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seawasp Another discussion, cut for length...
One of the common retorts (usually by Libertarians) to people talking about how the really rich exploit people is that such remarks indicate you think that business is a zero-sum game.
Now, it's absolutely true that capitalist business is NOT a zero sum game -- in fact, that's the foundation of its success, that people performing work on things increases their value, people finding more efficient ways to do things allows that increase to be done more efficiently, and so on. Obviously it's not zero-sum, or our resources would be, well, no different than they were centuries ago.
People like Trump often ACT like it's zero sum; there must be a winner and a loser in the game of business, and they'll be the winner. This is a kind of sad point of view, because in PROPER deals, there are two winners -- both sides come away with something they want, because the business they're doing is adding value. A miner supplies raw materials, the smelter pays the miner for both the material and the work the miner performed to get the material, and the smelter then takes those materials and turns them into steel, which is much more valuable than the raw materials. Both of them get rewarded for the same stuff... and the work put into it.
That said, whether it's EFFECTIVELY zero-sum for some group or groups is determined by HOW the exchange is done, and what the proportionate benefits are.
The simplest way to illustrate the current problem is through compensation (pay, though "pay" for higher-up people also includes stock and such)
Since the end of the 70s, CEO compensation went up by a factor of over 1300 percent through 2020; in the same period of time, the general worker's compensation has gone up by... less than 20%. (https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/).
It is, not to mince words, ridiculously arrogant or naive to believe that CEOs have somehow miraculously become able to do fifty times the value-adding work of each and every employee. Indeed, another measure -- productivity per worker -- shows that productivity per worker has increased by over 80 percent, but employee compensation has only increased by about 30 percent (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/).
Until around 1980, these two things were actually pretty closely linked; increase in productivity per worker pretty much matched increase in pay per worker. Workers were generally expected to get pay raises every year, often bonuses (to the point that there were some movies/TV episodes in which NOT getting your holiday bonus was a shock)
This began to diverge around 1980, and you can trace a lot of this to Reagan (and behind him, the Heritage Foundation's first cut at the "Mandate For Leadership", as they handed this to RR when he took office and he used it as a significant guideline to his Presidency).
Without getting into the weeds of how and why, the basic effect of the changing "Conservative" (really meaning 'pro stockholder') policies was to keep skimming off the increases in value from productivity and sending them upward, rather than, as previously, proportionately distributing them through the company to keep it healthy, stable, and long-term operating. For the majority of workers, this has now resulted in work BEING a zero-sum -- or even negative-sum -- game. Raises became more and more infrequent, and smaller, so that ultimately most workers found their salaries were effectively DECREASING with time. The only way to IMPROVE your chances turned out to be to hop from job to job, hoping you could get a salary bump with each new position. If you tried to have a career in one job, you would find your actual earnings dropping from year to year.
So while it is, absolutely, true that modern capitalist/business is NOT inherently zero sum, but actually positive-sum, it is also absolutely true that the way in which it is currently IMPLEMENTED is effectively worse than zero-sum for the vast majority of workers. This is, quite literally, because the upper management and CEOs and stockholders have been stealing the profits that should have been given to the producing workers.
This isn't, actually, a good thing for the businesses, and it's a consequence of the incredibly bad legal requirements that we've put on companies to, in essence, only consider the profit, and usually short-term profit, of investors over any other priority. Happy, well-paid workers do better work, and they STAY, so you have a stable business. Current business practices focus on what amounts to vaporware -- stock rises and falls that have nothing at all to do with actual business success, just the appearance of it.
So no, when I say the billionaires are screwing us, I'm not claiming that big business HAS to be a zero-sum game; I'm just claiming that the people running these shows are, in essence, cheating. And they are.
One of the common retorts (usually by Libertarians) to people talking about how the really rich exploit people is that such remarks indicate you think that business is a zero-sum game.
Now, it's absolutely true that capitalist business is NOT a zero sum game -- in fact, that's the foundation of its success, that people performing work on things increases their value, people finding more efficient ways to do things allows that increase to be done more efficiently, and so on. Obviously it's not zero-sum, or our resources would be, well, no different than they were centuries ago.
People like Trump often ACT like it's zero sum; there must be a winner and a loser in the game of business, and they'll be the winner. This is a kind of sad point of view, because in PROPER deals, there are two winners -- both sides come away with something they want, because the business they're doing is adding value. A miner supplies raw materials, the smelter pays the miner for both the material and the work the miner performed to get the material, and the smelter then takes those materials and turns them into steel, which is much more valuable than the raw materials. Both of them get rewarded for the same stuff... and the work put into it.
That said, whether it's EFFECTIVELY zero-sum for some group or groups is determined by HOW the exchange is done, and what the proportionate benefits are.
The simplest way to illustrate the current problem is through compensation (pay, though "pay" for higher-up people also includes stock and such)
Since the end of the 70s, CEO compensation went up by a factor of over 1300 percent through 2020; in the same period of time, the general worker's compensation has gone up by... less than 20%. (https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/).
It is, not to mince words, ridiculously arrogant or naive to believe that CEOs have somehow miraculously become able to do fifty times the value-adding work of each and every employee. Indeed, another measure -- productivity per worker -- shows that productivity per worker has increased by over 80 percent, but employee compensation has only increased by about 30 percent (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/).
Until around 1980, these two things were actually pretty closely linked; increase in productivity per worker pretty much matched increase in pay per worker. Workers were generally expected to get pay raises every year, often bonuses (to the point that there were some movies/TV episodes in which NOT getting your holiday bonus was a shock)
This began to diverge around 1980, and you can trace a lot of this to Reagan (and behind him, the Heritage Foundation's first cut at the "Mandate For Leadership", as they handed this to RR when he took office and he used it as a significant guideline to his Presidency).
Without getting into the weeds of how and why, the basic effect of the changing "Conservative" (really meaning 'pro stockholder') policies was to keep skimming off the increases in value from productivity and sending them upward, rather than, as previously, proportionately distributing them through the company to keep it healthy, stable, and long-term operating. For the majority of workers, this has now resulted in work BEING a zero-sum -- or even negative-sum -- game. Raises became more and more infrequent, and smaller, so that ultimately most workers found their salaries were effectively DECREASING with time. The only way to IMPROVE your chances turned out to be to hop from job to job, hoping you could get a salary bump with each new position. If you tried to have a career in one job, you would find your actual earnings dropping from year to year.
So while it is, absolutely, true that modern capitalist/business is NOT inherently zero sum, but actually positive-sum, it is also absolutely true that the way in which it is currently IMPLEMENTED is effectively worse than zero-sum for the vast majority of workers. This is, quite literally, because the upper management and CEOs and stockholders have been stealing the profits that should have been given to the producing workers.
This isn't, actually, a good thing for the businesses, and it's a consequence of the incredibly bad legal requirements that we've put on companies to, in essence, only consider the profit, and usually short-term profit, of investors over any other priority. Happy, well-paid workers do better work, and they STAY, so you have a stable business. Current business practices focus on what amounts to vaporware -- stock rises and falls that have nothing at all to do with actual business success, just the appearance of it.
So no, when I say the billionaires are screwing us, I'm not claiming that big business HAS to be a zero-sum game; I'm just claiming that the people running these shows are, in essence, cheating. And they are.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-10 09:25 pm (UTC)Like last week: Andrew Wilson, CEO at EA, asserting that "Dragon Age: The Veilguard" would have done better as a live service game -- after pivoting *away* from that model because of the disaster that was Anthem. I've seen every excuse from this to it being killed by "wokeness" (and never mind the runaway success of "Baldur's Gate 3"). Hardly anyone is blaming EA for not giving the dev teams enough time to actually finish the game -- except for the people *on* those teams. But it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before, after all. LucasArts didn't force Obsidian to release "Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords" in an unfinished state, and 38 Studios didn't pivot their "Kingdoms of Amalur" MMO into a single player game and then rush that out to market... Oh, wait. They did exactly these things.
Anyway, there is no "infinite" in a finite system. One would think these CEOs -- who make the world work, just ask them, they'll tell you -- would understand something so simple and not repeat the same mistakes over and over and over....
no subject
Date: 2025-02-11 12:28 am (UTC)