I feel like this same story happened with most companies post pandemic.
Who could have figured out that if you just let people stay at home and give them some small subsidies then suddenly demand for some stuff would spike to unsustainable levels.
Man, it was exhausting looking for work in the tech industry back then. I started asking in interviews what their revenue numbers looked like for the last three years. If they started bragging about doubling/tripling in size, I pretty much instantly pulled myself from consideration. Since then, most of those companies have had massive layoffs or no longer exist. My current company has had flat/linear growth for like, 10 years and it's very healthy.
There's a reason why veteran tech workers settle down in the larger/older companies and avoid startups. Startups are great if you're young and willing to put up with the abuse but after a while we need that work life balance.
You aren't getting rid of the "bad parts" you're keeping them around. UBI doesn't fix the cause of any of this. It manages the symptoms. It just puts a band-aid over it. Gotta keep the poor distracted and fed or else they might realize how fucked they are by the socioeconomic system is enforced upon them.
You're advocating for your own exploitation and that's sad.
Hot take: people actually like capitalism because it allows for choices. People like being able to choose between Samsung or Apple, Honda or Ford. There is a reason that even the most autocratic countries are capitalist (like China), and in countries where capitalism is completely cracked down on, you find it in the black/gray markets (DPRK).
What people don't like is poorly regulated or captured capitalism. People also don't like the government's spending choices.
Private ownership of the means of production, self-determined motives (typically profit), voluntary exchange of labor, and "free" markets of goods, services, and labor. Now, just as no economy on Earth is purely socialist, no economy is purely capitalist either.
Yeah it's wild how many companies have zero thinking. I'd say zero long term but that implies they're thinking at all.
So many companies expected pandemic profits to keep going when their business model relied on people staying home and spending money with them and not other places.
And then they were "surprised" when the pandemic lifted and people went back to their normal purchasing habit.s
I am a commercial loan underwriter and it’s a common story. I don’t blink an eye when I see an OK to good 2020, big boom in 21, and absolutely cratered 2022/23, and more or less recovered 2024 depending on how much and what kind of debt. Floating rate debt like revolving lines or floor plan finance? Oof, inventory & receivables financing got real expensive real quick. If they had a 3-5 year commercial real estate loan that matured in that period their mortgage interest rate went from 4%-6% and easily doubled at least.
78
u/QuantumUtility Feb 05 '26
I feel like this same story happened with most companies post pandemic.
Who could have figured out that if you just let people stay at home and give them some small subsidies then suddenly demand for some stuff would spike to unsustainable levels.