Especially when it comes to business. I just got off of a meeting with a company that focuses on “monetizing the user experience journey” and the amount of jargon that was used just left me yearning to go tend a field instead.
Especially when it comes to business. I just got off of a meeting with a company that focuses on “monetizing the user experience journey” and the amount of jargon that was used just left me yearning to go tend a field instead.
The entire concept of capitalism rests on selling something for more than it’s worth. This includes your own time and physical labor.
The problem is that we all got indoctrinated to believe that capitalism is a meritocracy, instead of a snake oil selling competition.
We’re instead to believe a high paycheck means you are high in importance. But in reality, since this is capitalism, it just means your high paycheck is now a great reason to waste people’s time to feel important. Selling your time as valuable while actually wasting it as much as possible for profit.
Which is now the only thing that trickles down. Well paid, but ultimate skilless idiots all making decisions to massively waste their time and everyone else’s so they can feel their paycheck is earned.
People who want to get shit done, don’t get these kinds of jobs simple because they’re too good at finishing them. Making all the other idiots they work with look like idiots. So actual skills are seen as a detriment to holding these positions as they quickly reveal how much time is being wasted by every single Csuite whose paycheck is bigger than their abilities. (Which is from my experience damn near all of them).
Worked with Apple, Google, Sony, and more. All have the same problem at the top: idiots delegating impossible promises to people that have actual skills then making them take the fall when it inevitably goes wrong.
I’m a socialist so no big fan of capitalism. That said, I don’t think capitalism is just about selling things for more than they’re worth.
We add value through our labor. Think of a log, it has some value as raw material. A worker might cut it into planks, and another might make a table out of it. It’s now worth more than when it started. The value came from our labor, and we should be compensated for it.
The issue with capitalism is that the few benefit off the work of many. Based on the rest of your comment I think we’re pretty much in agreement, but just want to highlight that as a worker-owner (vs robber baron) there’s nothing wrong with charging for what you’re worth.
Yes. Trades are between people with different values of the subject; no problem there. Seller values it less than buyer, they trade, everyone benefits. Negotiation is about splitting the difference and trying to get a fair price.
That can all be free and fair if the traders do not have excessive market power.
Capitalism is about accumulating market power, or other power that can influence the terms of trade and extract more than a fair share. Or worse distort the information about the trade so the one party mis-perceives the subject or the terms.
The classic case is to monopolise the means of production, or exclude workers from borrowing on fair terms to buy their own tools. Or prevent new market entrants from scaling to the minimum efficient economy of scale. So that capitalist can offer unfair terms of trade to workers and extract more than their fair share of the surplus.