Well yeah, the real power (capital) is making even more money from their work. Of course they'll pay them for being better at it. Its cheaper to pay CEOs more to be horrible than it is to pay people more.
Capital is the problem and shareholders are delighted when anyone takes out their anger on CEOs. I mean, its part of what they pay them for.
Well yeah. They hold the power. They make the decisions. And they really like money. Shareholders have shown that they're okay with the ridiculous compensation packages that CEOs build for themselves. Most notable was Musk's recent 59 BILLION dollar compensation package which is absolutely completely fuckin ridiculous bonkers, but his shareholders approved it for who knows what reason. Fucking morons.
The term 'CEO' is just individuals who exploit legal loopholes to unjustly enrich themselves at the expense of others, while being rewarded for such unethical practices. They serve no real value that can't be accomplished by those under them.
Wealth flows up. Yeah sure, it trickles down too. But what happens when you build a pump that makes water from a basin flow up into a tank, and only let it trickle back down? The tank gets fuller and the basin loses its water.
I know my value, too. So when I leave my retail job, I KNOW the company is going to give me a gazillion dollars because of the value I brought to it...I steal your /s and cry into it like a pillow
The owners have been painfully clear they believe they can sustain an economy only they can afford to participate in, but still somehow powered by and on the backs of everyone else that can't afford to live within it, let alone be active consumers/participants.
Honestly at this point the 95% should just tell the 5% to keep sucking eachother off buying eachother's space tourist rocket yachts (Edit: sorry, AI powered space tourist rocket yachts) only they can afford while we go off and make cooperative, interconnected socialist communities. Maybe start compeeeeeting on what cooperative, humble members of a shared society we can be.
Here is how I like to think of it: if your total assets are less than $10,000, you are much closer to being in the bottom 50% of the global wealth distribution than the top 1%. Our prosperity is stolen from us each and every day. Our miraculous achievements and discoveries consumed by a system that only cares about funneling the largest portion of that prosperity to a few.
Have you heard of Holocracy? It's one of the more popular of set of flat, self-organizing management structures; it's been tried at a few big name companies, with limited success. I think failures at this point are easily attributed to sheer novelty and lack of experience, and good guidelines for avoiding pitfalls, more than a fundamental flaw in the concept. One of the big issues I see needing to be addressed is ego; we will never get rid of self-proclaimed alpha types, and extroverts will always have an advantage in rising in the ranks regardless of competency. These sorts of issues can sabotage - even without malicious intent! - these flat structures. Some people will simply tend to accrue influence and power. But another issue is overcoming the tendency to bikeshed. Companies who've tried, and failed, to execute Holocracy, Sociocracy, Matrix Management, and Lean Management (there are a few of these styles) have been pretty good at documenting the weak areas that causes struggles and failures.
Anyway, I'm quite keen on these approaches; companies employing them are just hard to find.
The owners have been painfully clear they believe they can sustain an economy only they can afford to participate in, but still somehow powered by and on the backs of everyone else that can't afford to live within it, let alone be active consumers/participants.
That somehow is called slavery and it "worked" for a long time. It's their only true goal.
The owners figured that out after Jim Crow fell. Overt slavery leads to resistance, and gets harder to maintain at scale.
Since then, they stumbled upon a solution born of modern technology.
Just propagandize your labor pool using the media you own and the education system you inform through your captured government into enslaving themselves and believing it was their idea, and just as importantly, propagandize them into hating and blaming the minority of peasants who didn't fall for that propaganda as the reason for all their owner caused misery.
"If you work really hard and do everything we tell you, you will prosper!.. At some undisclosed point in the future. Just keep working our machines, it'll happen, you'll see! You stupid fucking sucker peasants🖕🤑💰"
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