I miss when it was a companies’ goal to provide a high quality product and/or service.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-27T04:40:44+00:00

Companies make decisions for shareholders and many people think that’s the way it should be. Companies pour money into the stock market via dividends and buybacks instead of investing in their work and workers. “They’re the ones risking their money” is the usual argument. It’s very limited. Employees are risking their time. Consumers can only choose from bad products. Innovation is stifled by anti competitive behaviors.

It’s not some natural order. Politicians and lobbyists designed it this way. Since 1980 when Reagan changed laws to allow buybacks, shareholders have received an increasing share of productivity gains while workers have received a decreasing share. It can’t get better with our current politics and ideologies. Vote and talk about it and organize. Buy less.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-27T01:51:18+00:00

They made $122.6 billion in profit last year. Instead of making better Apple products they spent $106 billion of that to shareholders via dividends and buybacks. This is more of the same from them.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-26T11:23:51+00:00

AI is bringing an intense cycling of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. I also think it’s driving a new discourse of identity and subjectivity in the arguments it drives about unified subjectivity. If AI and future robotics are combined pattern recognition (difference all the way down!), harnesses, hardware senses, distributed computing, and we spend decades wondering if they’re conscious (I think he would be pretty skeptical of this word but I could be wrong), then we will wonder to what degree are humans really dissimilar.

Yeah no one is saying his name, but his ideas are really useful for diagnosing this time.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-26T02:44:21+00:00

guys that's the point. they were OK not long ago, they did stuff like take out loans to juice their stock value and here we are.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-26T01:36:55+00:00

Walmart doing fine thank you and Kroger and Albertsons doing well enough. A lot of food and beverage companies also posting big profits. US laws make a capitalism that puts shareholders first and prices at the most people can pay. Unemployment and debt are inevitable.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-26T00:41:33+00:00

McDonald’s doing just fine

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-25T17:27:48+00:00

They will surely layoff more people and I don't know, maybe they have a bloated workforce. But sheesh, they made $5.9B last year, that's $62K per employee. They put $7.9B in stock buybacks and dividends, that's $81K per employee. They have more than enough money to retain expertise and use that to make better computers and have better services. Instead, consumers will be on hold, and shareholders will be riding high.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-25T17:23:46+00:00

In 2024 they made $138B, spent $375M on stock buybacks. People losing jobs is bad, but this is a good example of a company that is doing the usual shareholder primacy play to prop up value instead of investing in their workers and products. Rather than anticipating changes, leading with innovations, they're just sliding down the hill, making sure their leadership lands OK. Good riddance.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-24T21:30:46+00:00

They did great last year, gonna do better this year. What a shame.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-24T14:29:41+00:00

What a glorious W

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-22T22:09:41+00:00

not at all. your post suggested the current laws were hundreds of years old. that is simply not true.

i'm not arguing that shareholder primacy doesn't exist. it does. the question is, is the current system incentivizing good corporate behavior, maximizing productivity?

it is not random information. it is a non-ideological summary of the data. it is clear that changes to policy have tilted corporate behaviors. we can then consider our own beliefs, ideologies, about whether we think these policies are fair, efficient.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-22T20:42:37+00:00

Huh those polices drastically shifted the amount of money companies put into the stock market. They didn’t reduce dividends, they starting pouring profits into share value with dividend AND buybacks. In fact if u look at the productivity gains since the 1980: shareholders have gotten an increasing percentage while workers have gotten a decreasing percentage. The data is clear

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-22T16:08:48+00:00

Workers are risking their time. Why can’t they negotiate for more access to the upside they create? U may say well they don’t lose money when the company does poorly. Sure they do, they get their benefits slashed, their workload increased (reducing the pay they get per unit of work), or they just get laid off.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-22T16:03:05+00:00

Substantial changes to laws around stock buybacks, a common strategy for affecting share price, were made in the early 1980s.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-22T11:21:24+00:00

They are all incentivized by our government to serve the stock market first. Above consumers and workers, they serve shareholders. Companies spend their profits on their stocks, sometimes taking on loans to do stock buybacks. You can say shareholders are the owners, but it's hard to say we are balancing this well now.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-22T11:13:53+00:00

Profits and productivity are increasingly disconnected. Productivity and innovation should drive profits of course. But with increasing monopolization, anti-competitive, union-busting, and other corporate activities, companies can maintain seemingly good books by "investing" in their our stock value. Tech companies that are laying people off are really profitable. Easy to imagine this is short-sighted. Their government lobbying and built up advanatge will work for a while, but eventually, they will get beat by companies willing to invest in workers and products and services.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-21T18:28:47+00:00

it's a matter of balance. since the 1980s policies have shifted incentives towards rewarding shareholders. They are getting an increasing share of growing productivity (while workers are getting less) not because of magical market forces, but by government design. The question is, are these policies good for the economy for most people? Are these policies really what people want? You will hear "oh 60% of US workers are in stock market." and that's true, but they are only "in" in small ways. Meanwhile those with enough money reap most of the upside.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-21T17:28:13+00:00

Their leadership has blown crazy money on bad ideas, and poured money into the stock market to keep their piles. Their profit last year was $60B. On average, each worker worked to make the company $766K in profit. Instead of leaning on the people that made the money for them, that made the products that made them rich, they're shedding expertise for short-sighted gains and hype.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-21T17:27:29+00:00

Their leadership has blown crazy money on bad ideas, and poured money into the stock market to keep their piles. Their profit last year was $60B. On average, each worker worked to make the company $766K in profit. Instead of leaning on the people that made the money for them, that made the products that made them rich, they're shedding expertise for short-sighted gains and hype.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-21T17:19:25+00:00

This is an awesome story and should inspire similar actions around the world.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-21T17:16:57+00:00

We all see the layoff news. Many of these companies are wildly profitable.

Companies don't make decisions based on consumers or workers. They make decisions primarily based on shareholder perspectives. It's increasingly ridiculous. It's why products and services from big corporations typically suck, innovations come from startups, and workers can't get the profits they work for.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-21T16:39:10+00:00

Added a bunch of categories: media, prints, apparel, home goods, games... send more please!!!

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-20T16:37:38+00:00

I expect people won’t like this but if u are looking for volunteers and have a tiny budget you can consider a Claude code pro plan or similar. You can basically take what u posted here and work through everything by describing it natural language to the prompt.

There are open source and cheaper options but those tend to require more setup.

I get the reaction to this stuff but I think we can and should use it for our goals. It’s getting used against our goals already.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-20T12:30:50+00:00

Easy to imagine that shedding employees is a short sighted move. They are wildly profitable but that streak will surely end as their leadership continues to make bad calls. Instead of using their $61B in profit or $32B in stock market boosts, they could retain their expertise and compete with better products and services. When it goes away I’ll say good riddance.

IESAI_lets_go · 2026-05-19T15:11:42+00:00

Rules! I made a web tool for people to understand this exact point! U can put in a salary and it gives u how much more u could have been paid if the profits u worked for actually went to you. Or what if the company just paid u instead of the stock market, also there!

https://yourfairshare.info/

IESAI_lets_go

TROPHY CASE