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Outcast,

My last company had 40,000 people. Management knew how to run a generic company. They were really efficient at a lot of things like HR, IT and such. The bad not a shadow of a clue about what we were doing. My boss said “Here’s some drawings, take a couple of days to look them over and tell me if you would be interested in working on bidding this project, Corporate thinks it’s a good idea.” A half hour later I walked into his office and said “We have no business bidding this work. Corporate have lost their minds.” Boss says, “OK, but the decision has been made, you want to work on it?” Me “Hell yeah, really interesting stuff I know nothing about.” We spent a million dollars and then didn’t even put in a bid.

Really stupid stuff. But it was fun.

Here is another quickie.
Boss “Great news, we are the only bidder.”
Me. “All the sane companies ran away.”
That one is still not running and in litigation.

I don’t even think we have Capitalism anymore,

Capitalism died when the neutral interest rate fell below 2%, and the return on capital went with it. Capitalism is the business of investing time, and money to generate a return greater than the initial investment. That is no longer possible for most businesses. Capitalism has been replaced by speculation which consists mostly of guessing which way central bank money creation is going to flow. There are now very few, if any business dealings that can reward a capitalist.

True Capitalism has been dead for decades. What we have is Financialisationism, AKA: Socialism for the wealthy.

Capitalism doesn't allow too-big-to-fail bailout schemes. It pays its own way or fails.

Capitalism requires true price discovery.

Capitalism abhors things like negative interest rates:
Fed economist pushes for unprecedented rate cut in the United States-
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/investin ... index.html

Capitalism is indifferent as to who wins and who loses. It is a merit-based system.

Capitalism is ultimately self-limiting in that, over time, it will deplete its resource base and create new opportunities via substitution, which in itself is a self-limiting process eventually leading to decline, contraction, or the big reset. These things are essentially unthinkable in our current system of extend=> pretend=> financialise via fiat.

Newfie wrote:The bad not a shadow of a clue about what we were doing. My boss said “Here’s some drawings, take a couple of days to look them over and tell me if you would be interested in working on bidding this project, Corporate thinks it’s a good idea.”

A half hour later I walked into his office and said “We have no business bidding this work. Corporate have lost their minds.” Boss says, “OK, but the decision has been made, you want to work on it?”

Really stupid stuff. But it was fun.

Yeah, sounds all too familiar. I get it, 100%.

The thing is, I think companies end up getting what they deserve overall, in time. Kind of like Karma, but Karma can be slow in arriving due to momentum, etc.

The first half of my career I literally did the work of a few people or so, especially when I was really enjoying some crunch project. And that was fine since they gave me big raises often, awards, and let me know they appreciated the work. I loved the financial security and was usually 5 to 10 minutes from work, so all that dovetailed well.

The last few years, things had deteriorated so badly that aside from dealing with constant "emergencies" and endless meetings and paperwork, I hardly did ANYTHING. I was DONE multitasking, etc. due to the way I was treated.

And the saddest thing is, the management by then couldn't even tell the difference. All the really good people had either left or functionally "retired in place" like me by then.

...

I used to wonder in modern times, how much people work vs. say playing games on their phone. But if management can't even tell the difference, does it matter?

Dead already.