[FirmwareBurner]

>Otherwise it's just corporate greed

By that logic, every business around us operates on corporate greed since their sole purpose is to increase their profits and bring down costs, not to be a UBI jobs program.

Sure, certain large and profitable companies with sizable market caps could easily stomach having even more idle workers coasting all day for great paychecks, with a corresponding reduction in profits and still stay afloat, but why would they?

[McDyver]

Not necessarily. They can be profitable without being greedy.

In this case they could have just said "we don't have capacity to fulfill all new demands, we can happily run at full capacity, and charge more if needed". Other companies could have taken up the slack, new businesses popping up, etc. Instead, they recruited people who prioritised this new job, just to be let go.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Not necessarily. They can be profitable without being greedy.

Sure, but then they'll be overtaken by their competitors who will rake in more profits as they don't mind being greedy, and your shareholders won't appreciate that.

Greed and capitalism are basically synonymous, as the end game of capitalism is to accumulate as much wealth and market cap as possible, at the expense of your competition, until you own the whole pie.

Preaching to companies "just be OK with being a little poorer this time", while their competitors are using every dirty trick in the book to get ahead, will never work.

If you want a level playing field for everyone to not be greedy, it must come from regulations that hold companies accountable, not expecting companies to voluntarily act in favor of their labor force out of the kindness of their hearts, as that will seldom happen.

[clnq]

I ran a tech startup for several years and I can say you have a simplistic view of this. My company didn't want to be a unicorn, it didn't want VC money, and it didn't want the whole pie. It was funded out of pocket until it became profitable. It was under capitalism, and yet we had no investors other than the founders to be greedy for. We just built a product that was important for us, and we were content with earning enough for this to be worthwhile.

Capitalism is not synonymous with greed. We just idolize greedy people. We call them things like "successful", "self-made", "inspiring", or "capitalist" to absolve them of their greed. In the Soviet Union, people would call greedy people "successful", "self-made", "inspiring", and "communist".

It's really just the greed.

[FirmwareBurner]

Sure, I get it, and while there's several companies who think like your own, that's not the norm, many, especially the big trillion dollar ones, are the exact opposite.

Do you think Apple, Microsoft, Google, Saudi Aramco, etc. got to trillion dollar valuations by being mindful and not greedy?

[clnq]

All I'm saying is that capitalism does not prescribe greed. Take away capitalism and you have the same problems with greed. Take away greed and capitalism doesn't sound so bad anymore.