[vinyl7]

> We’re in some weird stage of capitalism where everything is a grift and nobody really cares anymore.

I've felt this way for a long time now. There's no substance to anything anymore. The US economy feels like a more advanced Nigerian scam, where very few things that the US makes provides anything of actual value and substance. Americans just can't afford quality anymore. We decided we'd like to have significant amounts of garbage rather than fewer quality things. This change was likely due to revving the economy toward quarterly profit goals and GDP growth over everything else. Theoretically, prioritizing investments should have "trickled down" where companies could have more capital to invest in workers, R&Dand quality...but instead it all just got soaked up into executive pay and the stock market.

[graemep]

Its short termism. its the same throughout the west and beyond. The markets want returns on a one or two year period, not long term investment. Executive pay is almost always tied to short term profits and share prices.

[Chu4eeno]

Yeah, it's the perversion of capitalism known as publicly traded companies.

Once you start noticing private companies (like some restaurant chains) manage to both treat their employees better and serve their customers better than the publicly traded ones, it seems like a very consistent trend.

Having pursuit of endless growth to appease otherwise uninvolved shareholders might not be the best way to do "capitalism".

[graemep]

Someone who is trying to build a business they can sell when they retire, or that they might leave to their kids, thinks on a completely different time scale. Smaller businesses are also run more by personal judgement and relationships than by rules and procedures.