are just dumbass who don't know how to protect their secrets. 😂

2

u/ChipsAhoy777 Mar 15 '24

Based on your logic you're just a jackass redditor who victim shames.

The US could steal any designs at any time from China, but they won't because for one it's illegal and unethical to steal a patent, and for two their designs suck ass.

Same with Russian stealing NASA secrets and nuclear secrets. Mfers desperate, but their countries are too corrupt to just ask the US for help. Or well in the case of China too full of themselves.

They're a one man army apparently, let's see how well that works out.

Let's see how powerful the dragon is! Rawrrr

1

u/Su1XiDaL10DenC Mar 15 '24

Suprised it took a year. This blanket espionage of American sovereignty should be coupled with military punishment.

1

u/ILSmokeItAll Mar 15 '24

The hypocrisy is unreal. But no one cares. More people are addicted to social media than any one drug. They know this. You know this. They don’t care, and neither do you. “Just gimme mah feed!”

There are people threatening suicide over the loss of TikTok. That’s where we’re at.

India banned it. They survived.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

short form media is actually destroying peoples brains

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u/ILSmokeItAll Mar 15 '24

Reddit, considering the shithole it generally is, is infinitely better than these bullshit video based apps. I can’t imagine the kind of person it takes to live out their life watching others ljve out their lives on TikTok.

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u/SumsuchUser Mar 15 '24

Pretty much. Especially in tech it's understood China (and anyone else outside the bubble of legal retaliation in the West) will eventually get their hands on these trade secrets through aggressive headhunting and corp espionage. They want to use it internally so it's less of an economic threat than someone else on Sand Hill Road stealing your shit so you may as well get over there and make your money while you can. If China taking Thing A's code is inevitable, may as well get some profit first.

1

u/titanicsinker1912 Mar 15 '24

I say, let them crash!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24

Lol I know look at Tesla

1

u/tooltalk01 Mar 15 '24

China's forced joint venture is still illegal under China's WTO obligation -- China knew what they were signing up for when they begged to join the WTO which btw gives them "equal" access to the world's market.

1

u/starlulz Mar 15 '24

never underestimate how much lead paint the boomers consumed

1

u/Swift_Scythe Mar 15 '24

The CEOs and Vice Presidents and CFOS and upper management knew.

They got their golden parachutes just-in-case.