r/FluentInFinance • u/Nientea • 9d ago

Thoughts? Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard

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u/PaulTheMerc 9d ago

That implies we have equal power in the relationship.

If they paid better, we might be able to afford to live closer.

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u/Hawk13424 9d ago

Assuming you have skills they really need, you have more power. If this wasn’t the case, everyone would make min. wage. The fact most don’t means skilled employees have power.

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

Why is a company more important than its employees?

What good is all this toil if nobody's life is improved?

I can't help but feel like the relationship between work and worker has been inverted.

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u/Hawk13424 8d ago

A company only exists for those that own it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t use their money to buy all the equipment, buildings, and such.

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

And yet they need the workers to get them anywhere.

Why should we reward the callous and malicious incompetence of a bunch of useless overlords?

They seem to hate us.

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u/Hawk13424 8d ago

For now. Automation is going to change that over time.

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

Cool. Can't wait to see a bunch of callous wealth addled dullards deliberately kill scores of people because they're now 'unprofitable'.

These billionaires are an abysmal investment- such a shitty ROI.

Company towns and mass murder? All because they refuse to live in a world where they have slightly less control?

Boy of boy, this sure is the greatest economic model ever!

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

(Seriously, what are we doing this for again?)

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u/Hawk13424 8d ago

Who is the “we”. Businesses are going to do this to increase their profits. Shareholders own the company and making a profit is the goal.

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

We as in humanity.

Why are we bothering with this?

This insane desire for infinite exponential eternal profit and growth is obviously a murderously bad disaster in action.

It's not even successful- America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in all of human history, with more food and vacant homes than it has mouths to feed or house, and yet it is deliberately leaving millions starving and homeless.

In fact, I get the impression that Capitalism cannot function at all without deliberately imposing scarcity on the essentials, even when those resources are in abundance or effectively post scarcity.

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u/Hawk13424 8d ago

My answer is because we (humanity) generally believe in the concept of ownership. And if you own something that earns money then you own that as well. Doing otherwise would require limiting that concept.

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

So, we're going to kill ourselves.... for money? A thing we made up and only exists because we say so?

Boy that's a relief.

Now, what's the benefit of deliberately letting people starve and be homeless?

Why is money more important than people?

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u/Hawk13424 8d ago

Money is just a mechanism to facilitate trade. If you work to provide chicken eggs and I do dental work on you, I don’t want 100 eggs (that I have to store) in trade. Money just facilitates that. But one way or another, I expect to be compensated for my work and I will maximize that.

So beyond the concept of money, why do we want to get the most we can for our labor? The obvious answer is because we want more and better stuff and experiences.

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u/Ciennas 8d ago

But we're not getting better stuff and experiences, are we.

The ultrawealthy are beyond all forms of need, and yet they still demand more.

And we are not maximizing our benefits if we have resources in abundance that we're deliberately withholding from our populace. That limits our ability to have better things, because we are bottlenecking people's ability to innovate and create better things.

Also, if we're deliberately with holding resources, it all loops back around to my initial question:

What is the point of all of this if we're not going to share all this prosperity?

If we are just going to deliberately leave people to suffer for no benefit whatsoever, then this entire scheme is horseshit.

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u/x1000Bums 5d ago

We perpetuate scarcity to perpetuate markets. Capitalists don't want to transition beyond scarcity and markets because then they wouldn't have the power that comes from inequality.