Obviously the corporate class seeks exponential growth at all costs. From that perspective the most evil actions will make a kind of internal sense. But what doesn't make sense is that so many of the decisions made by major Western corporations seem actively self-destructive. It's almost the equivalent of internal sabotage or following spectacularly bad advice, yet they all seem to be doing it.
You can see it across the auto industry, fast food, retail, entertainment. pretty much everywhere. Like If I were an amoral, profit-maximizing CEO, I'd focus on keeping my customer base in the imperial core happy, well-fed, and dependent, while paying workers in the developing world as little as possible and using coercion to suppress resistance if necessary. That would at least be internally consistent with maximizing profits. Instead companies keep raising prices, cutting quality and generally making life worse for their own customers. These decisions aren't just going to fuck them over in the long term, they're imploding their businesses right now, yet they all keep making them anyway. This trend seems to have accelerated after COVID. What happened?
>>2867494> But what doesn't make sense is that so many of the decisions made by major Western corporations seem actively self-destructive. Thousands and thousands of professionals working day and night against your feels and vibes about their decisions.
>>2867520“Professionals” that slept through their college courses that barely taught them and got there by having a friend’s uncle give them a reference
no one seems to be aware of this, certainly not anyone on the left, but we've long since in the west passed through the historical stage (in a dialectical materialist sense) of capital where it has the ability to innovate and develop the productive forces. this process was already underway towards the end of the 70s where you started having various crises that followed in the wake of the various failed revolutions of the late 60s and early 70s, and the answer to this was neoliberalism, in which the ability for capital to innovate and build anything was entirely abandoned in favor of what is essentially a scam: financialization mutated capital into being pure speculation, a casino for the rich that is kept on life support by draining the coffers of 20th century neoimperialism and then scraping the bottom of the barrel by exerting increasingly more downward pressure on the relatively wealthy first-world proletariat, because there simply is nowhere else for the productive forces in the developed world to go at this point.
there is even increasingly less to exploit in the third world now that it's begun to develop its own productive forces and go from being an entirely economically and geopolitically marginalized entity to a real force to be reckoned with (as the Iran War and the so-called Chinese Century demonstrate). we're currently in the stage where capital is cannibalizing itself and its apparatuses of power (i.e. the bourgeois liberal democratic state) in order to keep the speculation going. capital and the bourgeois state not only no longer have the ability to innovate or develop the productive forces but are no materially no longer to even act in their own self-interests, because its contradictions can only be resolved by socialism; there is simply nowhere else for us to go as a civilization without socialism. the Trump regime, private equity, "enshittification", the general self-destructive ineptitude and societal decay of the west and particularly the US are all exemplary of this; we've quite literally reached a "socialism or barbarism" stage where we either will transition to socialism one way or another or will start to see a slow collapse and regression, or possibly an unevenly distributed mix of both.
>>2867520>>2867528But they weren't this retarded less than a decade ago. they only care about themselves and their profits and this is objectively losing them money.
>>2867536I think it’s because profit rates are so low that it’s genuinely not worth the effort to make correct decisions
>>2867535Iran and China are different beasts compared to most of the third world. Many third world countries are hybrid regimes with two entrenched, corrupt political parties (and sometimes a military establishment that takes its own cut). Neither side wants to rock the boat, so the country stagnates while public services deteriorate and people live in Shit. Iran and China by contrast have centralized vanguard-style leaderships that can actually push through major political and economic changes.
>>2867535 (me)
and as for covid, all it really did was accelerate processes that were already underway. a good example of this is that a lot of businesses never recovered from their pre-covid hours even though there are lots of people who are desperate to work and unable to find jobs, because it turns out that you can simply choose to not have a business that functions as what its nominal purpose is and still be able to game the system to make money. this is what private equity is, why it's such a cancer that is materially reactionary in a dialectical sense, and why it's often said that McDonald's is in the real estate business and not in the business of selling burgers.
>>2867539they're undoubtedly the vanguard of what I'm describing but unless you believe the western propaganda about how China is doing neoimperialism by investing in infrastructure in Africa, it's a rising tide lifting all boats sort of situation as far as I can tell, and it also works the other way. for instance, the Iran War in particular has done a lot to erode any confidence the comprador third world states (e.g. the Gulf States) previously had that by capitulating to western interests they would benefit as junior partners of imperialism. the US has thus far in Trump's second term shown itself to be a totally inept decrepit empire and I expect this is only going to embolden to more radical nationalist groups in the third world to push for greater sovereignty and third world solidarity against western neoimperialism. I know BRICS is sort of a meme but that and the decline of the petrodollar in the wake of the Iran War are again further examples of where things are likely headed unless the US manages to somehow rally itself from all of this and not continue to stab itself to death and possibly take down the entire world's economy with it.
Because America's economic model since the end of the Cold War has been built around perpetual growth. During the Cold War capitalism in the West was kept in check by the existence of the Eastern block. The social protections and welfare policies adopted by governments in were implemented out of fear that socialism would become seem appealing. Once that threat disappeared in the 90s, governments gradually rolled back many of those protections.
It was always going to eventually happen after any sort of major depression and despite the post-COVID economic downturn corporations are still chasing exponential growth even though it isn't materially possible. The executivess can't change course because any slowdown means the stock price or quarterly earnings might dip, even temporarily and "the line going down" is treated as unacceptable. Normally, governments might step in to cushion the effects, but that can't happen anymore and now these companies are now with problems created by their own decisions. Meanwhile corporations that have been more sensible(or simply less retarded) are gaining an advantage with American and broader Western consumers.
>>2867494> focus on keeping my customer base in the imperial core happy, well-fed, and dependent,ML's are so retarded that they believe in trickledown economics lmao
Because they hired a bunch of low autism score non whites
I believe it is because capitalism is designed for infinite growth. That's not going to happen anymore though. After COVID, governments around the world tried doing what they had done always: stimulating demand. However, unlike previous recessions, COVID also affected supply, not just demand. There were less workers in the US, China, Europe, *everywhere*, because of all the casualties from the virus, and low birth rates.
This caused inflation, which caused wars and political instability, which caused even more inflation. Eventually the governments of the world got inflation under control, at the expense of now having very low, and sometimes negative, economic growth. And again, people realizing their standards of living aren't improving anymore, or in many cases, are going down, will cause even more instability.
>>2867608 (me)
That said, I very seriously have my doubts that the situation will improve. The world has become very reactionary in response, seeking to blame an "other", rather than fix the underlying problem.
One wonders if a slow decline is the destiny of our world.
>>2867603How is that trickledown economics?
>>2867603Man shut the fuck up fed. Go choke to death on Trump's farts the say hi to Moloch along with McConnell.
>>2867494COVID supply shocks accelerated the global decline in profit rates, making traditional growth and investment non-viable. Global corporations recognize this and have spent the past five years flailing about trying to course correct, either by cannibalizing themselves through layoffs and cutbacks, plowing money into speculation in AI/crypto/real estate, or developing rent-seeking schemes to generate revenue.
>>2867844pretty much this on the macro scale.
on the micro scale you have ever rising attrition of the work force, thus losing ever more knowledge about how shit actually works in a given organization and ever more bloated 'IT solutions' for problems that are organizational/social and thus can't be solved by shelling out hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions to accenture/hcl/infosys etc. to build yet another frankenstein in SAP.
>>2867876That's why they're investing so much in AI. They don't care how many billions they lose (I think Meta has already spent around $300 billion on its AI efforts) because they believe that once they have it, they can lay most of their employees.
>>2867876What do you think is causing attrition of the work force on the micro level? Boomers retiring?
>>2867535remember though, theoretically it would be possible to restore the rate of profit by literally nuking the planet lol, creative destruction indeed
In America every generation is worse than the last. The average Silent Generation man was tough and resourceful. Millennials and Gen-Zers are morons. It's not true in other countries, of course. Look at China. I wonder if they'll degrade like the West as they get rich or if the Tiger Mom culture BS will stem the tide? It just seems like whenever you raise up middle class professionals they eventually want to destroy the system that created them. See the New Deal and the USSR.
>>2867970I remember watching a documentary about poor black American kids trying to make it in basketball. The documentary went out of its way to emphasize the terrible conditions those teens lived in, but from my perspective it was almost surreal. They were living in huge houses that most people here could never afford unless they were wealthy landlords. Their fridges had food, their streets were paved and clean, the lights stayed on, the gas worked, they had air conditioning running in the middle of the day.
I'm from Pakistan and even many upper-middle-class families here don't run their ACs continuously. We usually use them only for short periods because of the insanely high and inconsistent energy costs. This is the middle class neighborhood I grew up in.
>>2867912>What do you think is causing attritionShitty wages, shitty working conditions, shitty managers, shitty environment altogether. As to why this is the way it is I see three broad categories.
For one the 'Macro political': undermining workers' solidarity and power. There is little chance to bond with people you barely get to know before either them or you yourself move on to the next job, be it out of volition or because of being given the boot. Thus there is little to no organization within a work force and thus little risk of the workforce fighting for better pay or working conditions.
For another 'Micro economical' flat out financial incentives. Young, inexperienced employees are way cheaper than old and experienced ones. This is why in the lay off bonanzas of recent years, it often is the old timers who are bought off with nice compensation packages to tune the books and make your organization appear more 'lean'.
Thirdly, rather 'intrapolitical' for a given organization: old employees are experienced and as the adage goes 'knowledge is power'. Manager types are afraid of employees who have more knowledge, both professionally regarding a given domain they work in and politically, given the organization they are in. So its best to get rid of those.
This is just broad strokes and as you can see, there is of course quite some overlap and interdependency under even the three points i listed. High attrition also is desirable on the macro level because with low job security, thus high attrition, there is more pressure on workers to take shitty jobs and accept shitty conditions as a shitty job still is preferable to living under a bridge.
Basically nothing Marx or Engels didn't write about anyways. To span the bow to the initial OP, which i agree with in its notion: after decades of neoliberalism and 'modern management practices', the chickens are coming home to roost, so to say. The 'too big to fail' monopolies are completely hollowed out by attrition, thus loss of knowledge, and financialization and it's only inertia that kept them moving forward before coming to a screeching hold and imploding.
>>2867925Probably not helped by the UAW fighting EV programs and supporting trade protectionism in order to keep domestic union jobs.
>>2867985>>2867985Yeah dont ever feel bad about americans or even african-americans talking about "hardship"
Theyre all immensely privileged compared to literally everyone else on the planet.
Covid is well known to cause brain damage comparable to a TBI. It made us all physically stupider as a society.
>>2867494Because capitalists will throw everything away for short-term gain even if it means losing everything in the long-term.
>>2868331I mean sure, but I’m also not gonna stand in the way of black and spanish people trying to fight for said privileged communities either
>>2868339I mean from my perspective I don't see much difference between the privileged communities or the hoods in America.
>>2868552
That's Islamabad, the top 5%. An upper-middle-class neighborhood there would be something like gulshan-e-Jamal. From my perspective any area that doesn't have begging or mutilated children, piles of trash and has reliable gas and electricity feels like a luxury.
>>2868556Alright, thanks.
It's a bit harder to look up info on pakistan, especially rural areas,
The US, due to its overvalued currency and strong lobbying from its financial and service sector, deliberately pursues policies that hamper it's manufacturing competitiveness in order to boost financial and service sector profits.
As a result, it's difficult for American manufacturing companies to make profits without outsourcing and/or or enshittifying it's products. The reason the US does this is that it's position as global reserve currency, strong tech industry and financial dominance creates strong incentives to support these sectors. Also, due to TRPF domestic manufacturing is just inherently low profit.
But at the same time, losing manufacturing capability makes it difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominance and ability to make profits. So eventually something has to give and some of the profits in financial and service sector must go into supporting manufacturing. This can be done in two main ways - direct and indirect taxation to transfer profits from one sector to another, as well as reducing cost of living by reducing "soft costs" (healthcare, housing, insurance, education) so that more money can be spent on physical goods. The second part is also a transfer of income from financial/service sector to manufacturing.
The problem of course, is that the financial/service sector is still dominant and is heavily opposed to any actual efforts in that direction, which is why we only have lip service and incompetent tarriff-based nonsense from Trump so far.
>>2867985>>2868272>>2868541>>2868553Sure you're totally from pakistan and totally not a western glowie pretending to be one. It is extremely easy to pretend to be from a third-world country on a imageboard.
>>2868563I don't live in a rural area, I live in Karachi
>>2868573acha bhai mai totally aik amreki agent ho
>>2868659aside from the stacks of cinder blocks and bricks that seem to be all over I'm kinda struck more by the normalcy.
Anywhere I should look in particular?
>>2868711just any street in karachi, it's one of the largest cities on the planet, 30 million people
>>2868659>acha bhai mai totally aik amreki agent hoIt's also very easy to put something in google translate to pretend to be fluent in a language so you can pretend to be from another country.
>>2869269That user's IP does read as being in Karachi for whatever that's worth. It's not impossible to find someone from outside the west online you know.
>>2867535yet another instance where the best marxist analysis comes from an-nils
idk why i use this fossil flag. are there any good recent theoretical works from this bloc? nihilist communism is a must-read on here. I find myself agreeing with the encylopedie des nuisances types about stuff
>>2867494>What happened?TRPF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall>>2867535>neoliberalism, in which the ability for capital to innovate and build anything was entirely abandoned in favor of what is essentially a scamThere were innovations. The '90s info-tech boom (and its aftershocks with Uber/social media slop and now AI) and also the biomedical revolution were notable. Melinda Cooper wrote about stuff like Monsanto patents of biology
>>2867970>the stereotypical Gen X angst was rooted in the feeling that there was too much abundance and security, that life somehow "sucked" because they had to show up every day to a clean, comfortable office cubicle, which was treated as if it were its own kind of hell.nu metal like Korn = working class chud music for the pioneer footsoldiers of the satanic empire
hipster alt-rock like The Strokes = petite bourgeois cannibal settler music for the downwardly mobile Jeffrey Epstein PMC class
>>2867536Tbh a lot of corporations probably ARE more incompetent now, in large part because of the exodus of older professionals from the economy in the wake of covid, and the prevalence of the opposition to all the aspects of a healthy corporate culture that would lead to both cultivating competence in a workforce as well as creating a resilient social structure to perpetuate that.
For example, one of the current corporate culture's most cherished ideas is that knowledge and people are perfectly fungible. There's no effort to keep those with institutional knowledge because the idea that people or individuals are essential or necessary is anathema to the principle that anyone can be discarded at any time and replaced at will. You can see this manifested in the drive for AI, where things like human creativity which requires the accumulation and development of a great deal of knowledge and experience is attempting to be mechanized out of existence.
Tl;dr: competency is disappearing because those that had it have left the industry and the mechanisms for transferring that competency have atrophied or been intentionally degraded.
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