I wonder what a viable solution to the constant need for quarterly growth from investors is. Dividends? Like why can't we have a company continue to make the same amount of trillions every year and be fine with that.
It's actually a mindset that's taught since forever too. I was born and raised in Vietnam, and was literally taught to, word by word, "Always strive to be the best. If there's someone better? Be better than that person." Funny enough I'd always been "Nah I think I'm happy being the second or third place" and they always looked at me in disbelief.
r/conspiracy ask these guys, you'll learn about capitalism, consumerism, materialism vs idealism, spritual war fare, changing world order, illuminati etc.
I am not saying all this is true, but it works/make sense like math equations
The need will always be there and there's no "solution" for that. Which is why it's critical to restore the personal and business tax rates from before 8/21/81. The entire point of any enterprise is to maximize profits, so that's why it's vital to have robust regulation and taxation. We're 50 years deep into seeing what happens when the government doesn't require businesses to care about their employees, consumers, or communities.
They simply don't.
So it's up to us to elect a government who will force them to, but we keep electing Republicans because of bigotry, fear, and greed.
The need will always be there and there's no "solution" for that.
yes and no. the "need" is a symptom of the disease (pathological sociopathy) which manifests itself in a perpetual cycle of insatiable necessity whether it be greed, gluttony, cruelty, lying, deceit, or (insert worst flaw of human nature here). and the only solution is to remove the diseased person from normal society (via prison and/or institution, for example) or remove the disease from the person.
The news headline that radicalized me was about a CEO promising swift changes after the revenue growth acceleration rate had slowed down for the second quarter in a row.
Not only are they making money. They are making more money. They are making more money faster. But how fast was now slightly slower and that was a problem.
I started working in tech right around the smartphones became a hit, There I realized really quick just how much bullshit is spewed in your average economics paper. They were all promising market growths for years as if nobody had ever heard of the term market saturation before only for 3 years later all decry doom and gloom because all of those models failed and the companies that were still making boatloads of money weren't infinitely growing anymore now that everyone already had a phone.
Its just a cancer.
But also those companies exist. In heavily regulated markets, where Venture Capital can't just come in, shit all around, underprise everything by going billions in debt and then racking up prices once they are the only ones left. Deregulation makes these places smaller and smaller each year.
CEO and executive pay that is 5x max the lowest earner. No golden parachutes. Earn your spot to stay. If you fuck up, you get fired as a CEO, no benefits, just a stopped paycheck
Guillotines are a viable solution. But I think it’s interesting to view corporations in biological terms, per Chuck Stross’s Accelerando. They’re organisms who want to survive and reproduce. But they and the billionaires are trying to avoid the “reproduce then die” part.
We the People need to form our own organisms, like unions, and act like T cells to protect our planet from the ruling class parasites.
The reason is simply the opportunity cost. If every other company on average gets you 5% growth every year, then whatever you're currently invested in better get you at least that much or else you're better off invested in broad index EFT.
As for what to do about it, that's a really complicated question. Some part of that 5% is from inflation and you really want 2% or so inflation to maintain a healthy economy where people are incentivized not to just hoard money forever.
Creating a system where asset backed loans above a certain amount are treated as income (with some caveats so people aren't double taxed) would probably be a good place to start. Also more broadly speaking, just tax the rich, not a wealth tax but income and capital gains. Even if it doesn't touch hit the 0.001% that hard, there's plenty between them and the bottom 95% who don't get taxed enough.
At least some part of it can be chased back to an old lawsuit with Dodge vs Ford. That case set a precedent at least, but may have birthed a law that states publicly traded companies have an obligation to shareholders before customers.
“If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.”
Grapes of Wrath
That is true, and that is how I previously thought about things. But I recently looked into it a bit more. He is the biggest shareholder and he is the executive chair of the Board of Directors.
I think it’s entirely reasonable to blame decisions like “keep driver salary as low as possible” on him
That, and alot of them think that someday they will be Bezos. They don't want protections and rights, because when they're the 1% they plan on being just as much of a greedy scumbag.
Legally he should have been forced to pay them an actual living wage, before hoovering up all the wealth for himself. Same with the Waltons. And all the other oligarchs who rely on below poverty “wages” and government assistance for their employees as they hoard all the success for themselves and only themselves.
Fun reminder that the Stop BEZOS bill is still sitting in committee. The bill would force corporations to reimburse government assistance programs like SNAP utilized by their employees. It's a full 100% reimbursement so they can't avoid paying employees a living wage. Call your congresspeople.
Aside from Bezos himself, aren't most of these bizzionaires that are destroying our economy (because people without jobs can't consume as much - and that is the foundation of our economy) actually from other countries - where their ideas/business models would be illegal?
That is also an issue that Mamdani is trying to address. Trying to get around following the law by calling the people who work for you “contractors” should be illegal.
There's a difference between something being allowed and that same thing being expected. A person shouldn't be expected to form their own company to get a job.
If your company works exclusively for Amazon, services Amazon trucks, delivers the packages Amazon gives you to the places they tell you on the Timberline they give you, you work for Amazon. The bidding process is whowill take the job for the least pay.
Exclusivity is the line here. If Amazon hires you to deliver their packages, and tells you you can only deliverer Amazon packages, you work for Amazon, not yourself. They just didn't class you as an employee so they don't have to pay benifits. If you have a contact with Amazon, but they're only a portion of your business then you're actually separate. The issue is how much control they have over you. If they control everything but you're officially separate on paper only it's what people get upset at
The delivery of consumer goods, yea? And yet they employ no delivery drivers. That's the problem. Subcontracting core employees is exploiting a loop hole.
Also you are coming off a bit bootlickery here bud.
I find it weird that everything is still under the Amazon umbrella even though they're contractors. Like, how are they not employees? Most contractors I know are recognized by individual company names.
"Contractor" is just another link in the chain specifically so the company doesn't have to take direct W2 responsibility for the worker. In the contracts they establish with the subcontracting company, the purchasing company requires the employees of the supplying company to wear branded vests and/or operate branded vehicles when working hours on their specific contract.
Wearing branding doesn't make a difference legally or financially. It's just part of the business agreement for the contracting company to get the contract. They then stipulate the rules and requirements to their direct employees.
Nearly all Amazon delivery drivers are subcontracted. Their contracting company is supplied Amazon branded vests and Amazon wraps for vans by Amazon with the contractual requirement that their employees display that branding only when delivering for Amazon.
See, thats not a contractor, thats an employee that they are calling a contractor to avoid having to pay benefits and accept liability if something goes wrong.
They've normalized it so much you don't even realize you are being swindled out of benefits amazon should pay
As an independent contractor you should be able to set your own schedule and use your own equipment. If you are clocking in, wearing Amazon provided jackets, driving an Amazon provided truck, delivering Amazon packages on a route dictated by Amazon with penalties if you deviate,
You're an Amazon employee with none of the benefits and all the risk
The people aren't independent contractors though. They're just employees of another company. It's exactly like construction sub contracting. You hire a contractor to redo your flooring and he gives you the pricing, scope, etc and you sign a contract with him. When it's time to do the job, he's nowhere to be seen but there's a team of 25 people in your house who knock out the in a couple of hours.
He's the independent contractor. Those are his direct employees. You've indirectly hired his crew to do the job via the terms of the contract. Hey pays them and provides them insurance as he sees fit.
It depends. There are people that are 1099 employees directly to amazon and they should be employees.
The scenario you describe is how it should be, though there are states that don't like even that for the way that amazon manages the independent contractor's employees. We'll see how litigation goes, but New York has the authority to dictate how a private company does business in his city.
The only direct 1099s I know of are the "flex" drivers who show up in their own cars. They're basically gig workers for instant fulfillment orders, similar to door dash. Anyone else is a DSP in that subcontractor model. Basically fleet owners.
I don't have the details around how Mandami plans to implement his law, Sounds like flex drivers may be the ones being targetted but I don't know. I've heard arguments that DSPs should be reclassified, but I'm out of my depth at this point
The same can be said for uber drivers and gig-based work under a megacorp. It's a megacorp. If you put in the hours, you should get the benefits. If the contract company isn't doing that, then it's on the company hiring them should be penalized for continuing to use them.
It's not that hard to fix. Make it too much work to use the loophole.
Agreed. And this is what Mandami is talking about. Passing a law to fix that sort of stuff.
Individuals create a single member LLC or sole proprietorship that the megacorp is paying as a contracting company, but they're really just an employee and they should get the benefits as such.
I swear there was a bill in congress that would restrict how many of your employees could be part-time or gig-based once your company exceeded 1,000 employees + contractors (or something to that effect). The idea was that more employees would be given benefits because they couldn't move to a 100% gig-work workforce.
The fact that I can't recall the name tells you how long it's been since I heard about it.
Many contractors work for other companies. Their workers wear that larger companies name.
Well, yeah. Hiring contractors are business to business transactions. Wearing the other company's name is optional typically.
Or look at fast food. McDonald’s? Most are franchises. Sure they sell/wear McDonald, but are an independently owned franchise.
Franchises are a completely different thing, not sure why you bring those up. Regardless of the arrangement between the franchiser and franchisee, the workers in that franchise are employees, not contractors.
In my area, lots of distribution centers and delivery drivers. Distribution centers? Workers are contractors. Out of say 609 workers, only 5-10 work directly for Amazon. Amazon pays a third party to fill out warehouse workers.
Delivery? Similar situation. Amazon pays a contractor for last mile delivery. Contractor pays workers/healthcare. Then 2-5 Amazon liaison staff.
Or now seeing no Amazon workers at all. Last 6-7 Amazon distribution centers in my 7m metro area? Amazon pays for construction and costs for the building. All workers are contractors. 600-650 building workers and 1400-1600 delivery workers…
See what's different here? Those workers in the distribution centers and arguably the delivery drivers function essentially as employees but Amazon says they are "contractors" so that they don't have to pay benefits or follow fair labor rules.
Yup, named Gothmog. And that is how I see all these big tech hot shot billionaires. Fucking orcs, Gundabad Orcs. Not one of them is redeemable. I'm a big Tolkien fan and all these asswhipes using names from his writing to do unspeakable evil is so frustrating.
Poetically, there's a popular paraquel to Lord of the Rings published in Russia that envisions the orcs and Saruman as the good guys who introduce industrialization to Middle Earth to overthrow the old order.
You can tell if someone is an autocrat because they start their speeches with: "What if the good guys are evil?" and end it with "Let's be evil for the greater good! We promise its temporary!"
Amazon doesn't pay any of their delivery drivers. They contract thousands of third party companies that own the trucks and that company pays their delivery drivers as employees to them.
If there's Amazon Flex drivers involved those are 1099 contracted workers similar to UberEATS or Doordash they don't work directly for Amazon and get no benefits from the company.
So the delivery partners might have Amazon shirts on and the trucks might say Amazon on the side of them but none of them actually work for Amazon and Amazon gets to skirt all of the compensation and benefits they should have been providing the whole time.
Amazon would have fought against abolishing slavery because “this would make cotton much more expensive for working families, simultaneously pushing thousands of former slaves into unemployment as the cotton industry is relocated overseas”
That's one of the most glaring issues regulators and we as a society face, in that context: abolishing slavery alone won't make businesses stop supporting slavery, it just makes them move to a place where slavery isn't abolished yet
Pricing would certainly be a Jassy decision and not Bezos.
Now Bezos as head of the Board of Directors could absolutely fire Jassy if he doesn't like those decisions, but Jassy is at the wheel on daily operations.
That's a possibility but not the only possibility. It is absolutely plausible that the board of directors feels shipping strategies should be changed, and then it would fall on Jassy to execute those plans.
At the most basic level, Jassy executes the plans that the board sets. Those plans have very likely included adjusting shipping prices in the past.
Eh, yes and no. I think you'd see more of how this is run today from listening to some of the Amazon earnings calls, but also, who cares? We agree on the overall point here, the details of which super rich greedy guy is at the wheel is kinda irrelevant :)
eh I wouldn't say so anymore. There have been absolutely dog shit decisions made by Jassy that you would never see from Bezos. I don't think Bezos cares tbh. Unless Jassy does something so profoundly shitty, I think Bezos gives his underlings extraordinary leeway.
At least where I live, the usual order is: Go to local shop > look for item > "We don't have that but you can order it online and pick it up here" > Leave, asking myself Bitch I'm actively trying to support you by buying locally, and you shoot yourself in the knee with bullshit like this > Look for other store > Repeat until item acquired or begrudgingly ordered
Please only do this if you can afford to and want to drive hundreds of miles at your own expense rather than ordering online just to make a point. A point which isn't convenience or good financial decision making.
They are acting as every single same day or next day delivery that you get just because that's what is being offered would now be something you now are paying $100 per as if you would absolutely always go for the super duper next day air Sunday delivery with white glove service by a guy in a three piece suit. Not that you would settle for the $7 USPS box that comes in like 4-5 days.
I live in a big city and almost a decade of time of buying things from Amazon. I've never bought something I needed next day. But I really needed it. Next day I'd walk to the goddamn store
Ahhhhhhahahaha. Amazon is low-key insinuating that they'll be forced to *stop delivery in NYC*! Yeah right, you're going to step away from the second largest market in the US? Uh huh. Somehow, I bet you won't.
And the world lost a wealthy white collar murderer who condemned countless people's family members to death despite them paying his company for healthcare. So sad. Much tears.
What about the families that lost fathers/mothers/sons/daughters because insurance claims were denied so that healthcare CEOs could keep hoarding their wealth?
Yes, what you are saying is easy to follow. It is just idiotic. I will ask again, what does that accomplish? That is the point. It just puts all the people doing the murdering in jail. The people that you are siding with, will have their lives ruined for absolutely nothing.
For a moment UHC was shitting their pants and rolled back an ai-powered claim denial “feature” they had just introduced and also pumped the brakes on claim denials in general. It didn’t last long of course, but it absolutely put the fear of god into those pieces of shit denying cancer patent care
They left out the part that says, “this will happen solely because we are deciding this is how it should happen so you continue to allow us to abuse your city the way we want.”
Yea, I think the issue is bigger since public companies as expected to maximize profits at the expense of workers. The workers need a seat at the table either with stake in the business or through a union.
Bezos isn't CEO anymore and it's not his decision.
Their business plan isn't "not to serve one of the largest markets in the world". Their business plan is to move their last-mile warehouses outside of NYC to bypass the law. The main question is how practical of a solution that can be, considering it'd be forcing delivery vans to do 1-2 hours commutes into NYC (which means 1-2 hours of less deliveries per van).
Not really. NYC is very weird. In Manhattan, for example, the vans don't deliver. They unload the packages into carts and the carts deliver them. If the DSPs have enough staff, an entire van can be unloaded in a matter of hours.
Of course, given that it's NYC, there are a number of peccadillos. Delivering a few hundred packages by cart to an apartment complex can be a breeze if your scanner is working. However, delivering to homes in Tribeca can be an impossible nightmare as you spend several minutes per doorway just waiting for the virtual doorman to get back from the bathroom.
God help you if you have to deliver to the IRS building.
Saying that their "deliveries could get slower and more expensive" as if shopping at Amazon is some basic human necessity. If Amazon's deliveries get slower and/or more expensive, that's their problem, not mine. I can always take my business elsewhere.
We've reached a point where there has to be laws and regulations against having your employees on welfare or government benefits while the CEO is one of the richest people in the world. That shouldnt have ever been a thing, ever. In fact, CEOs who run companies like this should be shamed, fined and threated with incarceration for cruel and unusual punishment. This is not okay!
So Mamdani, wildly popular, great policies, everyone loves him...and suddenly: ultimate human-dildo Jeff Bezos makes up some fake numbers to scare/threaten small families and HIS OWN EMPLOYEES that support him.
Sounds like an issue the free market will correct now that there's more room for a competitor in the direct fulfillment market. Good time to cancel your Prime in NYC.
UPS does it, and still pulled a very healthy $5.5 billion in profit. Which is a fraction of Amazons $77 billion. So much for scale reducing costs and improving efficiency. Take less profit, Amazon. I believe in you.
Nah without the exploitation of the workers how could he have amassed that much wealth? Its a sad state of affairs where the politicians in the US are bought and paid for by these corporations.
Mark Cuban did the math not only is it affordable for the government it beneficial for companies as well. The 1 thrive on creating chaos and misery among their perceived slaves.
As a shareholder, I have to ask: are you saying that you are not already charging what the market will bear for your products and shipping? There’s room to increase prices without losing customers? If so, you’re not doing your job. I suspect the current pricing is as high as your models say it can be, and additional costs - like living wages for your employees— will come out of shareholders profits. As they should.
The proposal of mamdani is useless, the model works the same here in germany and works fine. The problem is how workers rights are in general in the USA and not who the employer is. Workers rights in germany are strong so the exact same system for subcontractor works here.
I do agree with Warren. If you got 276 billion dollars, and you can EASILY afford 500 million yacht to a 55 million wedding with 5 million ring to give to your wife. You can EASILY AFFORD that. But this is the thing with these corporations. They would do anything to make just a PENNY more of money but all sorts of exploitative and just outright lazy tactics but then cry WOLF or PAPA when an politican DARES to preach and moreso do something to make them use their wealth for something productive and make workers under them lives more easily and we got useful idiots who just GOBBLE IT UP.
How much are they gonna take from people who have almost nothing while they have everything.. and keep stealing from you while they sit on billions.. wow
You don’t think amazon’s largest individual shareholder and founder couldn’t pay people a better wage if he wanted to?
“He literally can’t” have his business, the thing he started in his garage that ballooned into the online retail juggernaut that it has become, pay his employees a fair and living wage?
He has enough money to do anything he wants but he “literally can’t” pay people with his vast and ridiculous fortune?
As in it's literally not his job. He's not the CEO. He's not deciding wages or pricing.
It doesn't matter who starts the company, it matters who owns it today and is running it. He owns 8% of Amazon today.
Bezos is still head of the board so it's not that he has no power - he can certainly organizing firing / replacing the CEO. The point is wages are not his choice right now.
Now, AMAZON should absolutely be paying their employees more, but the person running the day to day operations of the company is Andy Jassy, the CEO. My point wasn't that the company can't pay more, my point was that it's literally not Bezos' decision to make right now.
No, I am arguing that we could get rid of all their money very quickly and the world would look little to not different after you divide it evenly.
$10 billion dollars divided by every human is about $1 per person but you also had to figure a way to sell those companies as you do. It is quite tricky to do and not obviously useful.
This is also an issue with programs to give money to the homeless etc.
I am not saying redistribution isn't necessary, it is, but i am saying it is a legitimately difficult problem long term.
Oh the bozo argument
That’s weird, because when we had a progressive tax system, the country was at its most prosperous. But the supply side economics, voodoo economics, we’ve been trying for almost 50 years has got us to our current K shape economy. It’s called voodoo because you need magical thinking to believe it works.
Just look at Kansas when it tried it
I did the math on this back of the napkin style. Let’s say there’s a half million Amazon drivers in the US if you bumped their pay by 50% or about $10 an hour, it would cost Amazon (or Bezos personally) about $10 billion a year.
The problem with this idea is that it represents over a third of Amazon‘s North American income (focusing on their income generated by people delivering packages). Or maybe a better way to put this is if you paid the workers a lot more the company would go bankrupt. Bezos could start selling his stake in Amazon to do this but a) he’d run out of money and b) lose his controlling interest in the company.
Let’s look at from OP’s list of annoying expenditures. It adds up to less than US$600 million. That’s about $1000 per employee or an extra $100/month on their paychecks
766
u/ElegantCoach4066 3d ago
Or y'know, he could just absorb the cost.
But that's unacceptable. The top 1% can never be expected to make less. Only the poors.