So I propose a solution:
We start and fund a non-profit organization designed to produce basic living essentials and sell it at the cost to manufacture, regardless of market pressures. Then we all collectively buy from this non-profit and have a functional means of production legally owned and controlled by the people.
Set up strict rules to ban anyone who has ever worked in any upper management position in any for-profit basic essentials producing company from ever holding any position of power in the non-profit. No one from the corporate world at all. No one from any position in state or federal government. No lobbyists or consultants or members of their think tanks or any of their goons.
Use open source designs for the factories and everyone in the community works together to automate them as much as is possible.
Sounds an awful lot like communism to me.
I’m in.
I’m surprised no one here has organized something like this yet.
I’m sure the ruling class would get rid of it pretty quickly.
How would they go about it, do you think? Is there a legal way such a thing could be shut down?
They banned collective bargaining, they can ban anything
You need a lot of money to start something like this, money that usually comes from investors who are expecting a return at some point. And if it gets started with too little funding, the big competitors can afford to sell at a loss for a while to force it out of business.
Something like this would have to be organized by a government, and consequently won’t happen under capitalism. Because if a government would be willing to go to that length, they could just as easily punish the companies currently profiting of off people’s misery.
Yes this is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time, I think it’s basically inevitable that it’ll happen eventually but an actual effort to make it happen faster would be such a positive thing in the world.
The reason I say it’s inevitable is because design tools are getting consistently better, hardware is cheaper than ever, and ever more useful stuff is being added to the commons. With ai assisted CAD and ai assisted manufacture we’re going to see so many amazing new open source designs getting built.
People are going to start moving away from for-profit designed homegoods like washing machines and printers because they’ll be able to get a community designed and tested product modified to their specific needs and tastes then have that fabricated at whatever local firm or tinkerer you want to give your business to.
the world will end before this will happen. You’d get killed if you tried it. Good luck though.
I don’t really get where the money is coming from.
By selling the products like any other manufacturer? The startup costs are the main issue, but people crowd source things all the time, no reason this couldn’t work in theory.
I’m down
You’ll have to make the way the non profit organisation is run or organised, also impossible to gather autocracy in.
Not just hard, impossible. No one should be able to mess with any aspects of the nonprofit, incorruptible, people-owned, affordable (NIPA) organisation.
And even if it is hard and not impossible, it should be made such that it is easier to get back to that situation, than to remove any of the NIPA aspects.
Yep, a huge portion of this recent ‘inflation’ is not cost increases or actual inflation… just basically the wealthy class turning the screws on everyone else because they can.
Don’t worry, my Econ 101 class states that surely a competitor will come in and operate at a lower cost to recoup that cost for the customers!
Wait… what do you mean the competitors are all increasing prices by the same amount knowing demand for diapers is inelastic and the Nash equilibrium is for them to all match price increases so that they all make more money together?
Surely a new entrant will help!
Wait… what do you mean nobody will invest in a new competitor because the market is “saturated” and even if they did the big brands would just decrease prices in the areas they operate until they run out of cash and fold?
Surely a regulator will help!
Wait… what do you mean the regulators feel price increases are due to “too much demand” for products and are turning the screws on consumers?
you turn the screws you tear down the bridge, flimsy as it is, it’s business-like
“But people are still out here buying staples and maxing out their credit cards, so we can turn the screws just a bit more, right? Right?”
-Rich People Probably
“There still aren’t enough homeless people. We can keep going.”
What’s terribly sad about that is we’re genuinely reaching crisis levels in some cities. These people need housing *with functioning plumbing stat.
I don’t understand people’s hesitance to house them because it’s like… all you people do is complain about them existing and wanting them “out of your downtown.” Well shit, it’s my downtown too and their downtown as well and all I want is for them to be housed, and holy shit that actually solves your whole fucking complaint because now they’re not in “your” downtown.
The amount of human feces that has to be cleaned daily in some cities is genuinely approaching crisis levels. It’s literally a public health emergency. It absolutely can get to the level where enough fecal matter is in a general area that large amounts of bacteria will be floating in the air, and people can end up getting ill from food that this bacteria has landed on. No direct contact with feces needed, once it has reached that level. We don’t want it to reach that level.
There’s my rant about how absolutely fucked the homeless situation is, because its inhumane and should be classified as “cruel and unusual punishment” in my opinion.
They literally lock up the baby formula in a cage at my local grocery stores now. You know, so criminal scum with starving babies don’t pillage them.
If that doesn’t signal imminent collapse I don’t know what does.
The devil’s advocate in me says that dealers often cut drugs with formula so there’s at least one other reason to keep it locked, but I don’t know how well that statement holds up under scrutiny, because it’s not like they check to see if you actually have a baby when you buy formula, and it’s probably not worth the risk to steal it as opposed to just buying it with the kind of return you’d get from diluting your product.
And yeah, I see razor blades, shampoo, and fucking laundry soap under lock and key in stores all the time. Nobody’s cutting drugs with any of those. Shit’s getting real fucked up.
I’ve heard the baby formula drug thing before, but I find it hard to believe you can’t mix it with something cheaper like regular powdered milk or flour.
A lot of this stuff is easily resellable down your local flat-roofed pub, and there’s practically no punishment for shoplifting.
Formula tins have a tamper-evident seal.
Someone should have Robert Reich be their vice president. He could come out every second day and rip into some fucking companies for the shit they do to keep dragging the whole world down.
I didn’t realize Sam Reich’s dad was so cool
I keep waiting for Robert Reich to end up on Game Changer somehow. I want to see the two of them make some shenanigans happen.
Having him deliver the “I’ve been here the whole time” would be incredible haha
Shareholder primacy is upheld by the state putting every publicly owned company antagonistic to its workers and customers, id est, the public.
This means the companies are forced to charge what the market will bear, and it’s the responsibility of the government to regulate prices to keep things affordable.
But this means lobbying by companies is an attack on the public. (It’s highly profitable to bribe officials and should be illegal. It also means officials who take lobby money are traitors to the public, the nation and their office, whether or not doing so is legal.
So the justification for bullets is there, and has been for several decades. We’re just not very good at seeing when we have nothing left to lose.
I wonder what it would take to convince people to fight for what is right.
The inflation we are experiencing is artificial
In other news, guillotine futures are up 20% in Q3.
research “diaper inflation” for more
My ex-favorite tea brands silently cutting 20% of tea bags in the box and raised the price 15%, while keeping the same sized box and make the printed weight and contents smaller and harder to find.
And people call me crazy for getting frustrated.
Employee wage increase? Or is that calculated in operating expenses?
The amount of people making babies is degreasing, but the company must grow
Yes, the CEO needs more baby oil to keep the old gears turning.
OpEx includes all salaries.
Corporations. Do. Not. Care.
Make. Them. Care.
Not sure how exactly, but I was inspired by your assertive capitalization.
Fire does the trick when applied at the right spots.
I mean, this is what happens when you give these vultures the freedom to do whatever they want!
yeh critical (since they (electorates in my ciuntry since 1970s) empowered banks with all the investment decisions) that those banks see more short term profit (and balance sheet growth), from business loans to small businesses than mortgages, consumer credit, and AAA large corp debt.
Otherwise any potential regulation fron competition is strangled.
unfortunately banks seem to prefer morgtgages over a productive/competetive economy for some really hard to predict reason . . .
I think it was a big mistake to let commercial banks into morgages, i think consumer credit should be heavily limited, and there should be some small business/local limitations on banks, so that they invest some % directly in diverse competetive economy in the places near to where their creditors live. (I know hard to regulate, but harder than regulating a mutinational bank . . .?)
globalised unregulated banking doesnt seem to help with much to me - unless you live in China maybe.
This doesn’t tell the whole story. It seems like the aggregate cost of Kimberly Clark products fell by $75M. But perhaps the diapers did increase in cost? Further analysis is needed.
Remember this discrepancy every time you hear “they’ll just pass the costs on to the consumer” with regards to regulation and taxes. It works the same way in both directions; the price is based on what you’re willing to pay, not their operating costs.
I think corporations learned some very dangerous lessons from the pandemic.
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The demand for essential goods is inelastic. They can charge whatever and people still have to but things, especially food, household products, and a place to live.
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They can understaff and underpay employees, and people will choose to fault people for laziness rather than the deliberate corporate choices that lead to the situation.
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Corporations have built such a large market share so as to have created giant barriers to entry that there is zero competition from new businesses.
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Even larger competitor corporations are happy to wink and nod as you both raise prices, cut staff, and give paltry raises because it just means you both make more money, and so long as you don’t say it out loud, it isn’t collusion.
They already knew these things, they just needed an excuse to not cause too much of an uproar. Egg prices went up by way too much too quickly that even the government, who rarely actually does anything about this sort of thing, started an investigation. Magically the prices dropped by a lot, but unfortunately still higher than it used to be.
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