Capitalists: “This system is great - money can theoretically flow indefinitely as more people spend money!”
Rich People who hoard wealth: “Allow us to introduce ourselves.”
More like, “Why aren’t people buying my commodities? Guess I’ll hire a focus group to see how I can improve the advertising. Can’t be because they can’t afford it. It’s fairly priced among similar products.”
It’s actually kinda interesting. Companies that practice what is sometimes referred to as conscious capitalism actually tend to drastically outperform their traditional infinite growth peers. Turns out when wealth is all accumulated in the pockets of a rounding error of the world’s population the economy begins to slow down. A lot.
It’s still not likely as good as something like a co-op but some corporations actually understand that customers, owners, investors AND employees are all stakeholders in their business. When the company’s earnings directly impact how much an employee can make they tend to be more driven to try their best to improve how much the company makes. Likewise happy employees often (unsurprisingly) have a tendency to simply try harder at what they do. When they aren’t constantly worried about being able to pay their bills, they tend to be happier. The whole thing just kind of turns into a giant feedback loop of growth.
Only thing is that a lot of conscious capitalists will in the same breath as stating all of this say that socialism is bad which amuses me, because what they suggest does certainly start to sound a lot like it.
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The invisible hand needs the glove of regulation to grab the money.
On the individual level we can surely all agree that the capitalist’s behavior is inhumane, but I don’t think it’s dumb or short-sighted as implied by the comic. The capitalist employer is making an optimal move from the perspective of profit-maximization, business competitiveness and perhaps even class solidarity with other employers by paying its workers as little as possible. They’re responding to incentives in order to maximize profit. It’s implied here that the long term effects of this may prove unsustainable, but then, are we ready to consider the possibility that they may not? On the other hand, forcing all employers to pay their employees more (by raising the minimum wage, for instance) might very well positively impact the economy as a whole (not that I’d know for sure - not an economist), along with, of course, the quality of life for working class citizens, though we should consider that it’d likely disproportionately affect businesses with thinner profit margins (potentially reducing competition, negatively affecting the cost and availability of some goods and services in the long run).
