Amazon, Tesla, Meta considered harmful to democracy Amazon, Meta, and Tesla have earned the rather dubious honor of being named some of the worst corporate underminers of democracy by the world's largest trade union federation. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) today published a list of seven companies it said were "emblematic" of the ways large international …
Yes and no: Amazon > Alibaba, Tesla > BYD, Meta > TikTok. You could protest until economic irrelevance. Tariffs and protectionism anyone? Stop bying cheap foreign-made goods? - Oh, no, that would be 400% more expensive.
Balanced approach is important. Antagonization of the society is also a risk.
Where are all the great European tech companies? Overly socialist environment is toxic.
What's wrong about Unions is that they aim at local solutions: me, my company. The higher level fix should be providing *only two* essential free services: medical care and education.
Jobs, pensions, housing, etc should be personal responsibility. Fair and simple tax system is also extremely important.
Common myth spread by billionaire fanboys and other dim lackeys who have been fooled into thinking they could join them.
A small number of billionaires is not an effective or efficient way of providing jobs. Even if they were perfect angels, determined to do good in the world, they cannot be as effective as a society that distributes the wealth, and the job creation capabilities, among many.
I'm still waiting to see a society that actually 'distributes the wealth'. What you can quite easily see is the stark difference between countries where non-governmental entities are allowed to innovate and grow and countries where the government controls everything. The latter tending to be massively corrupt and the populace live in poverty.
Very few, if any, major innovations have come from a government run entity. ARPANET being one of the few exceptions.
Norway is a capitalist country.
That fund has grown by investing in shares of private companies. The govt didn't start those companies.
On the flip side look at Venezuela and PDVSA. It is the state owned and near enough only oil and gas company in the country and it is an utter mess.
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"I'm still waiting to see a society that actually 'distributes the wealth'"
In terms of wealth re-distribution the US surely ranks among the most socialist countries in the world. Since the 1970s the working and middle classes have seen their salaries and wealth reduced and their tax burden increase while the wealthiest have become richer while paying lower taxes both proportionally and, as some boast, absolutely, than middle class families. The richest get full use of country's infrastructure which is paid for almost entirely by the taxes of other people. It's a shining example of how, in less than 2 generations, tax and social policies can transfer huge amounts of wealth from one section of society to another. GO USA!!!!
What we need are large private companies lead by innovative individuals which generate wealth AND well paid employees spreading wealth into their communities AND well funded government providing strong public services and infrastructure (and, to your last point, investing heavily in science) to support the above.
I’d suggest that there needs to be balance between these. Perfect balance is impossible to achieve, but that’s not to say that misbalances needn’t be addressed.
The existence of billionaires in indicative of a distorted tax system. Nobody needs that kind of wealth, it benefits nobody. The rich just pile it up, they can never spend it faster than it come in so it's just a way of keeping score.
While they have stacks of money locked up, it's doing nothing which defeats the purpose of capital. For capitalism to work money needs to be in circulation and the best way to do that is to put it into as many hands as possible and not having it hoarded by a few selfish gits.
Very few billionaires have actual stacks of money. It is all numbers on spreadsheets of what they could be worth if they sold all their shares. If the Muskprat suddenly decided he actually wants to turn his 'wealth' into Benjamins the share price would crash and his wealth would not be anywhere near as wealthy as thought.
Also remember your pension depends on this wealth value too.
While they may not have billions of liquidity they can borrow against it so the actual details are moot. Even without that they still have accessible cash beyond the dreams of us mere mortals so the distinction is not important.
The point is, and even Henry Ford understood this, if you spread money about, more people can afford to spend money and buy your products which gets as close to a "virtuous circle" as capitalism can manage. Concentrating wealth in a small group is poison to capitalism.
Actually, if you did the research you would find that small businesses make up a significantly larger portion of the Employment figures than large and medium sized corporations combined. They also pay higher taxes and provide greater local community benefits.
Unfortunately, larger companies have more disposable income to spunk on politicians and to spend convincing people that they are better for the economy, and so they get the benefits that your local employers dont. They're not better for the economy in any way shape or form. Unless of course you're a politician or a billionaire. Or perhaps in the business of building billionaire's yachts...
"small businesses make up a significantly larger portion of the Employment figures than large and medium sized corporations combined"
A lot of those 'small businesses' are sole proprietors or single person shell companies used for tax reasons. Stats from the ONS in the UK show that the number of 'zero employee' businesses outnumber employing businesses by over 2:1. Not sure what the data is like for the US.
And your point is?
It is a fact that SMEs employ the majority of workers in every country.
In the UK, in 2023:
99.9% of businesses were SMEs. 99.2% were small businesses, 0-49 employees.
SMEs employed 16.7 million (61% of UK employees), and turnover was estimated at £2.4 trillion (53%)
Small businesses was 13.1 million (48% of the total), with a turnover of £1.6 trillion (36%).
I don't doubt that there are a great many zero employee shells that exist entirely for tax avoidance and pre-pack administration to screw over suppliers, but small businesses do employ half the workforce.
"It is a fact that SMEs employ the majority of workers in every country."
"99.2% were small businesses, 0-49 employees."
Note the zero there. Yes there are just over 5 million small businesses in the UK but over 4 million have zero employees so this makes a big difference to the employee count.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2023/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2023-statistical-release
I'd vote for them.
Amazon sells me what I want at a price I like and delivers it to my door, saving me both money and time.
Meta give me WhatsApp which allows me to communicate with friends and family. Not only don't they charge me money, they don't push adverts at me either. Perhaps they are doing something nefarious with my data, but I've never noticed it and it certainly doesn't appear to have caused me any harm.
Ok, Tesla does nothing for me. Other people do seem to want to buy electric cars for them.
Politicians however waste my time and money and give me surprisingly little in return for what they take. Democracy means we should be able to vote them out.
When you extol the virtues of your corporate overlords, I feel you are misguided but you have that right to be misguided.
> Democracy means we should be able to vote them out.
Some questions on this statement:
- Can you vote?
- Do you vote?
- Does your vote get counted in the way that it should, with your vote receiving the same weight as everyone else's vote?
If the answer is yes, then you can "vote them out", but you have to also realize that probably fewer people than you think exist, agree with you {and|or} more people than you think exist, think the alternative options on the ballot is/are even worse.
I think that you should at least entertain the possibility that you're in a minority. And remember, if you're a minority, one of the better political systems to be in, is a democracy.
My effective tax rate is about 48% largely due to many many layers of taxation between me and the federal government... for which I'm not entirely clear that I'm getting a good deal in return and my vote against such things never works... so I question if democracy is really helping me either. Joining a union just seems like putting the president of the HOA (you know the one) in charge of how much you can make. It's just another tax you have to pay to reduce your freedom to do things. No thank you.
You fail to look at the big picture.
Companies like AMZN are destroying many million sof Americans because of their poor wages and conditions. THere are real consequences when so many people are treated like this. This is why America has a crime problem, because of the lower classes being treated soo poorly for so long, they become the criminals of tomorrow. Hardly a shock America has all those gangs, given what happened in the past.
Other western countries do have the same level of extremist poor treatment and they are far more peaceful.
Nothing is free, what goes round comes round.
"Meta [...] certainly doesn't appear to have caused me any harm."
I guess you are lucky, because others have been harmed by Facebook et al. The most egregious case was the spreading of nationalist and racist propaganda through Facebook in Myanmar, resulting in killings and rape and causing 700 000 people to flee their home. It's not that Meta is out to hurt you. They just want to make money and if a million people get hurt along the way, here or there, than that's not a priority for them. When they came for the Rohingya, you didn't care. But who knows, maybe they'll break you society next.
The unions really aren't fans of democracy.
I believe it was the UAW where it was shown about 75% of its membership supports Trump, and yet the union endorsed Harris.
The thing that is most important to the major unions is keeping their leaders in power, and those people really don't care much about the rank and file members.
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