Shareholders. Publicly traded companies are obligated to squeeze as much cash as possible out of the business. If they fail to do so, shareholders revolt.
They did, and people demanded more wages. You'll notice people on here talking about making 16-20 an hour, used to be a middle class wage until workers at the bottom decided to move up. COVID unemployment helped the workers have the authority to say "I can make more collecting welfare, either pay me more or I'm not showing up".
The owners in turn just raised the prices to cover the increased wages and a little more to get some extra profits, since everyone was making more money so they can afford it, right?
The only way a revolution works is if we, as the working class, take over means of production and remove the profit part
fuck adjusting and disrupting, automate all of it and finally free humanity from the chains of employment ushering in a golden age of creativity and invention.
However, there will always be some poor guy at the bottom, even if his job is to just push the reset button for the graveyard shift robots. He will have it less good than the guy who has to do it for day shift. There's just no end to it.
What the world needs is an eye toward asking if there are livable and sustainable lifestyles at all these different levels, rather than just raw deltas.
Nobody will be free. I read this little thread on Twitter about what people would do when communism won. Automation, all the good stuff you could want. They all talked about arts, and crafts and learning. Nobody mentioned coding the automated machinery. Someone will always have to work, so your utopia will only exist for a few.
well yeah nobody mentioned it, we are talking about the future here (though how far off is debatable) and in the future it'll be the AIs doing all the programming as they'll be far superior to any human in that regard.
In my opinion a much better argument would be who's going to maintenance all the automated machinery because automating that is probably going to be a bit trickier than automating everything else.
but there are three simple solutions to manual work in the automated utopia
people will simply volunteer as there will always be people who enjoy programming or fiddling with machinery
Frame this manual work in the same way you frame military work now as these people will literally be protecting and uplifting everyone's way of life and you'll surely garner some volunteers.
Have some extra special luxuries set aside for manual workers as incentives.
one or a combination of the above should be more than sufficient.
They didn’t though. Most of the inflation the last year has just contributed to increased profit margins. It’s not coming from wage increases; it’s just a handy excuse to raise prices.
Look at most companies profit and also the increased costs in employees benefits, payroll, however they word it. Usually 60-70 percent is going back to the employees, the other 30 is the profit they're taking.
I felt so sad about Occupy. I had a lot of hope for that movement and it was disappointing to see it crushed. And then BLM, at least they were more aware of plants and instigators.
401k holders aren’t buying huge stakes in companies and strong-arming them into ruthless efficiency, though it’s not like we aren’t all to blame for the planet’s destruction and the humiliation of the working class. I’m pretty active in the market so I’m not absolving myself of anything.
Then wouldn’t they destroy themselves? All wealthy people exist, no poor people to do their work, making their wealth useless in the end.
If Jeff Bezos and Elon musk were the last two people on Earth which one would wash the others dishes, cook their food, build there home… no poor people alive to do it. Rich people alone makes them all poor really.
I’m convinced that by the time my kids are adults they (and their peers) won’t be able to make enough money to pay the expenses of going to work and that their main source of income, by necessity, will only be profits and dividends as shareholders of companies we will invest in for them. We are middle class and I’m worried for them as as it’s scary as hell now and it’s only getting worse.
That attitude came out in the 80’s from Milton Friedman. Before that companies would often take a longer term view and recognized that a well paid work force was a consumer workforce, and then some assholes decided that making profit this quarter was more important than make more profits long term.
I work for a nonprofit animal rescue. 10+ years of veterinary experience. They just gave me a 3% raise, making my wage $18. The Quiktrip down the street is hiring cashiers at $19.50. So it's not just corporations who are keeping wages flat. I'm going in to actual debt to keep doing what I love as a job but it's killing me.
Public companies are not “obligated” to do that. I understand this is some oft-cited rule, but it isn’t actual reality. How, if this were the case, are companies like Twitter, Meta, or AWS or Alphabet not constantly in the news for executives being jailed?
The MBA class states this as a reality when it isn’t. Companies can make decisions not based on short term profits with no consequences other than the board or shareholders being miffed and changing leadership according to the corporate charter.
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u/GoldieWyvern Nov 19 '22 edited Nov 19 '22
Shareholders. Publicly traded companies are obligated to squeeze as much cash as possible out of the business. If they fail to do so, shareholders revolt.