I’ll reply more later but I mostly agree with you, and I think they’ve figured out (correctly) that desperation can block organizing. Plenty in the working class may be willing to risk being beaten by cops to organize and protest and try to get a fair deal, but if they can’t afford to miss a couple paychecks and still feed their kids, that they can’t risk. The union leaders need to squirrel away enough money to cover that type of expense for their workers if any of that is going to work.
I’m also extremely pessimistic about it breaking in a way that has a good outcome or a fix, and I have near zero hope that people will come together collectively. My focus at this point is almost entirely on trying to get my fiancee and I to a place of financial security long-term, then deciding what the best use of our time is. I view that as basically existential, and anything that pulls us away from that goal (like say door knocking for candidates) is a “jokes on me” waste of time.
So far every time it breaks, the solution is to put more fear and desperation into the underclass.
Boy this sums up my thoughts on just about everything these days. Not only does it feel like everything is engineered to squeeze me, but like, every public company is legally obligated to max squeeze. Beautiful stuff.
I would argue they’re not, because as an investor and a shareholder that’s usually not what I want. I don’t want two quarters or six quarters or five years of the best earnings possible, followed by downside. I want the company to have happy returning customers for 20, 30, 50 years.
I keep seeing this trend play out where a company grabs a bunch of market share by being the best at service or offering the best product, then they can’t juice their earnings anymore so they cut quality. I expect this to backfire at some point. I view Starbucks as ripe for the taking because their quality has dropped off, Caribou Coffee is WAY better because they use better (aka real) ingredients, and others are too I’m sure. Our Verizon service has been shit for months and we’re going to change when we get the opportunity.
I would argue that every CEO of a public company is personally incentivized to max squeeze in the short-term, and more focused on the short-term than the long term because of uncertainty.
But yes, totally agree it feels like everything is engineered to max squeeze me, you, and everybody.
You are of course technically correct (the best kind!) and a company could and should choose to not exert maximum leverage against their customers if it maximized shareholder value. But lol milk me daddy.
As I sit here high, watching the 49ers beating the Giants while also rereading this thread, I started thinking how good an airport hamburger would be right now.
It’s easy to forget that he actually is a far right piece of shit who deeply believes. And victimhood is one of the two core tenants of conservatism, the other obviously being racism.
Murdoch broke human politics for decades, he found the hack that makes democracy impossible. And he’s probably the biggest single reason America is doing nothing about climate change.
