I am now convinced that capitalism is evil

[cruising for burgers]

still not convinced...

[EdamAnchorman]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/boeing-corporate-america-manufacturing/678137/

Quote

The two scenes tell us the peculiar story of a plane maker that, over 25 years, slowly but very deliberately extracted itself from the business of making planes. For nearly 40 years the company built the 737 fuselage itself in the same plant that turned out its B-29 and B-52 bombers. In 2005 it sold this facility to a private-investment firm, keeping the axle grease at arm’s length and notionally shifting risk, capital costs, and labor woes off its books onto its “supplier.” Offloading, Boeing called it. Meanwhile the tail, landing gear, flight controls, and other essentials were outsourced to factories around the world owned by others, and shipped to Boeing for final assembly, turning the company that created the Jet Age into something akin to a glorified gluer-together of precast model-airplane kits. Boeing’s latest screwups vividly dramatize a point often missed in laments of America’s manufacturing decline: that when global economic forces carried off some U.S. manufacturers for good, even the ones that stuck around lost interest in actually making stuff.

 

[decibal cooper]

[Walter Ostanek]

On 4/26/2024 at 7:30 AM, EdamAnchorman said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/boeing-corporate-america-manufacturing/678137/

Even in Marx's time he noticed that a separation was developing between the managerial class and the owners of production themselves, something that is now standard in publicly listed companies. This trend with Boeing is the meta version of that, in a similar vein to the rise of crypto and the fetishisation of real estate. Capital no longer gives a shit about the real economy at all. It's abstracting itself to some higher plane of circlejerk bullshit

[Walter Ostanek]

[Crazing]

[EdamAnchorman]

9 hours ago, Walter Ostanek said:

Even in Marx's time he noticed that a separation was developing between the managerial class and the owners of production themselves, something that is now standard in publicly listed companies. This trend with Boeing is the meta version of that, in a similar vein to the rise of crypto and the fetishisation of real estate. Capital no longer gives a shit about the real economy at all. It's abstracting itself to some higher plane of circlejerk bullshit

Maybe this is related to what you're saying, but I've started listening to earnings calls for some public companies.  No matter what the company makes, medical devices, cars, food, baby toys, etc., 100% of the shareholder questions at the end are from investment banks and hedge funds asking what the execs are doing to make their return on investment bigger & faster.  Forget about making a better, safer car, or helping more people with better medicine, or whatever.

Take a look around you right now and realize that everything you see around you that was made by a large public company is the way it is to maximize shareholder return, not necessarily to make a better product for you.