This is one of the supposed benefits of the free market. If left alone, under normal conditions, what’s supposed to happen is that badly ran, uncompetitive firms end up showing themselves the door, making room for new market competitors who may not be so badly managed. Don’t fucking save them, especially don’t advocate for saving them if you claim to love free markets.
The problem with free markets is they are incredibly unstable and create booms and busts and people don’t like this so we get the worst of all worlds which is unfettered capitalism and no competition or failure weeding out poorly managed companies. Maybe free markets are just a shitty ideal?
Maybe free markets are just a shitty ideal?
Yes. The answer to that question is yes. Free market capitalism encourages cutthroat competition in which the only factor in any decision-making process is maximizing profits. Safety isn’t a factor. Employee well-being isn’t a factor. National security isn’t a factor. The economy at large isn’t a factor. Long term investments aren’t even a factor. Line go up this quarter equals good quarter. Regulations ensure mandatory minimums for societal prosperity.
Until corporations realise they can cheat and change the game by bribing politicians to tip the scales in their favour.
Business exists only for one thing; exploiting systems, even if that means meta-exploitation, since that’s the highest form of exploitation, and the inevitable endgame.
free markets are a shitty idea, but ive never seen one in real life before.
I think America would actually benefit from switching to a free market economy, instead of our current bullshit where our politicans are too spineless to tell companies like Boeing “sucks to suck” when they ask for yet another handout instead of doing any real work
Agreed, but the big players have their hands tied up in Congress and the military so much that it’s not gonna happen.
Then they should be nationalized, because they’ve already got the benefits, but none of the downsides, while the public get none of the benefits, and all of the downsides… At this point “too big to fail” are essentially critical government infrastructure setup by wealthy criminals to steal directly from tax payers.
Nationalizing industries? In America? We don’t do that here, friend. We give corporations massive bailouts and forgive all felonies.
I think you could make the argument it is already nationalized if the government bails them out to protect it’s military industry sector.
we dont have a free market. We have what i can only describe as Inverse Socialism
its socialism for the wealthy and the corporations, and “free market” for everyone else
this is part of the reason why theft of property from the rich, or violence against them, is not morally wrong.
They get tax breaks that we all pay for, and they influence policies that help themselves while killing us.
You cant steal what you already paid for, and its not murder when its self defense
It is, afaik, the literal, actual, unironic definition of the fascist economic model. Basically, the public sector only really exists in the form of “private” companies that are tightly coupled to the government.
thats what they taught us about communist Russia when i was in highschool
Our economics class learned that their “public” sector was a mix of private companies acting as both private citizens AND government agencies.
And my teacher was like “imagine if all the roads and utilities and infrastructure for the country was run by private, FOR PROFIT businesses that benefit from laws written for citizens, AND from laws written for corporations but are not bound by either”
20 years later i realize thats how its been here the whole time
Historically I don’t think that’s what the term “free market” was referring to, although some people do use it that way now. As always, we need to remember that there are no normal conditions, and free markets aren’t free. If you don’t have anti-monopoly legislation, if you don’t have anti-corruption legislation, then large corporations will win.
Look I’m fine if the govt wants to say a particular corporation is too big to fail. But trying to let that company remain private is not how too big to fail works. If you want a bailout, the govt owns your company, and the govt is obliged to maintain ownership for as long as it’s deemed too big to fail…e.g. critical to national interests.
Personally I think all publicly traded companies should be partly owned by the people… Like sure you can have an IPO, and still make a zillion dollars… But society automatically owns a large enough share that you have to check with us before doing anything drastic
While I don’t disagree with you in principle, this begs definitions of what “us” and “anything drastic” means, which could vary to such an extent as to prove whatever law you’re proposing meaningless or to be so draconian as to stifle all technological progress.
To big to fail should mean splitting up the company. At the very least when bailed out. Intresstingly the US actually made a profit bailing out banks in the 2008 crisis.
If I remember it correctly, that “profit” was nominal, i.e. without including the devaluation of that money due to Inflation, much less doing the proper investment accounting (as the Finance types do) were profit is a yield above a risk free investment (which, curiously, is normally Treasuries) and if it’s below that it’s not a good investment and beyond this the risk of losing your money also determines if the yield is worth.
Pretty much by definition the yield wasn’t worth it in helping the banks at the interest rate the Government got, as why nobody else was willing to lend them the money at that interest rate.
I’m so sick of companies pissing away all of their profit and money to make rich people richer then when the smallest problem hits it is our problem. We pay. Fuck them.
Looking at this (below) with some super sloppy math they have made in the last ten years 25 billion in profits and 5 billion in losses totally 20 billion in profits (give or take as my interest in totalling this accurately is zero). The fact that they used their money irresponsibly and didn’t say for a raining day, or it’s raining planes day, is not the tax payers that need to save them. I’m in my mid 30s, you know how many times I’ve seen extremely profitable and successful “too big to fail” businesses bailed out. Fuck the fucking fuckers and anyone who trys and correct my math.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BA/boeing/gross-profit
Between 1998 and 2018, the plane manufacturer also manufactured a whopping $61.0 billion in stock buybacks, amounting to 81.8 percent of its profits. Add in dividends and Boeing’s shareholders received 121 percent of its profits.
Stock buybacks should be illegal or at least heavily regulated. They’re stealing money from their employees, putting their company in peril by not having cash on hand, and stunting innovation. Imagine if major companies had to put profit back into their company? Instead it’s a game to see how much you can exploit the working class, how little you can innovate and still get by (it’s easy when you have no competition), and gamble (after lobbying with minimal money) that your political plants will force the taxpayers you’re exploiting to bail you out. It’s pretty disgusting.
https://greenalphaadvisors.com/boeings-struggles-highlight-the-perils-of-stock-buybacks/
https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/ba/buybacks#google_vignette --> they’re still doing it as of March of this year.
Stock buybacks aren’t really the issue, if they didn’t exist they’d just be paying dividends with the money instead. The real issue is the reckless pursuit of maximising shareholder payouts, particularly for too big to fail corps.
While you are correct that dividends would be paid, it just wouldn’t happen on this scale or to this detriment, imo. Buybacks are used as a crutch to generate Short-term profit and lead to executives and companies focusing on short-term goals. They artificially increase EPS for executive compensation. This is all exacerbated when companies know they’re going to be bailed out by taxpayers because there are only 2 companies that make planes now, or 3 media companies setting prices together.
If it is of national importance, then let’s nationalize it
That would make a lot of sense …until we’re reminded that USA is a kleptocracy, masquerading under a thick coating of we the people, freedom!™, liberty and justice for alla select group of people. Then it becomes clear the obvious and only solution, is for the government to pump a couple billions into Boeing.
Maybe Boeing should have thought of that before making poor decisions. It should learn a little something called personal responsibility and if it goes broke, well, that’ll be a shame. Anyway!
