47 posts tagged with business and capitalism.
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Smart Move(?)
Capital One announced this week that it intends to buy Discover in an all-stock deal valued at $35 billion, which would make it by some measures the largest credit card company in the U.S. While CEO Richard Fairbank covets Discover's independent payments network, consumer advocates fear a negative effect on its vaunted customer service, as well as a general trend of credit card companies squeezing customers more as they grow larger. Though there is an argument that the proposed deal will increase competition at the network level, it will still face heavy antitrust scrutiny from the Federal Reserve and Biden administration regulators. Meanwhile in Congress, criticism of the deal has already been aired by pro-regulation stalwarts, including Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, and... Josh Hawley?
Nobody drives in San Francisco, there’s too much traffic
One day after California green-lighted a massive expansion of driverless robotaxis in San Francisco, the implications became clear.
At about 11 p.m. Friday, as many as 10 Cruise driverless taxis blocked two narrow streets in the center of the city’s lively North Beach bar and restaurant district. All traffic came to a standstill on Vallejo Street and around two corners on Grant. Human-driven cars sat stuck behind and in between the robotaxis, which might as well have been boulders: no one knew how to move them. [more inside]
At about 11 p.m. Friday, as many as 10 Cruise driverless taxis blocked two narrow streets in the center of the city’s lively North Beach bar and restaurant district. All traffic came to a standstill on Vallejo Street and around two corners on Grant. Human-driven cars sat stuck behind and in between the robotaxis, which might as well have been boulders: no one knew how to move them. [more inside]
privatization, technological innovation & other familiar bromides
The primary product sold by all management consultants – both software developers and strategic organisers – is the theology of capital. Review essay by Laleh Khalili on When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm. A US government website records federal contracts given to McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and others. Homeland Security and the Pentagon paid lavishly for ‘engaging human-centred design’, developing a ‘culture of continuous improvement’ and other meaningless bits of management-speak festooned with cryptic acronyms. Two contracts with the federal procurement agency, which earned McKinsey $1 billion between 2006 and 2019, had to be terminated because the company refused to submit to an audit. [more inside]
The chickenization of everything
How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (thread) - "Surveillance Capitalism is a real, serious, urgent problem... because it is both emblematic of monopolies (which lead to corruption, AKA conspiracies) and because the vast, nonconsensual dossiers it compiles on us can be used to compromise and neutralize opposition to the status quo."[1,2,3] [more inside]
A blind and opaque reputelligent nosedive
Data isn't just being collected from your phone. It's being used to score you. - "Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you've likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret 'surveillance scores' — digital mug shots of millions of Americans — that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the U.S. economy. People with low scores can suffer harsh consequences."[1] [more inside]
"We saw, every day, the effects of giving somebody freedom"
Remember a few years ago when the owner of a credit card payment processing company based in Seattle raised the minimum wage of his employees to $70,000/yr while taking a huge pay-cut himself and capitalists the world over, afraid of their beloved & apparently suuuuper delicate system collapsing from such madness, flipped out? The BBC recently checked in with Gravity Payments and its owner Dan Price to see how things were going. Pretty damn well, as it turns out. (via, h/t Chrysostom)
The Priests Of Market Fundamentalism
“The title of the book refers to a period that Appelbaum defines as being between 1969 and 2008. For him, this was a time when the policies that economists almost universally endorsed—tax breaks, austerity, deregulation, free trade, monetarism, floating exchange rates, reduced antitrust enforcement, low inflation, among others—were enacted. It is a period when market fundamentalism triumphed.” The Tyranny of Economists: How can they be so wrong, so often, and yet still exert so much influence on government policy? (New Republic)
Externalizing Waste Costs Hurts Everyone But Producers
“Beyond disposability, present day waste practices like recycling continue the extension of profit through trash. The Container Corporation of America sponsored the creation of the recycling symbol for the first Earth Day in 1970 (Rogers 2006: 171). The American Chemistry Council, the world’s largest plastics lobby, enthusiastically testified in favor of expanding New York City’s curbside recycling program to accept rigid plastics (ACC 2010). Recycling is a far greater benefit to industry than to the environment. ” Modern Waste is an Economic Strategy (Discard Studies) We asked 3 companies to recycle Canadian plastic and secretly tracked it. Only 1 company recycled the material (CBC)
1: It refuses to boost markups.
Costco is one of the world’s largest retailers, boasting 770+ locations and 245,000 employees. Last year, it had more than $140B in sales. But unlike many of its counterparts on Fortune’s Global 500 list, Costco has risen to the top by flying in the face of traditional wisdom.
Grubhub's predatory practices against small restaurants
Grubhub is using thousands of fake websites - up to 23,000 domains are allegedly used - to upcharge commission fees from real businesses. This includes listing phone numbers that don’t belong to the actual business, and using logos and food photos without permissions. Example: restaurant's real site vs. Grubhub's fake site.
The Consultant Crisis
“We listened to their estimates,” said Quentin Kopp, who was chairman of the rail board in 2008 but has since become an ardent critic. “They were clearly wrong.” How California’s faltering high-speed rail project was ‘captured’ by costly consultants (LA Times) [more inside]
Red Light Special
“ In his 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx implies that at earlier points in its development, capitalism is still “progressive” because it produces rapid increases in productivity. There aren’t enough material goods to support everyone at this stage, so socialism would only amount to the redistribution of scarcity. But at some point, Marx argues, production increases to such a scale that it becomes possible and necessary to socialize the existing mechanisms of production and redistribute the social product fairly. This would, for some, be enough to constitute socialism: a democratically run, centrally planned economy that ensures every person’s material needs are met. A Walmart for the people, with the same low prices and efficient logistics but without the poverty wages—and no billionaires at the top raking in the profits.” The People’s Republic Of Walmart? Could large megabusinesses be a starting point for a democratically planned economy?
(Corporate) Purposelessness
The entire economy is Fyre Festival - "Unlike the bullshit jobs of the past (which focused on over-defining roles in a bid to compete on status rather than pay, or to justify the roles in terms of social importance and purpose), the relatively new phenomenon of mystic jobs is about something else. These jobs do have purpose: they disguise (according to the column's admittedly hugely generalised hypothesis) the lack of social value associated with the corporations and start-ups they're affiliated to, while justifying their expansionist empire-building agendas." [more inside]
“purpose paradigm”
“However, the truth is that there is no convincing evidence at all of this supposed success. A fast-growing body of reports, analyses, and research, including reports from Amnesty International, shows how self-regulating business initiatives, including the palm-oil certification scheme of Unilever, make no real impact or worse, inhibit real change with a false illusion of progress. “One of the systemic problems that Unilever’s ‘sustainable’ palm-oil scheme refuses to acknowledge,” says Eric Gottwald from the International Labor Rights Forum, “is that workers on plantations need independent trade unions to improve their working conditions, not corporate-sponsored “certifiers.” A six-month long investigation into Unilever’s supply chain in 2017 by five millennial journalists from Investico, a Dutch platform for investigative journalism, did not find evidence to back up Unilever’s leadership claims either. At the five certified palm-oil plantations that they visited in Indonesia, as part of the investigation, the team encountered the same environmental and labor violations that are known to be pervasive among non-certified plantations.” Big Business Has a New Scam: The ‘Purpose Paradigm’ Multinational corporations are luring millennial workers with empty promises and self-serving slogans. (The Nation)
Unemployment Is So Low Some People Have 2 or 3 Jobs
What Happened To All The Steady Jobs? “Louis Hyman’s new book, Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary, shows that this shift in work did not happen on its own, and that it began long before the founding of Uber or TaskRabbit. In this persuasive and richly detailed history, Hyman traces a decades-long campaign to eliminate salaried positions and replace them with contract work.“ (The Nation)
There should be no more poaching of private companies with public funds.
Amazon's HQ2 to be split between New York and Virginia, with a smaller hub in Nashville [The Verge] “Amazon has announced that its second US headquarters will be split between two cities, with smaller-than-expected offices in the New York City borough of Queens and the Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia. The announcement caps a year of deliberations that saw over 200 frenzied proposals offering billions in incentives to the e-commerce giant. Amazon had promised 50,000 jobs and $5 billion of capital spending for the so-called HQ2, which will now be split equally between the two chosen locations.” [more inside]
A conspiracy against the public
“Despite their many shapes and forms, these different anticompetitive plots have one thing in common: a commitment to strengthen the firm’s hold over market, consumers, and workers. Consumers pay for this concentration of power at the checkout line. This is because firms tend to decrease production numbers after merging. Having few to no competitors gives them even less reason to lower their prices. Market power also stymies innovation and quality, as competitors are thwarted from supplying better, affordable products. Sometimes, the outcome is mere inconvenience. In others, it’s the difference between life and death. “ THE RULES OF MONOPOLY by Vanessa A. Bee - mergers, stock buybacks, market control, price fixing and other strategies of anti-competitive behavior. (Current Affairs)
Pulling the ladders up all the way
Farmers on SNAP
Cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Formerally food stamps ) hurt small to medium hold farmers and thier customers. SNAP is a boon to rural and urban economies, cuts in the Farm Bill May end that. (Civil Eats) Tens of thousands of people are about to loose access to fresh produce. (Modern Farmer) Farm bill targets food stamps — but not the well-off farmers who have been on the dole for decades. (LA Times) Arsenal For Democracy episode: Congressional farm bill and SNAP eligibility revisions.
Patriotic Patriarchy: Working for the Man
Utopia and work - "The utopianism of full employment is so entrenched, as a seemingly uncontested common sense, it's difficult to imagine a different utopian horizon. But there is one, which emerges from at least three different theoretical and political traditions." (via) [more inside]
What it is, how it works, and who is for and against it.
Teen Vogue gets down to brass tacks : So, what is capitalism?
“Debt is the lifeblood of private equity...”
“If you have seen the movie Goodfellas, you may recall the scene where the mob takes over a bar: they run up bills on the company’s credit, rob the place blind, and then, when they’ve gotten as much as they can, burn the place down and walk away. That is only a very slight exaggeration of the real business model of private equity. “ The Working Person’s Guide To The Industry That Might Kill Your Company. (Splinter) “Private equity is remaking the retail environment, causing even successful companies like Toys ‘R’ Us to go out of business. And they’re fundamentally remaking American commerce in the process, with Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Dollar General set to benefit. Meanwhile, private equity is more or less getting off scot-free.” The Real Retail Killer. (New Republic)
“Crunch trades short-term gains for long-term suffering,”
Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them by Jason Schreier [The New York Times] “Among video game developers, it’s called “crunch”: a sudden spike in work hours, as many as 20 a day, that can last for days or weeks on end. During this time, they sleep at work, limit bathroom breaks and cut out anything that pulls their attention away from their screens, including family and even food. Crunch makes the industry roll — but it’s taking a serious toll on its workers.” [Previously.] [more inside]
Who Owns the Wealth in Tax Havens?
The ultrawealthy have 10% of global GDP stashed in tax havens — and it's making inequality worse than it appears
Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman offer a new working paper about the composition of wealth held in offshore tax havens. Quick summary: "10% of world GDP is held in tax havens. The top 0.1% own 80% of that. The top 0.01% own 50%." [more inside]
Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman offer a new working paper about the composition of wealth held in offshore tax havens. Quick summary: "10% of world GDP is held in tax havens. The top 0.1% own 80% of that. The top 0.01% own 50%." [more inside]
Is Your T-shirt Clean of Slavery?
Business of Fashion: "Is Your T-shirt Clean of Slavery? Science May Soon Be Able to Tell. Shoppers lured by a bargain-priced t-shirt but concerned about whether the item is free of slave labor could soon have the answer — from DNA forensic technology." [more inside]
The Court That Rules The World
International investors have a private court of appeal even in criminal matters - "A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. [ISDS] operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret." (via) [more inside]
“...they’re really into capitalism.”
Don’t Know What To Read? Let Goldman Sachs Tell You. [Melville House] "Goldman Sachs: financial giant, hotbed of enthusiasm for subprime mortgages, and hapless recipient of your hard-earned money. Who better to tell you what to read? Well, now they are telling you what to read, in the form of a recently-published recommended book list [PDF]. We’re talking about people who incurred $550 million in fines for schemes to turn a profit on the civilization-threatening financial crisis they themselves had helped create, and the line between genius and chutzpah is notoriously hard to draw, so, yeah, I’d like to know what’s on these folks’ bedside tables."
WORLD OF TOMORROW
World After Capital by Albert Wenger [Work in Progress; GitHub; GitBook; PDF; FAQ] - "Technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digital technologies scarcity is shifting from capital to attention. World After Capital suggests ways to expand economic, informational and psychological freedom to go from an industrial to a knowledge society." (previously)
It's not secular stagnation; it's financialization.
Elizabeth Warren has a great idea for making Tax Day less painful - "She's taking on TurboTax and other predatory companies." [more inside]
The Unseen Threat of Capital Mobility
For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions -"The very richest are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield billions in income." (via) [more inside]
Desire Modification in the Attention Economy
The Future of (Post)Capitalism - "Paul Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy." (previously; via) [more inside]
"Anxious? Depressed? You might be suffering from capitalism"
In a new study from researchers at Columbia University, of nearly 22,000 full-time workers (from a dataset from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions), they saw that 18 percent of supervisors and managers reported symptoms of depression. For blue-collar workers, that figure was 12 percent, and for owners and executives, it was only 11 percent.
Bay Gold: the brand appropriate to a junior vice-president of GT
Big Pot: the California Democratic party added marijuana legalisation to its party platform - "Earlier this year Founders Fund, a venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, led a $75m investment round into Privateer, a private equity group focused on cannabis. It is the biggest single investment in the US cannabis industry to date: 'What Privateer is doing is looking like a Procter & Gamble or a Coca-Cola approach. The real value in the market is going to be having the Coke-calibre brand...' Meanwhile, a distinctly California-style backlash is already growing [and] the US has become an exporter of illegal cannabis to Mexico, as cultivation in the US has increased." [more inside]
BuzzFeed Motion Pictures President Ze Frank
Producer Michael Shamberg Wants to 'Invent the Future' With BuzzFeed Motion Pictures - "I don't think there's ever been a Hollywood R&D model like we have here." (previously 1,2,3) [more inside]
Dear Marc Andreessen
"Hi, Marc... You seem to think everyone's worried about robots. But what everyone's worried about is you, Marc. Not just you, but people like you. Robots aren't at the levers of financial and political influence today, but folks like you sure are. People are scared of so much wealth and control being in so few hands... Unless we collectively choose to pay for a safety net, technology alone isn't going to make it happen." [more inside]
offshore companies for everyone!
Want to get away with not paying taxes but don't have the money to make your own offshore company in the Cayman Islands? Fret not - you can hijack an existing offshore company starting from the low low price of 99 cents! [more inside]
"The bloodiest battles took place in the marketing meetings"
Plagued by the realities threatening many retail stores, Sears also faces a unique problem (alternate link): [CEO Eddie] Lampert. Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.
THE BOSOM BUDDIES OF WASTE
“During the 1920s, the British firm Parker-Holladay created a fictional character named Bill Jones. Mr. Jones’ dispensed his friendly advice to British clerical workers through colorful lithographic posters emblazoned with his get-right-to-the-point maxims." Why not enjoy this collection of can-do, yes-sir business motivational posters before you head back to work?
Executive Compensation
The Incentive Bubble (ungated pdf) - "The fraying of the compact of American capitalism by rising income inequality and repeated governance crises is disturbing. But misallocations of financial, real, and human capital arising from the financial-incentive bubble are much more worrisome to those concerned with the competitiveness of the American economy." [more inside]
15 Million Merits
Are you encourages in your place of work by the use of gamification? Congratulations, comrade, you are treading in the footsteps of Soviet Russia!
smaller companies are using robots
Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend - "For US manufacturing to make sense, factories must make extensive use of automation. That's getting easier, given that the cost of robots with comparable capabilities has decreased precipitously in the past two decades." [more inside]
Capitalism for the Long Term
In
Capitalism for the Long TermManaging Director of McKinsey & Company Dominic Barton sums up his prescriptions for the future of corporate governance for the Harvard Business Review. [more inside]
entrepreneurial paradise
In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism - We venture to the very heart of the hell that is Scandinavian socialism—and find out that it's not so bad. Pricey, yes, but a good place to start and run a company. What exactly does that suggest about the link between taxes and entrepreneurship?
funemployment
How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America
The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come. (via rw)
The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come. (via rw)
The Gervais Principle
The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”.
Warning: link may evoke baleful despair!
The Brilliant Issue
I asked Nathan Myhrvold, C.E.O. of Intellectual Ventures and widely considered to be one of the smartest people in technology, if he is brilliant. "If you put yourself in that camp, you might be correct," he teased. "But then, you're also an asshole." The Brilliant Issue profiles Porfolio's picks for best game-changers, upstarts, rebels, connectors and other influencers. [more inside]
Ghetto Capitalism
Ghetto Capitalists At once an outsider and a welcome participant in the ghetto economy, he found that he was suddenly part of “a vast, often invisible web” of economic exchange. That web supports the residents of Maquis Park and adds a strange sort of order to their existence, tempering chaos and adding predictability to the lives of Chicago’s poor. For the most part, the people he meets seem eager to trade. It’s just that much of what they’re trading isn’t going to meet with the approval of a law-and-order Republican or a bleeding-heart Great Society Democrat.
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