this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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This is the madness. It really speaks to the emptiness that underlies whatever we call the philosophy that results in this kind of decision making. Modern MBA cult? Neo-liberalism?
Christ, stop buying businesses just to break them people.
Why don't people bother to fight back though.
You can.
Buy stock for a company that prioritizes steady sustainable growth instead of chasing an ever increasing profit margin.
Plan to keep that stock for decades.
Buy more stock as time goes on, never stop buying that stock.
Pray that a giant conglomerate doesn't decide to buy it.
If a conglomerate buys it, dump stock immediately while everyone else is buying. Then reinvest it all into a new company.
Repeat as needed.
It'll help good companies, and if enough do it, conglomerates might eventually not seeing gobbling every other company up as profitable.
The internet decreed like a decade ago that "Anything You Don't Like Is Neoliberalism," so why not?
I'm open to other words, but I don't know what else to call it.
Its whatever killed Sears, a company that was built on the idea of distributing a catalogue and people buying shit from it, and them having it show up at their house. Jesus christ that sounds familiar where the fuck have I heard that before?
Its this idea that making money by taking a functional business and breaking its ability to function is some how "good business".
Its Horowitz and the take over of Pacific Lumber Company.
Again, I dont know if I can call it neo-liberalism because I dont really know what that means (as in, I'm not sure there is a 'there' there).
Whatever it is, its fucking idiotic.
Never trust a political movement that renames itself constantly.
They likely know they can't defend their policies, so instead they steer the argument towards what their name is.
If that wasn't the case, they'd tell you what label they want to be called
Neoliberalism (narrowly defined under economic terms) is the idea that minimizing government impact in markets is a good thing, and that government regulation should be designed to efficiently address externalities with as little market distortion as possible.
Neoliberals, for instance, were among the first advocates for single-payer healthcare in the US, as they saw the insurance market as generally one large externality ripe with perverse incentives.
Historically, neoliberals have ranged from Reagan/Thatcher to Bush 1/Clinton, to HRC and Obama. Republicans kind of lost the plot on neoliberalism around 1996.
The internet started shitting on neoliberalism right about the time Hillary Clinton trounced Bernie Sanders, which they also blamed on neoliberalism. Before then, their criticisms were mostly Reagan/thatcher specific. As neoliberalism evolved, so did the internet, because leftists need something to hate and they were the loudest people online at the time.
Its bigger than that. I dont know if it was clear from how I said it, but there not being a "there" there is that both the word has lost meaning, or that its meaning has broadened to mean something bigger. You should look into some of those references I dropped.
Whatever "this" is, I think neoliberalism is a good word for it (and I do take the broad definition to include the culture behind it).
I am literally a neoliberal. I work with neoliberal groups, donate to neoliberal charities, support neoliberal politicians, and even own a hoodie that says "neoliberal and proud."
Before I got perma'd from Reddit for saying "The only good nazi is a dead nazi," I regularly posted on /r/neoliberal.
I am quite aware of what neoliberalism is.
What you're describing is more just people being bad at their jobs, and this moving you to assume malice instead of incompetence because of their job title.
Sears was dead for almost twenty years, they just didn't know it yet. They died when malls died, and instead of any sort of pivot, they doubled down. This was a car crash in slow motion.
Hmm. No.
See my original post in this thread.