[edanm]

> Corporations have perfected consumer value extraction, allowing them to pay themselves more and bid higher against the competition, further increasing prices to consumers in an endless loop.

This flies in the face of most economic theory, and also flies in the face of reality. How many corporations are out there with 90% profit margins? Very few, if any.

> If my movie budget is 300m but 200m of that went to high priced actors (think JD, RDJ getting paid 50m~) did that movie produce that amount of value?

I'm not sure what the high-priced actors have to do with it, but the amount of value produced has nothing to do with the budget - it has to do with the tickets you sell. If your $300m movie tanks and no one ever goes to see it, you've in some sense created 0 value. If everyone in the world goes to see it and you make billions of dollars, you've created billions in value, as decided by actual people choosing to vote with their wallets to giving you money for your art.

The budget only figures into it in the sense that you need to subtract it from the revenue to decide on the actual profit.