I feel like the purpose of society is short term financial gain

[prototypian]

I feel hopeless and like I know too much. I feel cynically and pessimistically that the whole world is driving toward private equity style funds trying desperately to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible with no interest in anything else. And the result of this is an ever increasing need to do stock buybacks, cut as much staff as possible, avoid paying supplier and services and book revenue fast before any downstream failures occur. Humans don't matter as workers or even as consumers. They matter only in the ability to be convinced to give up capital immediately or obtain short term financing to own debt that they assume the risk for. I feel like the ultimate goal for a modern company would be incredibly revenue, zero employees and the ability to extend credit to buyers of their product or service with no risk to anyone but the downstream customers ( the risk is completely transferred with no capability to be bankrupt or discharge the debt. Then to constantly have new customers willing to take on more debt. And that's it. That would be the ultimate in profit and corporate success

I've watched companies shedding millions of dollars per month in employee costs just to prove to the market that they can fire people and for them moment keep operating. And the employees and even customers don't matter. Only the share price.

It's depressing

 

[itsgone2]

You've put it so well. All of it is true. It's happening to my company which was a special place. It's tragic.

You understand this so much better than I. A fried and I were discussing it because capitalism is always criticized, but this isn't capitalism anymore. At least capitalism wants competition. This is just about destruction and moving on.

I don't know how society survives in current form. Everything, everything, is so expensive, and jobs are disappearing. It doesn't seem sustainable.

 

[prototypian]

I feel like the world is racing toward a universal basic income that gives 50 percent of people who all live in wealthy parts of the world just enough to live if they don't want any luxury at all and it also gives them enough to spend. 5 percent of people will be employed in the few places where we still need workers. 44.999 percent of people will live in squalor and poverty because they don't matter and don't live in important places and the remainjng 0.001 percent own everything and own all of the debt attributed to the 50 percent and the incomes of the 50 percent and 5 percent are completely taken up by the companies owned by the 0.001 percent. And that's it. A velvet rope closes off all the national parks, the nice places to live, the cultural treasures and the access to education and even voting and healthcare. The rest of the world won't matter

 

[ScarletTanager]

At least these companies ensure when I order rope, or SN, it will be delivered promptly.

 

[prototypian]

Scary thing is that the clv (customer lifetime value) could mean that you as a number are worth more alive to the algorithm so they wokld want you kept around long enough to meet the revenue quotas

 

[Off_Switch]

U.B.I. won't fix anything. As a matter of fact, it will probably end up making things worse. Time and time again this world has proven that we cannot all have nice things. Greed, corruption and degeneracy rule this planet. But for some reason, people keep having children and creating more victims for this insufferable planet to chew up and spit out.

 

[volo]

Late stage capitalism. Mixed with techno-feudalism.

 

[Pluto]

 

[prototypian]

The philosophy and academic discussions are irrelevant. What you call it or point out isn't the actual way it will evolve nor will the statements of what will or will not fix it matter. The only drive is short term increases in profit under anything that can be done. You're held to it, your boss is held to it all the way to the ceo and even owners of organizations at the highest levels. The only key is always maximize short term profit with no risk. The push will always be the short term profit and transferring the risk to someone else. That's what drives every decision in corporate world and even governments and major economies. There are too many people willing to step in and say "I'll do it for less and in less time and take on the risk" just for the opportunity to be paid. Even if you stand your ground on principle ten people behind you will see that as an opportunity to undercut you and promise that they will do whatever it is you will do for less and in shorter amount of time and with all the risk assumed. The universal income wasn't a statement to fix things. It's just a way to give a segment of the populariiin a small amount of capital for a short time so that some other aspect of business can earn that capital back. It's not to solve anything. YOU don't matter to the overall system. Even if you have value, the goal is to try and either use that value for short term profit or to extract that value from you for improvement of short term profit. Thats it. The whole world and culture is based on this. Hundreds of people play in a field is looked at instantly as "how can we monetize the parking, gathering and their attention with fees and advertising revenue?" The national parks, the national monuments, the public spaces, the roads, the meals and music. It's all under a drive to somehow get at that maximum short term profit under any circumstances possible.

 

[SASU-KE]

The manager at my company has already warned us that if we don't Start learning Python coding and get into agentic AI roles within the next two years, all of our jobs will disappear.

 

[mirrorlize]

We are just replaceable cogs of Elon Musk and his rich fellas.
Welcome to a world where suicide info are kept hidden to keep their cog moving.

 

[prototypian]

Except that it doesn't matter. That's what I've realized. YOU don't matter. There is always enough to replace you in work. That's not a problem. There are way more people than we have jobs for, especially ones that pay livable plus discretionary income wages. There never has been enough capital to pay everyone that much. The actual key is to have enough people barely alive and in debt with a slight threshold to keep increasing that debt so that the businesses and products and media all have sufficient consumption. You specifically coding or losing your job is just an event and if you compare people 500 years ago it was the same. The ones who control the means of production need the ones producing to do the work for as little income as possible and they also need that group to keep paying.

An example is the Montgomery bus boycott. Ignoring racism for just this thought exercise. Why would a group of people get angry at a poor group deciding not to use public transportation. Especially when the public transportation was already racially stratified. The owners and town didn't want the black citizens to even look others in the eye and to sit on the back of the bus. When that group just decided to save their dimes (the fare to ride the bus was 10 cents at the time). The violent anger at the carpools and walking was not because the black citizens were doing something wrong. It's because the bus system was entirely dependent on that small amount of income to run. It was too thin a margin so that if even a small number or in that case a large number of people stopped paying their dimes it would destroy the system of the busing. No one cares now as public transit is a bygone era in the modern suburb but that is the example. What modern private equity finance wants is stable revenue and cutting the company to the bone to reap the profit as fast as possible and to ensure that no one has more or less money than absolutely necessary to buy the things they sell. This is existential but I feel it is true. And it's not a secret cabal of billionaires. It's an entire mechanized digital system designed to always reward only short term
Fast profit through whatever way gets it fastest ans most profitable.