Capitilism is rigged. Using working in retail as an example

[Segus1992]

I am fortunate enough to live in a country with freedoms and the ability to choose your lifestyle and career. And education too if you can afford it.

However I also live in a country with incredibly high suicide rates/depression/violence/crime

Why is that? in a land of opportunity do we still see the same rates of poverty and general social status where only a few excel and most wallow in their own pits of poverty.

I dont claim to be a expert politically or a business analyst but I have a lot of experience working in retail which is the basic model of modern capitalism.

Why is it the worker bee's, the people at the bottom do all the work, and the few at the top thats jobs consist of mostly sitting in on meetings and listening to phone calls and they never spend a 12 hour shift working on their feet on concrete tiles take over 95% of the profits and you get such large inconsistency from the top to the bottom even though you are all working towards the same goal, a successful company.

Or let alone cleaners of malls who literally shovel shift and earn less in a year than a CEO makes in a month.

It just all seems so rigged to me and it makes me depressed at the state of the world.

More important individuals are valued higher than expendable workers. They've deserved their position through one way or another.

[Cæli]

Seeming is incorrect. It is. Capitalism is the most destructive idea humanity has ever subscribed to in thought and practice.

still a lower level of slavery compared to a slavery to the state. you don't want to be a slave of a country with an army. you really don't want that. in practice, there's no better solution currently, coupled with a state.

[RobertoCarlos]

More important individuals are valued higher than expendable workers. They've deserved their position through one way or another.

I never said people shouldnt be valued.

Its the scales that are fucked up.

People at the top taking not just the sunday, but the nuts and cherry too.

And companies devour each other in competition and merge/buy out to the point you get monopolies and then they can run away with it.

if it wasnt for government and laws corporations would skin you dry as much as they could

And if governemnt was completely unbiased and free of corruption it wouldnt be such a big deal but that isnt the case is it

[spanishninja]

Im not saying people with more responsibilities shouldnt be paid more. But the scales of the people at the top is too dramatic.

Its not like most managers/bosses do that much more beyond having their cell phone turned on after work hours. And any manager worth their salt has the business working smoothly enough you dont need to demand so much extra of your staff

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Fast food outlets like mcdonalds/ petrol stations/ supermarkets are already going towards self serve.

Pretty obvious where this is all heading.

More responsibilities does not just mean having more to do. It also means having more important things to do. At your retail position, any mistakes you make are going to be very inconsequential to the success of the business. To a CEO, every decision that gets pushed to them could break the company if they act incorrectly, or even if unforeseen circumstances render their then-correct actions ultimately detrimental. This is why CEOs are offered golden parachutes in the first place when they take the job. They need significant incentives put in place to even TOUCH the sort of high-risk work that would be required of them.

[Molis]

99% of my front liners would fold after a week in my job, and I am only Manager level (not CEO)

[PaladinBash]

You're just learning that working hard is a sucker trap and that you've been a sucker your whole life. That's good, it means you're aware of it. Now you can do something about it. You're still in the brainlet/communist scrub idea of 'changing the system', something that not only hard and impossible but if you could somehow do it, you would only achieve making shit worse for everyone else and while your 5 minutes of awareness are shocking to you, it absolutely can get worse for everyone, including yourself. Thankfully commies are just mindless tools and lack any actual power themselves and will never really get anywhere in the west. Only the greedy selfish conmen among them ever get anything which is a delicious irony.

So no, don't work hard. Ever. Yeah sure, some executives absolutely do work hard because they have a mentality that lets them thrive in those conditions. You are not an executive. You are not thriving. Do as little as possible and get through the lazy underhanded cunning way. I would say "be exceptional" or "grow your skills" but that's hard and face it, if you're ready to embrace communism after 5 minutes of figuring out that hard work is for suckers, you aren't exceptional and you're not going to grow any marketable skills. Do as little as possible to not get sacked. Find something nobody else does at your workplace and do that and nothing else. Make friends with your bosses and rivals. Play the game if you must but do everything you can to get out of as much as you can. You would be amazed how everyone in every workplace hates the guy who does nothing but is still there or worse, gets ahead of them. They resent this person more than anyone because he is smarter than them and reveals to them their own stupidity in working hard. Be that guy. Pretty much everyone can be that guy, you just have to genuinely put yourself first and play the game.

[Kasierith]

Seeming is incorrect. It is. Capitalism is the most destructive idea humanity has ever subscribed to in thought and practice.

]https://i.imgur.com/mj52rCWl.jpg

I'll keep that in mind the next time I talk to my granduncle about what living through Stalin's purges was like.

[PC2]

I think saying that there will be a economic crisis is pretty much a guaranteed because we have a history of cyclical crashes. The real trick would be to say how this crisis would come about but they aren't saying anything ground breaking.

I have heard that cyclical meme repeated a lot. But I don't think there is any rule that guarantees economic crisis or prosperity. It depends on people's daily choices. Which can't be scientifically predicted by economists.

[Segus1992]

I never said people shouldnt be valued.

Its the scales that are fucked up.

People at the top taking not just the sunday, but the nuts and cherry too.

And companies devour each other in competition and merge/buy out to the point you get monopolies and then they can run away with it.

if it wasnt for government and laws corporations would skin you dry as much as they could

And if governemnt was completely unbiased and free of corruption it wouldnt be such a big deal but that isnt the case is it

The reason this happens is that we have way too many people able to do the shitty menial tasks, and far fewer able (with appropriate qualifications) to do the valued positions. Because so many people are available for the shitty jobs, and because they need jobs anyway, companies are allowed to treat their workers how they want. If the workers don't like it they can leave, problem is that leaving isn't something anyone has the luxury of being able to do even if it's technically totally allowed.

In short, without better politics, we need fewer people.

[Ruminations]

If someone wants to work 120 hours a week and have a complete work-life imbalance and die prematurely from a stroke, let them. I'm sure the millions that they're earning as CEO will be waiting for them in the afterlife.

[Choloz]

because your job doesn't require an education (both internal knowledge of the store and general ed). all you need are social skills, which you learn in kindergarten. if you can't do the job, then you're easily replaced. there's a need for consistency with higher level jobs, because they have a working relationship with all of the employees, wholesalers, corporate, etc. they make decisions, they move parts around. you don't; you break cash and smile at customers

[exochaft]

If you think that so little is required to enter management or higher than management, it somewhat begs the question; why don't you become the CEO of a company?

I don't even mean "dude become Jeff Bezos in the next year or gtfo". Start your own business and see if you can make it work. If you can, you'll be earning a lot more than a retail shlub.

People that tend to badmouth capitalism likely have never been in a position of high responsibility in a company, or likely haven't even started or run their own company or started a business. It's not easy. At all. Especially if you're just starting out creating a new business, as you'll likely be putting in 80-100 hr weeks at the minimum with little/no pay for yourself for months or maybe years on end. Even then, there's a high chance of failure, as rising to success doesn't mean you stay there. People see successful companies, then fail to realize or give credit to the vast amount of time and effort (and money) that went into making the company successful.

Retail generally doesn't pay well because anyone can literally do it, and there's no shortage of people who will take the jobs. It's an entry-level job, it's not a career job unless you work your way up the ladder to some sort of manager or franchise owner potentially. If you took your average entry-level retail worker and threw them into a high level position in a corporation, they would fail miserably if the stress and weight of responsibility didn't kill them first. If those who think that these top-level jobs are easy and that anyone could do it, then their pay and benefits would be drastically lower than they are.

[Draco-Onis]

I have heard that cyclical meme repeated a lot. But I don't think there is any rule that guarantees economic crisis or prosperity. It depends on people's daily choices. Which can't be scientifically predicted by economists.

But people don't change so all economists have to do is predict the timing but the cycle will continue unless by some miracle human nature stops for some reason.

[Super Kami Dende]

Except that is just a fantasy not reality, the CEO gets paid insane sums of money because everyone on the board are his buddies who will rubber stamp his raise. He is not accountable when the performance tanks because no one holds him responsible, if he bankrupts the company he will get a golden parachute even a bail out if he is too big to fail.

He doesn't have to be hyper efficient, work all the time or smart he just has to know the right people to golf with on weekends. That mythical CEO you describe is the exception usually a founder most are not that because they don't care as much.

I think you've never actually met a CEO or seen how Boards and such work.

[Draco-Onis]

People that tend to badmouth capitalism likely have never been in a position of high responsibility in a company, or likely haven't even started or run their own company or started a business. It's not easy. At all. Especially if you're just starting out creating a new business, as you'll likely be putting in 80-100 hr weeks at the minimum with little/no pay for yourself for months or maybe years on end. Even then, there's a high chance of failure, as rising to success doesn't mean you stay there. People see successful companies, then fail to realize or give credit to the vast amount of time and effort (and money) that went into making the company successful.

Being a founder or a small business owner is not the same as being a CEO of a publicly traded company (see Sears, Theranos, Sears, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Equifax, major banks during the financial crisis). I don't think most people think of people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or a small business owners when they think of of things like this.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I live a pretty good life in a pretty hard core capitalist nation. I am not a CEO or anything. Just a middle tier guy that went to school, worked my way though several jobs, and settled into a position that I am needed in. I just don't go though life trying to get rich. I just am interested in making ends meet and occasional growth. Not that hard. I just see a lot of punks these days thinking they should go from broke to baller within 6 months and if they don't it is somehow societies fault.

[spanishninja]

Being a founder or a small business owner is not the same as being a CEO of a publicly traded company (see Sears, Theranos, Sears, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Equifax, major banks during the financial crisis). I don't think most people think of people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or a small business owners when they think of of things like this.

It may actually be more difficult to take over the role of CEO in an established company vs one that you built yourself. Corporate America is all about incremental growth, where each year the company is expected to do a certain percentage better than the year before, in order to meet the operating plan. Under these expectations, you are forced to work with whatever resources available (which to be frank is likely to be shit in the case of a company that just got rid of its last CEO) and navigate completely new bureaucracy and company politics, to achieve a well defined goal in a limited timeframe. And let's say you hit it out of the park one year with higher than expected growth; guess what, you just made your work next year even more difficult. You simply don't have those sorts of expectations working retail or some other minimum wage job. Almost half of all CEOs last fewer than five years, and median tenure has been steadily decreasing.

Being a CEO is definitely not an easy job.

[Draco-Onis]

It may actually be more difficult to take over the role of CEO in an established company vs one that you built yourself. Corporate America is all about incremental growth, where each year the company is expected to do a certain percentage better than the year before, in order to meet the operating plan. Under these expectations, you are forced to work with whatever resources available (which to be frank is likely to be shit in the case of a company that just got rid of its last CEO) and navigate completely new bureaucracy and company politics, to achieve a well defined goal in a limited timeframe. And let's say you hit it out of the park one year with higher than expected growth; guess what, you just made your work next year even more difficult. You simply don't have those sorts of expectations working retail or some other minimum wage job. Almost half of all CEOs last fewer than five years, and median tenure has been steadily decreasing.

Being a CEO is definitely not an easy job.

That theory only works if the board which are most likely your buddies hold you accountable, the reality is the C suite has bred a culture where the position is more political than actual work done or performance. There's a rather long list of companies whose CEOs pay continues to go up even as their numbers continue to tank.

[PosPosPos]

Perhaps, but when people suggest the best way to counter corporatism is to institute socialism it feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Yeah well, those are the....special exceptions.

Most of us stick to certain aspects of socialism rather than suggest replacing capitalism entirely per se.

[PC2]

But people don't change

People change constantly. That's the point of being born and growing up. And for countries to improve their laws over time.

so all economists have to do is predict the timing but the cycle will continue unless by some miracle human nature stops for some reason.

Economic predictions can never be perfected though, that's called hubris. "A tiny group of elites who know best" is also dangerous and undemocratic.