/liberty/ - Liberty

Look OP, the more a company are faggots and push a brute fore method to produce a bare minimum, the more they have to rely on outside forces like government to maintain their monopoly or spend more on internal resources to keep shit running. Monopolies are what they are, but they would be regional at best if not for the government subsidies precisely because of what you described.

I haven't really worked this out fully yet but I've noticed that whenever a capitalist economy begins to reach the limits of market expansion and employment the whole system tends to go into a decline until new markets are found and new sources of labor can be exploited. What I mean is, to increase profits you must do one of two things: increase production extensively (via increased employment of workers) or increase production intensively (through improved productivity.) Both of these strategies assume that there are untapped markets that will buy the increased production.

The fundamental problem is this: what if existing markets are more-or-less saturated by existing industries? Your only option in this case is to improve productivity by pushing down the value of labor. That's what we're seeing in many industries today. But this is unsustainable long-term, since every worker is also a consumer. The depression of wages is the depression of buying power and markets.

Also, this article might interest you.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/08/capitalism-without-capitalists/

Aside from economic incentives that encourage an overworked and demoralized employee base, the nature of modern capitalism is becoming more bureaucratic than entrepreneurial. That means the real strategic decisions and policies of a company are increasingly decided by those who primarily see enterprises as an entity from which resources can be extracted and later abandoned.

>The larger and more inefficient a firm grows, is the tendency towards the latter?

Probably. To me it seems like a combination of bureaucratism and conflict of interest. There is no reason for company managers to have any loyalty to their employees nor vice versa. Different levels in a firm have differing incentives that push them in opposite directions.

>>82644

> what if existing markets are more-or-less saturated by existing industries? Your only option in this case is to improve productivity by pushing down the value of labor.

What do you mean by "saturated" and why then would it be by pushing down wages?

>>82651

By "saturated" I meant that there is no additional demand for goods already being produced. One can't increase profits by increasing production, since new goods would simply go unsold.

The only option then becomes an increase in productivity. But since current production of goods is already at an optimum the increased productivity can only result in either firing workers or reducing their compensation.

>>82644

>>82656

It's been called creative destruction.

>According to Schumpeter, the "gale of creative destruction" describes the "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one".[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

>>82656

Increase in productivity results in labor allocation to other products/industries.

>>82644

>But this is unsustainable long-term, since every worker is also a consumer. The depression of wages is the depression of buying power and markets.

Or, and here's a thought, as wages depress, workers leave those fields for other pastures and companies fail to meet productivity goals, resulting in failed competition/closed businesses and market prices stabilizing. You can witness this in Construction and truck driving every time a recession hits. Only a fraction of employees stay in the construction/truck driving industry when the economy hits a downturn while others look for greener pastures, and when the economy comes back, there's growing pains because the old workers are settled in their new fields/don't want to go back to their old jobs, while the companies can't find people to bring in, resulting in increase in worker wages once more. You'll witness this in Electronics Manufacturing (manufacturing in general) in about 5-10 years as boomers die out/retire, and the age gap in workers becomes apparent. It already is in HVAC which is predicted to have 13% "growth" over the next decade, E.G. no one willing to work at the lower wages so there's a huge influx of companies that need HVAC technicians.

The only places this doesn't happen are obsolete jobs (robots or just machines in general can do it better/faster/cheaper) and jobs where no special skills are required (where workers are EXPECTED to either grow/get promoted in the company or to look for greener pastures as they get experience/education).

>>82749

And before anyone comments, yes, this leads to a pseudo-monopoly as the most efficient and cheapest businesses are the only ones to remain in business. These pseudo-monopolies do not operate on the same principles as a government-enforced monopoly because the monopoly will disappear if demand increases enough for inefficient (or perhaps more efficient) businesses to participate in the market.