Companies doing stock buybacks to boost their share price (and executive pay), instead of re-investing the money into their business. As Ben Norton said, this is why Boeing is in such a fucked up place now. Price to earnings ratios that prices stocks at well beyond their worth. People invest more money to prop up the overvalued stock market, causing an even more unreasonable price. People look at , assume that it will always go that way, and keep dropping money into it.
Not to mention that so much of a company’s “value” is symbolic shit like their trademark. For instance, Apple’s logo is worth over $100 billion, Tesla’s is somehow over $70 billion, even though the cars are fucking shit. So much of clothing is just a company slapping a label on the product and the storefront and calling it a day, while subcontracting everything in the design and production.
I’m tempted to put this in badposting, because this is not incredibly new or insightful.
Imo it’s more so that crypto was the purest, most distilled form of capitalism. Finance so far abstracted from any real world value that it looked rightfully absurd to onlookers. Pure ownership, zero labor. All that matters is number go up, substance be damned.
take solace in the fact this bubble is just bursting soon and its gonna come crashing down hard.
i feel for all the lives its gonna destroy along with itself tho
I feel you on this post, I wouldn’t put it in badposting. It’s worth pointing out. Companies that used to make X now make Y (not inherently bad but usually it is in this system) or now they make a shittier version of X. It’s just brand name.
Which, speaking of Tesla and by extension everyone’s favorite K-holed asshole, is one of the funniest parts of the twitter buyout. The name change. The brand recognition alone was the real value because the website was shit from a dog. But, being a captain of industry had to change it to satisfy his adolescent obsession with a letter. Consequences be damned. And the billions lost in that endeavor? Forgettable. It’s just more ones and zeroes in the banking cloud. More numbers on screens. So detached from tangible reality they are closer to videogame scores. Definitely adjacent to crypto. So I agree with your sentiment here.
Companies that used to make X now make Y (not inherently bad but usually it is in this system) or now they make a shittier version of X.
Or even better (worse): they still make X nominally, but all their growth comes from over financialized bullshit related to it. Like the airlines or Starbucks making more money from financing than selling their products
The stock market is completely divorced from material reality
Hold on I need to take out credit on my credit to pay my credit card. Yes this can go on forever, the economy isn’t real anymore.
