like I went to taco bell and they didn’t even have napkins out. they had the other stuff just no napkins, I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins! so they can save $100 per quarter rather than provide the barest minimum quality of life features.
Because stocks kept trading at higher and higher P/E ratios essentially saying “the market thinks this company can make much more money in the future than they are making now.”
The problem is, most companies couldn’t, and as we have hit a recessionary phase those companies are now scrambling to try to show continued growth justifying their price.
The way they do that is by cutting off their limbs and selling them for short term cash at long term consequence.
So you see them cutting costs in all kinds of ways that screw over their customers but can show quarterly profits. Even though it means customers may not stay customers if better options appear.
So we are in this sort of pendulum swing period where large corporations suck because there’s effectively no competition that doesn’t and sucking is the last way for them to squeeze water from a stone. The natural solution is that we’d see competition rise up that doesn’t suck to take their customers away and force pro-customer changes.
This likely will eventually happen, but it’s going to take time. There are emerging tech trends that will accelerate it, but are still a few years away from practically changing the equation.
In about a decade things should suck less, and a number of the crappy companies around right now may no longer be around, but in the meantime it’s still going to suck for a while yet as things adjust to the dying of the old guard and birth of the new.
I don’t really agree with this. It is the answer that I think classical economics would give but I just don’t think it’s useful. For one, it ignores politics. Large corporations also have bought our government, and a few large wealth management funds like vanguard own a de facto controlling share in many public companies, oftentimes including virtually an entire industry, such that competition between them isn’t really incentived as much as financial shenanigans and other Jack Welch style shit.
Some scholars (i think I read this in Adrienne bullers value of a whale, which is basically basis for this entire comment) even argue that we’ve reached a point where it might be more useful to think of our economy as a planned economy, but planned by finance instead of a state central authority.
All that is to say: why would we expect competition to grow, as you suggest, when the current companies already won, and therefore have the power to crush competition? They’ve already dismantled so many of the antimonopoly and other regulations standing in their way. The classical economics argument treats these new better companies as just sorta rising out of the aether but in reality there’s a whole political context that is probably worth considering.
I disagree on your expectations for improvement, though agree on the rest.
There are lots of markets with natural barriers to entry were there isn’t any realistic chance for a new competitor to arrise and even if one did thanks to, say, some new technology, they’ll almost certainly only “disrupt” until they became well established and then do the same as all the rest because that maximizes profitability (just look at Uber a decade ago and look at Uber now).
Then there are lots of markets were crooked politcians (which nowadys seems to be most of the ones in the mainstream parties) make sure there are artificial barriers to entry so that well-connected companies are protected from competition - pretty much any market were an operating license is required, such as Banking and Mobile works like that - and that too means no costumer-friendly competitors will arrise in such markets, ever, because the gatekeeping which is in the hands of said crooked politians stops them before they even start, and said political gatekeepers couldn’t care less about consumer-friendliness of market participants and they’ll only change their ways if forced to politically and that’s not going to happen in countries with voting systems designed to maintain a political duopoly such as the US were the politicians rarelly fear losing their positions, especially on complex hard to explain things like how consumers suffer from them “maintaing high artifical market barriers to entry”
In the old days, before neoliberalism got entrenched, you might have such natural or artificial monopoly or cartel markets occupied by a Public company, which due to the lack of competition quickly grew inneficient (in my professional experience the same happens in Private companies in such a situation, by the way), though cheap, and on which there was often political pressure to improve. Now you have them occupied by Private companies who are driven solely by profit-seeking, so it’s still shit (because they cut costs) only it’s also expensive for customers rather than cheap (because they try to squeeze costumers with high prices) and suffers zero political pressure because the politicians hide behind the “It’s a Free Market” to refuse to regulate whilst secretly waiting for their Non-executive board memberships as rewards for being “friends of business” - a wonderful example of all this are Railways in the UK.
this sort of talk will get you killed in the revolution, fair warning.
🙄
Huggies went up in price, but their cost of manufacturing actually went down.
It’s got nothing to do with profit margins, it’s just pure greed. Also, the law requires that publicly traded companies be greedy.
Also, the law requires that publicly traded companies be greedy
The law doesn’t actually state you need screw over your customers and maximize profit. It says that executives have a fiduciary duty, which means they must act in the best interest of the shareholder, not themselves.
That does not mean they have to suck out every single dollar of profit. Executives have some leeway in this and can very easily explain that napkins lead to happier customers and longer term retention which means long term profits.
It’s purely a short-term, wall street driven, behavior also driven by executive pay being also based in stock so they’re incentivized to drive up the price over the next quarter so they can cash out.
Yeah sure, but then you could also say the same about a private business. The CEO works for the business owner, whether the owner is private or public stockholders.
But the reality is that publicly traded companies end up being far more greedy and profit driven than private businesses. In particular, the greedy private businesses tend to taget an IPO, while the more conscientious ones remain private.
nothing to do with profit margins, it’s just pure greed
???
Maybe I should have said “it’s nothing to do with maintaining profit margins” against rising costs.
Gotcha, that makes sense.
How does the law require them to be greedy?
I just assumed that it was shareholders.
Maybe not an exact law to be greedy but aren’t they legally responsible for acting in the interest of the shareholders not the consumer
Not technically a “law”…
“The shareholder wealth maximization doctrine requires public corporations to pursue a single purpose to the exclusion of all others: increase the wealth of shareholders by increasing the value of their shares. However, a company should be committed to enhance shareholder value and comply with all regulations and laws that govern shareholder’s rights.”
The" however… " part is largely ignored, except for when it benefits shareholders.
The “however” part you quoted explicitly mentions following the rights of shareholders. From what you described, there’s literally nothing else in the doctrine to ignore.
Yeah, your right. I guess I got to the part where it said “comply with regulations and laws” and laughed through the rest.
Lack of competition against an embedded brand name. Change brands.
The brands shuffle their designs to stay ahead of IP laws. Gillette made the definitive shaving razor in 1901, the patent subsequently expired and anyone could make it, now they make new razors every few years to stay ahead of the curve.
With nappies, the correct answer is reusable nappies. It sounds gross, but when you’re a parent you quickly learn to deal with all kinds of shit.
You also get funky designs and stuff. The insides are interchangeable, the oustides are fashion.
when you’re a parent you quickly learn to deal with all kinds of shit.
Depends if you have a second washing machine because you’re now creating a new waste and different expense. Also depends on how much time you have and every dual income family answer the same. None. So no the generalisation that reusables are the solution is not accurate at all. I’d prefer biodegradable nappies any day. The washing machine goes over time as it is with the 14 outfit changes every day.
2nd washing machine?? How many people do you know with 2 washing machines???
“Biodegradable” is a marketing term.
I’m not knocking people who use disposable (biodegradable - HAH) nappies, but that doesn’t mean that washing reusable nappies is something impossible for most people. If anything, disposable nappies are a relatively new invention.
Maybe with current electricity prices the maths has changed, but washing reusable nappies worked out far cheaper for me when my kids were using them.
Actually at least two families who have small children AND reusable nappies.
I don’t care for the “marketing” I mean it from the actual definition. Plus where I live companies are held to account for label based claims. So sounds like a US problem tbh.
So you have small children and both parents are working? Notice the plurals. We found with one baby it’s easy enough however the moment we both went to work and even more so with two babies it was impossible extra workload. Out of the friends and families in my circles the ONLY (2 families) that use reusable are the ones with a dedicated stay at home parent. Which is becoming rare more than ever.
because somehow our economic system says that a company is only successful if it’s growing, not if it’s regularly turning a profit every quarter. at least, that’s my understanding of it. so, they have to do something to generate something that looks like growth somehow
It’s pretty simple. Because we are all so spoiled and entitled that we won’t even consider NOT buying their shit anymore. It’s the same reason the video game market has grown rampant with micro transactions. They keep pushing the boundaries, and we keep giving them our money regardless of what they do. I’m actually curious to see how far they can push this insanity. They already slap a new year on sports titles every year and somehow sell the same game to the same people annually.
PUT YOUR WALLET DOWN.
The amount of people on Reddit who shill for companies like EA and Activision is shocking.
Once wrote a comment on the lines of ‘sadly, British gamers mostly have terrible taste in video games, 90% of us don’t give a shit about anything unless it’s GTA, FIFA or Call of Duty. We literally reward companies for shitty consumer practices.’
Most of the replies I got were calling me an asshole and were acting like I’m trying to police what people can like/dislike.
But still, Electronic Arts make record-breaking profits because… EA Sports: It’s In The Game (you bought last year)
Any platform you find corporate asshole lickers. They are the worst.
Best one of the newest releases is Street Fighter 6. Not just a full price game with a yearly season pass, which is fair for a service game and additional content, but also more frequent battle passes and the cherry on top, not only you pay for additional costumes as before, but each character has only 2 colors available. How much for a simply different RGB value you might wonder, a whopping over $100 for all colors. Didn’t buy this well executed game, because I refuse to partake in this.
This set the precedent for Mortal Kombat 1 DLC which is also filled with high cost and still charges outrageous money for new Fatalities.
At this point thought can we really victim blame? Like were all just advanced moneys and it turns out almost every monkey in this environment will get addicted and capitilists are happy to use that maliciously.
It issue is systematic at the least, and I can almost gaurentee won’t be solved in the next century by a couple people voting with just their wallets
It’s both. We are both simultaneously capable of free will, yet are also products of the universe that created us. So my answer to your question, in my humble opinion, is yes. Yes, we can victim blame while simultaneously lamenting the corporate landscape.
Let’s make this simpler. This corporate greed is a problem, yes? What actions have you taken to remove this problem?
Total and unquestionable revolution.
Just take a peek at history and the times things changed ‘peacefully’
(ghandi didn’t go on a hunger strike to look skinnier that’s for sure)
I assume because some fucking ghoul noticed people liked taking them for their cars so now we just don’t get napkins!
They were probably just out and too busy to restock or something. It happens. Never been to a fast food place where they don’t provide napkins and I steal napkins from the taco bell I live near regularly. What a weird overreaction.
Ya, this whole thread is unhinged. Very strange.
Welcome to lemmy. I hate big corporations but some of the people on this site will blame amazon when they stub their toe.
Unregulated capitalism.
const_void fighting the good fight at…checks notes… lack of napkins…….
Yes… capitalism…and not consumers who just don’t care.
You’re gonna get a lot of downvotes but people really are too pacified by binge watching Survivor while scrolling through TikTok. People don’t get angry about the shit that matters, not when it’s much easier to be angrier about Star Wars not being good anymore.
This is by far the biggest problem - most people don’t put up with that shit and will publicly murder a company that tries it on.
It’s just this one country, you know, the one with the guns, that rolls over to get their bellies scratched when the billionaires come knocking
My satellite TV (Sky TV … UK) subscription ended recently and they would not give me any sort of deal to sign a new contract, Come black Friday they a spamming me by email and every type of advert for great deals for NEW Customers only!
I called SKY to cancel and they offered me a better deal but we’re going to charge me an admin fee to sign a new contract, they wanted me to pay them to sign a contract with them!
I told them that it was not acceptable and cancel my service, having been put through to “my manager” they eventually waived the admin fee…
How has it come to this, I’m an easy customer, I am happy with the product, I’ll sign a contract if it’s a good deal, but they went out of their way to lose me
Because for every person like you that jumps through hops to get a new deal there are lots of people who just passivelly let the renewal happen under inferior conditions that they could have got if they tried.
That’s also why they put stupid hindrances in your way: such things cause many people to give up and just go along with a suboptimal renewal, ergo they make more money from acting thus than they lose from clients who say “enough is enough” and drop them (notice how you did not drop them - they lost nothing from giving you the run around and could’ve gained if you had given up and renewed with the shit conditions: it’s pretty much a can’t-loose situation for them)
I lived in then UK for over a decade and one thing that stood out when I moved from the The Netherlands to the UK (already more than 15 years ago) and from the UK to Portugal is how much more the larger consumer-facing companies in the UK did the most that they could to take advantage of people’s mistakes or laziness than in those other countries - I remember a particularly sleazy gym membership contract from Virgin were per-contract (I always read those things) the only way to cancel it before the yearly auto-renewal was to contact them during a specific week before renewal (2 weeks before end of contract if I remember it correctly), not before nor after.
Over the whole time I was there, a handful of the most outrageous abuses when it came to consumer contracts were plugged (the one I remember the best was the creation of a rental deposit insurance to stop tenants from losing their deposits at the end of the rental agreement, as before that landlords would often just keep it all for no reason and then the only option the tenant had was take it to Court) but the whole posture of taking advantage of costumer laziness and normal mistakes (auch as, forgetting a date for canceling and auto-renewal) was widespread in the UK compared to other countries I lived in.
As it so happens, people themselves were also to blame: I remember how amazed the rental agency guy was that I actually read the Rental Agreement and even demanded corrections before I signed anything - “Nobody reads these”, he said - when even at the massive daily rate I was paid back then for my work it was still worth it to spend the 1 or 2 hours reading a contract were I was assuming a commiment of at least £15k (at the time a “reasonable” London rent for a year).
Me in your position would’ve just said “fuck this”, cancelled SKY and gone without (and I have done it for some things were I felt the other side had abused my trust, such as closing my account with my first bank in the UK the one and only time I was charged an overdraft fee), mainly because my early adult years happenned mostly in The Netherlands so I have their style of demanding consumer rather than the more passive and willing to overlook these things style common it the UK.
Because your rights have been eroded by decades of deregulation and lobbying. And because publicly traded companies are legally required to maximize profits at all costs.
We’re in a modern gilded age. There are no consequences for modern day robber barons.
Taco bell has switched their demographic from dining in, to take out and drive thru. Started with the pandemic, that’s why most stuff that used to be readily available isn’t put out anymore. All the taco bells in my area did this, same with several other fast food chains.
Why I don’t eat out as much is because of the shrinkflation. Back in the mid 90’s you used to be able to get a whopper for a dollar. Now they’re pushing $6 and they just aren’t the same anymore. More if you get a meal.
Because the corporations write the rules. Literally; laws are written by corps and presented to lawmakers along with “gifts” and “campaign donations” - and implicit quid pro quo. They then present them to be voted upon, sometimes without even bothering to read them.
Exactly that. We are run by corporations more so than our elected officials. A lot of people fail to fully understand this fact. Corporations and capitalism is the answer to why everything sucks.
Do you really have to ask? Capitalism, when it goes unchecked, turns everything shitty. Capitalism has been relatively unchecked in the US for the last 50 years, so everything is shitty. That’s starting to change as unions become more powerful again, but they’re still a fraction of what they were in the early 20th century. Late stage capitalism, baby!
Not only are unions enjoying a resurgence holding employers to account, the FTC under Lina Khan is doing antitrust for the first time in most of our lifetimes. It’s bad now, but it will get better if we fight for it like we did back then.
mArXiSm
go actually read Marx, dude was smart af.
Did you ask if they had some napkins? Yes we are living in a post capitalist nightmare but honestly, seems more likely the wage slave in charge of putting out the napkins either hadn’t had a chance to do so or forgot.
If there’s an empty napkin dispenser, that would be my assumption. But it’s been happening more often and at more places that no, they don’t even have dispensers, you need to ask for napkins.
Capitalism is the answer. Greed, unchecked profits.
Theres a few problems
- Companies trying to maximize profits
- Corrupt political systems lets companies exploit their workers and customers alike
- Supply chains have been getting disrupted more and more. “Just in time” and getting “just enough” supplies no longer works well. A lot of stuff gets delayed or out of stock
- We expect unlimited resources on a finite planet. Whether its plastic junk, useless tech, or food we expect it to be available 24/7/365
A big one that you missed is
It’s socially acceptable and even encouraged for companies to fuck their customers. People assume that not being fucked over by a company means that company isn’t doing well.
