10 votes

Capitalists are bad at business

2 comments

  1. knocklessmonster
    (edited )
    Link
    I dropped out when he built Mondragon up as the go-to co-op. They also operate like any other large capitalist enterprise, using similar techniques for cheap Asian and South American...

    I dropped out when he built Mondragon up as the go-to co-op. They also operate like any other large capitalist enterprise, using similar techniques for cheap Asian and South American manufacturing. It's not the syndicalist wet dream you would want to believe it is. It's not to say capitalism isn't a horribly messed up system, but Mondragon is as capitalist as anybody else, it just happens to have a large group of first-class citizens. If he's cherry picking here, then I can't be sure he's not cherry picking anywhere else, which I would say is not a thought I want to watch an hour-long video essay with.

    8 votes
  2. PendingKetchup
    Link
    The video has a clear thesis, but doesn't have a clear unidirectional throughline of argumentation to support it. For example, it presents increasing stock prices as not an important part of...

    The video has a clear thesis, but doesn't have a clear unidirectional throughline of argumentation to support it. For example, it presents increasing stock prices as not an important part of running an actual firm, but also uses CEOs' ability to increase stock prices as a measure of their effectiveness in service of the argument that CEOs are broadly ineffective.

    I'm also not buying the claim that 1/13th of revenue is a startlingly low profit rate, and therefore evidence that the large companies contributing to that statistic are incompetently managed.

    That being said, I did come away with the impression that the author is correct: big businesses don't really deliver innovation, and tend to adopt a strategy of monopolization and whining to the government, which isn't even all that good at creating shareholder value, let alone the stuff the firm ostensibly makes.

    5 votes