I saw that people are buying $150 or $250 sockbags for their iphone. They also are buying $30 glass cups from Starbucks. Can people accept that the customer is a major part of the problem?

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    IMO, consumers aren’t necessarily stupid as much as corporations have very expertly learned to weaponize FOMO through advertising; allowing companies like apple to inflate their profit margin from something reasonable to “whatever the consumer is willing to pay.”

    Is that “capitalism”? Yes…technically. But to me, it goes against the spirit of capitalism, which at its heart sums up as “Farmer has a cow that produces milk. Farmer sells the chicken farmer down the road his extra milk and charges enough to be reasonable but doesn’t get greedy because he needs eggs.”

    Corporations don’t need our eggs. They don’t believe they need anything from us and so don’t care about being reasonable about profit.

    Its “capitalism”, but in my opinion, a perverse, stilted form that should have been kicked to the curb the moment Reaganomics started making it popular.

    • FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe
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      7 hours ago

      I don’t think it “goes against the spirit of capitalism” as capitalism prioritizes profits. I’d say it goes against free markets tho bc companies are encouraged to monopolize industries or work together to artificially inflate prices and depress wages. I think capitalism without intense regulation always ends up placing profits over people