5 ms·

You didn't accidentally save half a million, you deliberately and intentionally saved them half a million, but now you regret it. That's not the same thing. La

by mcv 3y ago

You didn't accidentally save half a million, you deliberately and intentionally saved them half a million, but now you regret it. That's not the same thing. Large organisations are so woefully inefficient that I'm surprised they're able to compete at all, but they have a ton of money and economy of scale and all that, and along the way there's more than enough money to waste millions on stupid nonsense and inefficiency and nobody really cares.

photonbucket 3y ago
In my mind, there is where inflation really comes from. For every wage paid that wasn't useful, the resulting product becomes more expensive / less profitable. If we were able to optimize out all the waste we'd probably have deflation while computers and business processes keep getting more efficient
- digging 3y ago
  I mean waste is probably a source of inflation but lots of it just comes from unrestrained profit-seeking behavior. If a company believes it can raise its prices without impacting sales, it will do that. That's why so many massive corporations posted record-breaking profits during the recent bouts of inflation.
  - anoxor 3y ago
    Government shutdowns that made it more difficult or impossible to shop outside of big stores or online would be as big or bigger issue here.
    - digging 3y ago
      It wouldn't explain simultaneous mass layoffs.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  Except that generalized deflation is one of the largest and widespread economic disasters that can be brought about; you are disincentivizing immediate consumption to on the basis of future larger consumption, you're disincentivizing investing in the economy instead of just holding capital - both things that will make a economy stop working in the long term. It's the reason why most central banks really want some minimal level of inflation going on at all times.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  ...no. Inflation is actually very simple: More money is added to the system than value produced. That is, money is printed faster than value is created through labor. Stop and think for a second. How do we have trillions of USD? Banks create money. And they're doing it faster than ever before. Now you can absolutely have price gouging at the same time, but the two are independent of each other, even though combined the affects are worse for the price gouged.
  - anon-3988 3y ago
    I think OP is saying that the creation of high paying useless job is causing the bulk of the money that exist in the system to not mean much. Which is why we have inflation, because the increase in the amount of money does not scale with the amount of "value". Imagine if government is spending half of the money printed to people staring at walls. This would naturally double the inflation because it requires double the amount of money to produce the same amount of "value". So the government is pumping money, but is not getting the desired signal, so it pumps more money.
    - mcv 3y ago
      Only if those people are actually required to stare at walls for that money. Because having received money, they will want to spend it on stuff, which creates demand. Only when that demand can't be met because people are required to stare at walls instead of creating value, do prices go up and cause inflation. So there's another reason to replace welfare with UBI. Seems every discussion leads to that these days.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Price gouging can also be inflation. Inflation is simply measured by how much prices go up. If companies just raise prices to reap more profits because nobody is stopping them, as seems to be the case right now, that's still inflation. Of course this kind of inflation should be fought by competition, but you have to have companies actually willing to compete on price.
    - 3y ago
Vinnl 3y ago
It would be helpful if you'd point out what term is appropriate. Given the reference to "my country", odds are that they're not a native speaker. (I can't tell from the English though, but I'm not a native speaker myself.)
throwaway290 3y ago
Another way to look at it, you intentionally saved the company half a million and you got paid what you think was the fair pay for it. It seems like the author might think it's too much money but the irony is that someone is clearly undercharging (helping skew salaries in the entire industry lower, of course) while execs get bonuses. There's nothing to regret if you can make ends meet, great job.
akira2501 3y ago
> I'm surprised they're able to compete at all They typically don't. When the government doesn't enforce it's own rules, these companies just buy up competition. They strangle the market and they get more inefficient all at the same time.
crazygringo 3y ago
> Large organisations are so woefully inefficient that I'm surprised they're able to compete at all It's easy to understand: large orgs are competing against other large orgs that are similarly inefficient, because efficiency in a large org is a really, really, really hard human problem that we simply haven't solved. And remember they're still providing a valuable service/product. For all their inefficiency, they're still more efficient than not existing at all. This is why they would exist if there weren't competition. And you might ask, what about competition from small orgs? Well, a small org has less efficiencies of scale, but if they are efficient otherwise, they can sometimes compete effectively with the large org. But then they grow into a large org and will wind up with all of the large org inefficiencies. It's just how things are. It's not that nobody cares -- to the contrary, company owners care hugely. It's that literally nobody has any idea how to solve it.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > It's easy to understand: large orgs are competing against other large orgs that are similarly inefficient, because efficiency in a large org is a really, really, really hard human problem that we simply haven't solved. We used to break up companies that became Too Large. Either they became so large that it was impossible to compete against them (as Large Company can demand way better pricing on volume than Small Startup can or has way better access to financial instruments due to better ratings, or like many automotive companies even run their own goddamn bank), or because they could use a wildly profitable business to price-dump competitors out of existence or because they became so large that they felt free to extort their customers to the tune the people would complain about it in the media/their congresspeople too much, or because they became so large their sheer size represented too much economic risk ("too big to fail"). We should begin doing that again. Something as big as Google/Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Walmart, the Big Four consultancy shops, virtually all major banks - there's absolutely no reason these should be allowed to exist at their current size. Or, if these companies still wish to exist at their size / their existence as one platform, they at least have to be regulated to mitigate the threat originating from that scale.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
The only reason 99% of large companies exist is they got bigger than everyone else first, and that gives them the power to keep everyone else down. Competition is a fairy tale we tell MBAs so they'll start new businesses so it looks like there's competition. They never had a chance.
pjc50 3y ago
> I'm surprised they're able to compete at all Competition is usually eliminated by one or more "moats": huge capital upfront investment, patents, market lockin agreements (e.g. the way Windows is sold to OEMs), vertical integration (e.g. Apple), compliance (it's genuinely hard to start a bank or a hospital), buying out competition, buying out the staff of the competition (why FAANG have so many highly paid staff doing work that gets cancelled) or even less legitimate means. Large companies tend to end up with similar failure modes to authoritarian state-controlled companies. It's interesting how well China has been able to ride the line between control and growth on this one.

by mcv 3y ago

photonbucket 3y ago

In my mind, there is where inflation really comes from. For every wage paid that wasn't useful, the resulting product becomes more expensive / less profitable. If we were able to optimize out all the waste we'd probably have deflation while computers and business processes keep getting more efficient

digging 3y ago
I mean waste is probably a source of inflation but lots of it just comes from unrestrained profit-seeking behavior. If a company believes it can raise its prices without impacting sales, it will do that. That's why so many massive corporations posted record-breaking profits during the recent bouts of inflation.
- anoxor 3y ago
  Government shutdowns that made it more difficult or impossible to shop outside of big stores or online would be as big or bigger issue here.
  - digging 3y ago
    It wouldn't explain simultaneous mass layoffs.
ElectricalUnion 3y ago
Except that generalized deflation is one of the largest and widespread economic disasters that can be brought about; you are disincentivizing immediate consumption to on the basis of future larger consumption, you're disincentivizing investing in the economy instead of just holding capital - both things that will make a economy stop working in the long term. It's the reason why most central banks really want some minimal level of inflation going on at all times.
Vicinity9635 3y ago
...no. Inflation is actually very simple: More money is added to the system than value produced. That is, money is printed faster than value is created through labor. Stop and think for a second. How do we have trillions of USD? Banks create money. And they're doing it faster than ever before. Now you can absolutely have price gouging at the same time, but the two are independent of each other, even though combined the affects are worse for the price gouged.
- anon-3988 3y ago
  I think OP is saying that the creation of high paying useless job is causing the bulk of the money that exist in the system to not mean much. Which is why we have inflation, because the increase in the amount of money does not scale with the amount of "value". Imagine if government is spending half of the money printed to people staring at walls. This would naturally double the inflation because it requires double the amount of money to produce the same amount of "value". So the government is pumping money, but is not getting the desired signal, so it pumps more money.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Only if those people are actually required to stare at walls for that money. Because having received money, they will want to spend it on stuff, which creates demand. Only when that demand can't be met because people are required to stare at walls instead of creating value, do prices go up and cause inflation. So there's another reason to replace welfare with UBI. Seems every discussion leads to that these days.
- mcv 3y ago
  Price gouging can also be inflation. Inflation is simply measured by how much prices go up. If companies just raise prices to reap more profits because nobody is stopping them, as seems to be the case right now, that's still inflation. Of course this kind of inflation should be fought by competition, but you have to have companies actually willing to compete on price.
  - 3y ago

Vinnl 3y ago

It would be helpful if you'd point out what term is appropriate. Given the reference to "my country", odds are that they're not a native speaker. (I can't tell from the English though, but I'm not a native speaker myself.)

throwaway290 3y ago

Another way to look at it, you intentionally saved the company half a million and you got paid what you think was the fair pay for it. It seems like the author might think it's too much money but the irony is that someone is clearly undercharging (helping skew salaries in the entire industry lower, of course) while execs get bonuses. There's nothing to regret if you can make ends meet, great job.

akira2501 3y ago

> I'm surprised they're able to compete at all They typically don't. When the government doesn't enforce it's own rules, these companies just buy up competition. They strangle the market and they get more inefficient all at the same time.

crazygringo 3y ago

> Large organisations are so woefully inefficient that I'm surprised they're able to compete at all It's easy to understand: large orgs are competing against other large orgs that are similarly inefficient, because efficiency in a large org is a really, really, really hard human problem that we simply haven't solved. And remember they're still providing a valuable service/product. For all their inefficiency, they're still more efficient than not existing at all. This is why they would exist if there weren't competition. And you might ask, what about competition from small orgs? Well, a small org has less efficiencies of scale, but if they are efficient otherwise, they can sometimes compete effectively with the large org. But then they grow into a large org and will wind up with all of the large org inefficiencies. It's just how things are. It's not that nobody cares -- to the contrary, company owners care hugely. It's that literally nobody has any idea how to solve it.

mschuster91 3y ago
> It's easy to understand: large orgs are competing against other large orgs that are similarly inefficient, because efficiency in a large org is a really, really, really hard human problem that we simply haven't solved. We used to break up companies that became Too Large. Either they became so large that it was impossible to compete against them (as Large Company can demand way better pricing on volume than Small Startup can or has way better access to financial instruments due to better ratings, or like many automotive companies even run their own goddamn bank), or because they could use a wildly profitable business to price-dump competitors out of existence or because they became so large that they felt free to extort their customers to the tune the people would complain about it in the media/their congresspeople too much, or because they became so large their sheer size represented too much economic risk ("too big to fail"). We should begin doing that again. Something as big as Google/Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Walmart, the Big Four consultancy shops, virtually all major banks - there's absolutely no reason these should be allowed to exist at their current size. Or, if these companies still wish to exist at their size / their existence as one platform, they at least have to be regulated to mitigate the threat originating from that scale.
- crazygringo 3y ago

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

The only reason 99% of large companies exist is they got bigger than everyone else first, and that gives them the power to keep everyone else down. Competition is a fairy tale we tell MBAs so they'll start new businesses so it looks like there's competition. They never had a chance.

pjc50 3y ago

> I'm surprised they're able to compete at all Competition is usually eliminated by one or more "moats": huge capital upfront investment, patents, market lockin agreements (e.g. the way Windows is sold to OEMs), vertical integration (e.g. Apple), compliance (it's genuinely hard to start a bank or a hospital), buying out competition, buying out the staff of the competition (why FAANG have so many highly paid staff doing work that gets cancelled) or even less legitimate means. Large companies tend to end up with similar failure modes to authoritarian state-controlled companies. It's interesting how well China has been able to ride the line between control and growth on this one.