[autoexec]

In the end it's really just greed. Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with. They are constantly testing price increases to see how high they can get their prices before they start losing enough customers that it hurts their profits.

Older customers who have an idea in their mind of how much something is worth based on how much they've previously paid may eventually feel cheated and stop buying, but there's always a new generation of customers who never knew any better. There are things they can do to offset the backlash like they might offer a sale at the same time as they increase prices to give customers time to get used to the new sticker price. They keep the price the same and try to hide the fact that they're giving customers less product.

it's pretty shortsighted though because it makes our money increasingly worthless and eventually we'll end up like Zimbabwe and a loaf of bread will cost us $100.

[indoordin0saur]

> In the end it's really just greed.

Yeah, well their job is to get the best price for their product. Just as it is your job to get as much money as possible for your product, i.e. your talents and labors.

In a competitive economy with informed buyers this greed is what makes things cheap and high quality. Think about two grocery store owners in a small town. They've settled into an equilibria with each other to keep the status quo and not get greedy for a bigger share of the market by competing on price or quality. Then one day, seeing an opportunity, a new grocer moves in with fresher fruit, a wider variety of products and most importantly lower prices. All the customers go over to that grocery store and the old grocers have the choice to improve or die. From the point-of-view of the previous grocery store owners the new grocery store is "greedy", but it ends up benefiting everyone else.

[sokoloff]

> In the end it's really just greed. Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with.

Is it also greed when consumers want to pay as little as possible? (In some ways, of course it is, but at some point, the loaded term greed isn’t particularly helpful towards understanding perfectly ordinary microeconomic behavior.)

[autoexec]

> Is it also greed when consumers want to pay as little as possible?

Yeah, sometimes it is. People should be paid a fair amount for the resources, time and effort they put into something. Greed seems fitting when the motivation is just an endless repeating of "I want to give you less while taking more of your money for myself" although more often it's "for the company's shareholders".

Pushing for ever-increasing profit at all costs is what corporations do. Calling it anything but greed is just misrepresenting their nature.

[usefulcat]

> Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with.

In any market where competition exists, companies compete against other companies for customers. Any company that doesn't (for whatever reason) maximize it's net income is likely to cease to exist at some point, or at the least is unlikely to grow. As a result, not being 'greedy' is usually not a viable strategy.

Describing simple self interest as 'greed' is inherently loaded and reductionist. Look at the natural world; pretty much all living organisms exhibit self-interested behaviors (at least at the group or species level, if not the individual level). Are all of those 'greedy' too? You could say yes and not be wrong, but in doing so you would dilute the meaning of the word 'greed'.

[themaninthedark]

Do you ask for/expect a raise every year? Even if your job responsibilities and workload doesn't change?

It's easy to boil it down and say greed or capitalism but I don't think it is a very reasoned position.

>Prices for goods in Europe in the sixteenth century rose to about four times the level that had prevailed during the preceding three centuries, increasing poverty levels but also raising the profit potential for those who were in a position to exploit an economy that was suddenly based primarily upon money and credit rather than labor and trade. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/worldwide-in...

Not sure if they were fully capitalistic by then but that was a long time ago.

I also know that Japan has had inflation for a long time, reading history about coins and looking up the worth of a mon that would be 10000 to 1 yen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_cash_coins_by...

IMHO, inflation is driven by both greed (not just companies, everyone wants their retirement portfolio to go up) and increased money supply. The USA has a large amount of deficit spending, this is money that we just magic into existence. We have used it recently to try and manage crisis like 2008 GFC and COVID but I don't think that it is a coincidence that after those two events the costs of everything went up.

Worldwide the prevailing economic theory is that deflation is bad, I am not sure but unless we are willing to allow for some deflation you will only every have inflation.

[autoexec]

> Do you ask for/expect a raise every year? Even if your job responsibilities and workload doesn't change?

Cost of living requires that. Also, even when my job responsibilities and workload don't change, my skills do. Someone who has gained valuable skill and experience should be better compensated than someone showing up for their first day of work.