A billionaire wrote this letter to Google a year ago. How likely is that Google's layoffs and actions since then are at least partly because of this?
A billionaire wrote this letter to Google a year ago. How likely is that Google's layoffs and actions since then are at least partly because of this?
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Doesn't even question what employees are possibly doing. Just says there are too many and they must be put out on the street. Says the people who are left are making too much money.
I say this a lot but....seriously....when do we start burning things?
My hatred of the owner class is matched only by my disappointment in my fellow humans for not only taking it, but often defending it.
The people we struggle for have abandoned their humanity. That's what it takes to be one of society's supposed winners or be in their good graces: practiced sociopathy.
And half of the peasants fantasize about being the sociopaths instead of ending their reign and this despicable con game of an economy.
Summed up concisely. I've unfortunately given up hope that anything can be done or can improve. It feels the fight, whatever fight there ever was, has been lost.
Fuck that. I will not go gently into that good night. I will rage against the dying of the light.
Oh ya? Is your rage posting on lemmy? How’s that working out?
I don’t have to prove myself to you, nor would I post details here that could reveal my identity.
I’m genuinely not super revolutionary but I didn’t get halfway through this letter before coming to the realization that this person needed to not exist anymore and same for anybody else of the same ilk.
If you don't have a list of people in society that need to burn you aren't paying attention hard enough.
I can't afford that much paper
Which is another reason we need to start burning things. can't even afford paper.
“Man, if I just had the Death Note.”
Holy hell, if some fairly rational person got such a book and did their research on who needs to be written down the world would probably look a lot different in a short amount of time.
He says they aren't needed "operationally" but Alphabet is not supposed to be merely operating anything. They are supposed to be inventing and experimenting and pushing the envelope. This discontented billionaire just wants ever-increasing rent on existing IP and should be called out as a simple landlord and not called an investor at all.
Yeah, I'm not sure I really get this whole "reduce employment" logic. Like if some product just isn't profitable and you lay off the employees you hired to work on it, that's not surprising, but if the employees are doing something profitable, and you actually needed to hire that many to get whatever it was you hired them for done, shouldn't it be more profitable to a company to keep them, even if one had a large number?
Moreover, if all the oligarchs are doing it, and they are, who will be left to buy their products/services?
They're breaking their own ponzi scheme economy for a few more quarterly profit boosts because there's nowhere else to grow/metastasize. Media companies are making less media. Food makers are making less product types. Their profit is coming out of gutting workers and their ability to produce what their economic sector produced in the first place.
This is a terminal stage market capitalism fire sale. The snake is eating its own tail having conquered the board.
Because this is the End of the Line. The snake has found its tail and Oroborous awakens to transform the end into the beginning. An ideology of everlasting consumption will eventually consume itself.
Especially on a finite world with finite resources.
Bold of you to assume the stock market has anything to do with finite resources.
When the ultra wealthy and their companies run the system into the ground they will buy up the failed stocks and cheap land that nobody else can afford then come out ahead when the economy recovers like they have in the previous economic crashes. They can afford to buy low and cash out when it is high because they have zero pressure to act at any given point in time due to their ridiculous wealth and zero legal repercussions.
But even then there reaches a point where they run out of things to buy, and people to buy them from.
Eventually they poison the one thing they worship: the sanctity of private property rights. It has to serve at least some portion of the populace if it's going to remain tenable, but they're doomed to discover and undershoot that number.
The Western world spent a century demonising socialism with "they'll take your home and car" but it rings hollow when you have neither.
I cannot afford an emergency. Bring in the socialist, if it is houses they take, and cars they enamor, surely they will leave me be.
Bold of you to assume they were talking about the stock market
Upthread:
This is a terminal stage market capitalism fire sale. The snake is eating its own tail having conquered the board.
And? How do you get stock market from that? They are obviously talking about the economy as a whole and not the stock market
The stock market is the reason for chasing quarterly profits and a massive part of what gets counted as the economy. It is the main driver of all the shitty late stage capitalism practices we are discussing.
The stock market is certainly part of the problem but it’s not everything.
Capitalism in its entirety is the issue. Capitalism is based on infinite growth which is unsustainable and impossible.
The stock market is just a tool to extract wealth from the populace. Without the stock market it would still happen but with less efficiency.
You have the same problems with or without stocks.
They’re not thinking long term, they want immediate and maximum profits
It makes quarterlys look good immediately before the problems show up later
It's the mindset of someone who wants to cash out which is usually all ultracapitalists
The source matters, too. This is a dude exploiting people and hoarding so much needed wealth. To an obscene amount. Like, he has more than enough to do everything he could possibly dream of, for the rest of his life. And long after he's gone, all his descendants will be set and will never have to worry about money for their entire lives...
So what does this psychopath obsess about? "Please kick people out into the street and reduce the pay of anyone who remains. Number go up... Fuck em, got mine lol"
Because he doesn't care. He's looking out for himself.
"Hey Googs, you have too many employees and that's cutting in my investments. Shitcan 150,000 so my investments go up and I make more billions kthxbye"
The funny thing is... what are the operational requirements of an R&D organization?
As far as I can see, it's nothing, by definition.
Anyway, does the rich person there not understand that? Also, what is the value of an R&D organization where people are demotivated?
The rich person only cares about short term profits. They want to liquidate any good will and long term preparedness. Once the host corporation has been sufficiently bled of value, the parasite will move on to the next source of value it can find.
But then, an R&D organization doesn't have short term profits.
Correct. R&D only creates future value. Usually in the VC model, R&D is done by individuals or small groups and then funded (bought) by VC to get it to market. So even though the R&D do-er can cash out their future profits for immediate profits, the value of that R&D can't be realized immediately.
I personally think the VC and legacy models are currently competing, and VC is winning out. As we see here, even large, established companies aren't immune to impinging VCs.
Don't need to burn things, the letter is already addressed by that which needs to be burned.
Well yeah I mean eventually that as well but....you know....things in ....its....general vicinity first.