Someone(s) have sent out pro-worker messages to unsecured receipt printers connected to the internet

[TheMysteriousGX]

A lot of these funds work by targetting what they perceive are underperforming companies. By buying large quantities of stock they can if not take control of the company outright, then have sufficient ownshership to drive a change in direction and make the company more profitable, so the stock price rises and they can sell up and move on. Of course, what makes a company more profitable is often not good for workers.

Considering that the best way to make a company "profitable" is to charge it a loan based on how much you bought it for, cut it into chunks, hold a fire sale on its assets, sell the copper wiring out of its walls, fire the employees, then have the company you bought declare bankruptcy because it can't pay all of the loan you charged it for buying it so vacuum up any disposable assets you missed in the first round and discharge any remaining debt you used to buy it in the first place...

Just wanted to elaborate on how exactly hedge fund capitalism works. It's shocking that anybody thinks this is a sustainable system, much less defendable. Capitalists are weird like that though.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Considering that the best way to make a company "profitable" is to charge it a loan based on how much you bought it for, cut it into chunks, hold a fire sale on its assets, sell the copper wiring out of its walls, fire the employees, then have the company you bought declare bankruptcy because it can't pay all of the loan you charged it for buying it so vacuum up any disposable assets you missed in the first round and discharge any remaining debt you used to buy it in the first place...

In short: You ruin the company you bought and use every trick in the book to get every penny you can out of it, and fuck over everyone else you possibly can along the way.

In capitalism, this is not only good, but right and just.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Work is optional. The consequences of not working might be significant depending on your situation, but there are places in the world that you are inescapably trapped in an existence less desirable than an American choosing not to work. It's funny to me how often you try to describe how things are wrong or could be better, and the better you imagine is the way things already are.

When the fear of "consequences" is institutionally built into how a society functions, you're talking about coercion.

Everyone in North Korea has freedom of speech. The consequences of saying the wrong thing might be significant depending on your situation..

I'm not really interested in the relative "desirability" or otherwise of various forms of existence. I'm certainly not into pretending that America is an autarky and that the conditions of people outside of America have no relationship whatsoever to the global economic system that supports the comparative wealth of Americans. The fact that an unemployed person person can technically survive in a developed country without starving provided they are able to consistently satisfy the state-imposed requirements for not starving isn't really the point. ALL work is structured coercively. It doesn't really matter if you have a job or not. You are still, almost certainly, getting fucked by people who rely on you being too afraid to quit.

That is what it means to live in a society with a capital monopoly. You work because you have no choice, because capital (a thing without inherent value that can be created on a whim) is scarce, and you don't have enough of it to have a meaningful choice about whether or not you work. The artificial scarcity of capital devalues labour, all labour, to the point of meaninglessness. Meanwhile, the people who do have enough capital to choose whether or not to work, for whom work is a hobby they sometimes play at rather than a necessity of life, take most of the material value of what you produce in the form of more capital. They get richer, you earn enough to stave off poverty (if you're lucky).

If you actually cared about work ethic or the value of labour, you would see this system for the disgusting abomination that it is, but I don't think the value of labour is what really bothers you, is it? It's the idea that we live in a society where everyone gets what they deserve, where the people at the top must be at the top by virtue of some great merit or moral worthiness that marks them out from us wretched sinners struggling to survive. I am sorry to tell you that that is a lie, and the sooner you stop believing that lie the better.

 

[Thaluikhain]

In short: You ruin the company you bought and use every trick in the book to get every penny you can out of it, and fuck over everyone else you possibly can along the way.

In capitalism, this is not only good, but right and just.

Random bit of trivia, the company that made Thompson submachine guns was a few months away from having that happen to it when the US suddenly needed loads of SMGs right now because of WW2. Not like they were the only people making SMGs, but it would have been a problem for the US military if that happened.

 

[Agema]

Considering that the best way to make a company "profitable" is to charge it a loan based on how much you bought it for, cut it into chunks, hold a fire sale on its assets, sell the copper wiring out of its walls, fire the employees, then have the company you bought declare bankruptcy because it can't pay all of the loan you charged it for buying it so vacuum up any disposable assets you missed in the first round and discharge any remaining debt you used to buy it in the first place...

Just wanted to elaborate on how exactly hedge fund capitalism works. It's shocking that anybody thinks this is a sustainable system, much less defendable. Capitalists are weird like that though.

It's not always that bad, but that certainly happens.

There's been a mini-crisis in care homes in the UK recently. The UK started privatisation of the care home industry decades ago, although much is still public sector. What appears to have happened recently is that finance wankers have been buying care home providers, saddling them with debt from a leveraged buyout, and passing them on. In some cases, they split them into a property company (that owns the land and care home) and a care delivery company (that rents the care home property and looks after the residents). This can make profit opportunities look more attractive, increasing the value: the property company jacks up the rents... and puts the care delivery company out of business. To cap it all, private providers of care have lower average quality ratings compared to public too, possibly not surprising given they're stripping out resources in the form of debt, huge executive salaries and shareholder profit. Apparently in one notable example, it was almost impossible to even tell where the money was, because the care provider was run through a staggering twelve separate companies, some of which appeared to be little more than shell companies.

It's obvious this doesn't work. Not even for the government, which has to step in and fix the mess because there's a legal obligation to provide care, and pays for a lot of care provision by the private sector even without them collapsing. But what's the government doing about it? Seemingly little so far, because I fear the government is immensely relaxed when it's funnelling money to shareholders and global finance. The government has announced that it is increasing National Insurance 1% to pay for social care. Why? Over 15% of private care home finances is disappearing off to international finance for their stupid leveraged buyout scams. If your bucket has a load of leaks, fix your bucket, don't just try to pour a lot more water in.

And just in case we were wondering who the Conservatives care about, it decided that everyone must pay for £86,000 of their own care before the government takes over. It's not that I particularly object to people contributing to their own care, but a person with £100,000 savings bequeaths 14% of that to their kids, whilst a person with £1 million bequeaths 91% to theirs.

 

[tstorm823]

None of these arguments you are coming up with are anything more than smoke and mirrors. These guys are as stupendously rich as the numbers say, and I have no idea why you are so invested in trying to pretend otherwise.

I mean if Tstorm wants to argue that wealth is entirely imaginary then I'm down for that because it is. But it's weird to me when capitalists use our arguments against capitalism to defend it.

He recognised that once something is owned it becomes inaccessible to others.

Collectively, you've all almost got it. You can't horde an imaginary thing. Tesla and Amazon are inventions of the human mind. Sure, by one person owning a part of them, other people cannot own that same part, but the alternative is that they don't exist. If somebody makes a painting, and other people evaluate it to be worth $1,000,000, that sudden spike in wealth has taken nothing from anyone else. Ya'll act like billionaires are sucking their wealth off of society with big vacuum cleaners, but that wealth wasn't taken from anyone, it was imagined into existence. I'm not arguing they aren't stupendously rich, I'm arguing that their wealth was created from nothing and does not afford them proportional societal power to the dollar amount we assign to them.

 

[tstorm823]

because capital (a thing without inherent value that can be created on a whim) is scarce.

Capital is not scarce. There is not theoretical cap on the velocity of money.

It's the idea that we live in a society where everyone gets what they deserve, where the people at the top must be at the top by virtue of some great merit or moral worthiness that marks them out from us wretched sinners struggling to survive. I am sorry to tell you that that is a lie, and the sooner you stop believing that lie the better.

The problem is quite the opposite of that, none of you like that I don't think those at the top are inherently sinful, and those struggling to survive are inherently virtuous. I have no problem managing the fact that people don't necessarily get what they deserve, you have a problem with the suggestion that maybe some people do.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Collectively, you've all almost got it. You can't horde an imaginary thing. Tesla and Amazon are inventions of the human mind. Sure, by one person owning a part of them, other people cannot own that same part, but the alternative is that they don't exist. If somebody makes a painting, and other people evaluate it to be worth $1,000,000, that sudden spike in wealth has taken nothing from anyone else. Ya'll act like billionaires are sucking their wealth off of society with big vacuum cleaners, but that wealth wasn't taken from anyone, it was imagined into existence. I'm not arguing they aren't stupendously rich, I'm arguing that their wealth was created from nothing and does not afford them proportional societal power to the dollar amount we assign to them.

Capital is not scarce. There is not theoretical cap on the velocity of money.

The problem is quite the opposite of that, none of you like that I don't think those at the top are inherently sinful, and those struggling to survive are inherently virtuous. I have no problem managing the fact that people don't necessarily get what they deserve, you have a problem with the suggestion that maybe some people do.

These statements are in conflict.

Also, it their wealth is imaginary why the desperate refusal to take it away? Playing along with delusions to the point that it's running national finance is a very bad idea.

 

[Agema]

Collectively, you've all almost got it. You can't horde an imaginary thing. Tesla and Amazon are inventions of the human mind.

That is some hot bullshit, as anyone who has heard the term "intellectual property" will recognise.

Companies are in some part inventions of the human mind. More practically, they are the creations of labour, whether physical or mental, backed up with large amounts of resources, even down to the computer someone sends emails on. This labour turns ideas into goods and services, much like a farmer turns seeds into wheat with labour. One might point out that the labour done by Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk may have been important, but in practice many of the ideas that are being spun into gold are coming from legions of employees who don't have $billions in stock. This is even without considering the investors who have had no idea whatsoever, beyond the decision to chuck their money at these companies and latterly suck out a chunk of the profits.

If somebody makes a painting, and other people evaluate it to be worth $1,000,000, that sudden spike in wealth has taken nothing from anyone else.

Wrong. Terribly, badly wrong. There are in fact limits to how much wealth you can create. You can view this through the basic concept of supply and demand: as supply increases, demand and value falls. If the global demand for smartphones is 2 billion a year, making 3 billion smartphones does not magically persuade another billion people to buy a smartphone - or at least, not without a drop in price of smartphones to induce a billion people who otherwise wouldn't buy one to do so. And even if that occurs, it means those billion people are buying a smartphone instead of something else - so the demand and value for other goods and services drops. Because the total income of a smartphone buyer doesn't just magically increase by the value of one smartphone just because they buy a smartphone.

The problem is quite the opposite of that, none of you like that I don't think those at the top are inherently sinful

This is a fallacy - the objection is to the system that permits it. There may be some bleed-over into generalised distaste for corporate bosses (guilt by association is very common) and there is no shortage of examples of corporate bosses doing immoral things. But people aren't saying "End capitalism" because they hate Jeff Bezos. They're fed up with Jeff Bezos because he represents an economic system they consider unjust.

 

[Silvanus]

Wrong. Terribly, badly wrong. There are in fact limits to how much wealth you can create. You can view this through the basic concept of supply and demand: as supply increases, demand and value falls. If the global demand for smartphones is 2 billion a year, making 3 billion smartphones does not magically persuade another billion people to buy a smartphone - or at least, not without a drop in price of smartphones to induce a billion people who otherwise wouldn't buy one to do so. And even if that occurs, it means those billion people are buying a smartphone instead of something else - so the demand and value for other goods and services drops. Because the total income of a smartphone buyer doesn't just magically increase by the value of one smartphone just because they buy a smartphone.

To add to this: the value of currency also depends in large part on the amount of it in an economy. Hence why increasing the amount in circulation leads to inflation, without simply making the recipient proportionally richer according to pre-inflation values.

So yes, if someone has 20 billion in the bank, or circulating only among a small cadre of millionaires and billionaires, that is absolutely impacting the relative spending power of everyone else. If that 20 billion didn't exist, the value of currency in other hands would increase. Not precisely proportionately, but it would.

 

[tstorm823]

Also, it their wealth is imaginary why the desperate refusal to take it away? Playing along with delusions to the point that it's running national finance is a very bad idea.

Because you can't take the wealth away. The wealth is an imaginary, derivative concept. You can either take away the ownership, which in the case of stock values would be confiscating the business, or you can tax the value of the wealth in currency. The value of currency is imagined the same way the as the value of the stock, but the currency itself is not imaginary. That is a concrete thing, that must be converted into, and is a huge mess. Either way, if you start trying to take away people's wealth, the game theory play will be to own as little as possible, and that's a bad thing. We want ownership of and responsibility for things to be desirable. Nobody is going to start a business if they carry the liability for failure and have the business taken from them should they succeed.

Wrong. Terribly, badly wrong. There are in fact limits to how much wealth you can create.

There aren't limits to how much wealth you can create. There just aren't. Wealth is an imaginary number, no number is beyond the power of imagination. It happens constantly that the demand for something spikes or falls, and as a result the value of that thing spikes or falls in unison. The held wealth of the people who had that thing fluctuates wildly based on that, even without the number or quality of that thing changing in anyway. Because wealth is a product of the collective imagination. There are things I own that I would not give up for a billion dollars, and if other people agreed with that assessment, that'd make me super rich by the standards we judge these billionaires by.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Capital is not scarce. There is not theoretical cap on the velocity of money.

Capital is artificially scarce because most people don't have it, and thus those who do have it have disproportionate bargaining power. That's what a "monopoly" means.

The problem is quite the opposite of that, none of you like that I don't think those at the top are inherently sinful, and those struggling to survive are inherently virtuous.

Money implies poverty.

Being unbelievably, impossibly wealthy while people are struggling to survive is inherently "sinful". It implies that you view those people as expendable in service of your own comfort and luxury. That is what is wrong with "being at the top" of this society, in order to get there and live with the state you are in you need to have a complete disregard for anyone else.

Living in a society where the basic necessities of living (food, healthcare, water, warmth, shelter) cost money implies a comfort with the idea of people who can't afford these things not having them. If you are comfortable with that, I don't think you have any right to claim some ethical high ground over anyone.

 

[Seanchaidh]

There aren't limits to how much wealth you can create. There just aren't. Wealth is an imaginary number, no number is beyond the power of imagination. It happens constantly that the demand for something spikes or falls, and as a result the value of that thing spikes or falls in unison. The held wealth of the people who had that thing fluctuates wildly based on that, even without the number or quality of that thing changing in anyway.

You're conflating wealth with a particular method of quantifying wealth.

 

[tstorm823]

You're conflating wealth with a particular method of quantifying wealth.

I suppose, but that method is really what we are talking about here. If you'd like to choose an alternative method of quantifying wealth, perhaps owning a big pile of Amazon stock isn't so significant.

Money implies poverty.

In the most pedantic possible way, sure. If people have money, some people will have the least amount of money, and since we define poverty in relative terms, some people will always be in poverty the way we define it. That has no bearing at all on actual quality of living.

Being unbelievably, impossibly wealthy while people are struggling to survive is inherently "sinful". It implies that you view those people as expendable in service of your own comfort and luxury. That is what is wrong with "being at the top" of this society, in order to get there and live with the state you are in you need to have a complete disregard for anyone else.

Living in a society where the basic necessities of living (food, healthcare, water, warmth, shelter) cost money implies a comfort with the idea of people who can't afford these things not having them. If you are comfortable with that, I don't think you have any right to claim some ethical high ground over anyone.

Money is not what is missing to solve those problems. Keeping everyone fed and sheltered and whatnot are logistical problems for society, not funding.

 

[Seanchaidh]

I suppose, but that method is really what we are talking about here. If you'd like to choose an alternative method of quantifying wealth, perhaps owning a big pile of Amazon stock isn't so significant.

You say that as if owning a controlling share wouldn't entitle you to just shut down the whole thing if you wanted under our present economic system. That is power.

 

[Silvanus]

There aren't limits to how much wealth you can create. There just aren't. Wealth is an imaginary number, no number is beyond the power of imagination.

So... we can just print money, then!

No. The more currency is pumped into an economy, the less value each unit holds. There is not a specific, demonstrable limit to wealth, but there absolutely are some very basic economic mechanisms that prevent wealth creation out-of-nothing.

Money is not what is missing to solve those problems. Keeping everyone fed and sheltered and whatnot are logistical problems for society, not funding.

Strange, then, how homelessness charities and homeless people desperately and obviously request money, rather than a logistics major.

 

[tstorm823]

So... we can just print money, then!

No. The more currency is pumped into an economy, the less value each unit holds. There is not a specific, demonstrable limit to wealth, but there absolutely are some very basic economic mechanisms that prevent wealth creation out-of-nothing.

Wealth =/= currency. Wealth can increase and decrease independent of currency. If every house in the world collapsed spontaneously, the wealth of humanity would drop precipitously without any change to the currency available.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Money is not what is missing to solve those problems. Keeping everyone fed and sheltered and whatnot are logistical problems for society, not funding.

And logistical problems are solved in a capitalist society by using..?

 

[tstorm823]

And logistical problems are solved in a capitalist society by using..?

Human effort, if a solution is even possible. That is true in any society.

Money and wealth are not magic wands that can make anything happen just by wishing for it, and if they were, why the hell would you want to get rid of them?

 

[Cheetodust]

Human effort, if a solution is even possible. That is true in any society.

Money and wealth are not magic wands that can make anything happen just by wishing for it, and if they were, why the hell would you want to get rid of them?

You're clearly being intentionally obtuse. Are you actually going to insist that these "logistical problems" can be solved without money?