view the rest of the comments
Anti-Corporate Movement
This community is the first one on lemmy of its kind. It sits between the idea of anarchism/anti-capitalism and left leaning economic policy.
Our goal is to make people aware of the dangers of corporate control, its influence on governments and people as well as the small but steady abrasion of empathy around the world indirectly caused by it.
Current topics this includes but is not limited to:
- Meta's entry into the fediverse
- Game companies putting gambling mechanics in childrens games
- Embracer groups buyout and closing of smaller game studios
- IP trolls destroying small companies and keeping progress back for profit
Feel free to debate this but beware, corporate rhetoric is not welcome here. If you have arguments, bring them on. If its rhetoric trying to defend the evil actions of corporations, we will know and you will go.
Our declared goal so far is to have all companies and individuals worldwide capped at 999 mil USD in all assets, including ownership of other companies, sister companies and marital assets. The reason for this is that companies (and individuals) are not supposed to resemble small(?) countries with a single leader(-board) and shareholder primacy. Thats why we feel like they must be kept in check indefinitely.
But companies will just wander off The argument that large companies will just wander off is valid, which we embrace. We dont need microsoft, apple, google, amazon and other trillion dollar companies. There are small competitors being kept small and driven into brankruptcy by anti competitive behavior of these giants or simply bought up and closed. If starbucks left tomorrow, we would not have an issue with this.
But then we have x little microsofts that all belong to the same person(s) If in fact nobody was allowed to accumulate more than 999 mil in assets, they would not be able to own all these. And like defending agains burglary, it is not about complete defence but time and effort. You only have to keep the thief occupied long enough for them to be caught, give up or make a mistake.
But these giants have tons of IP which would then limit our growth Thats another topic we must touch on. We will (only this one time) take a page out of russias playbook and demand that IP of non complying companies (assets over 999 mil USD) will be declared invalid, which opens them up to be copied.
But then they will "live" in one country that doesnt accept this Correct, and they should be taken into custody the moment they enter the airspace of a country that supports this act.
It's dumb that they're not pushing to get rid of those empty desks and save that money. But I guess the market demands miserable workers or something.
You are right, but there’s more to the story.
Every CEO on the planet would love to cut the cost office space. They loved working from home because it put the cost of having somewhere to work onto to someone else. They would then sell, or cancel leases on expensive downtown buildings and save a lot of money. It’s really that simple.
However, if everyone does this at the same time - which they would - no one would want to buy the office space, meaning the prices would crash.
If commercial real estate crashes, loans get defaulted on and banks take catastrophic beating.
So the banks have been having conversations with CEOs to make sure that doesn’t happen.
And that’s why your ass is being hauled back into an unnecessary 1 hr commute to work in an unnecessary building.
Ding ding ding!
I've been saying this for years.
Two main factors in why mass remote work can't happen:
1: Tons of managers and executives just psychologically need to be able to physically see people working, be able to have the ability to come pester or chat with employees whenever they want.
It has nothing to do with actual productivity.
Its part object permenance (if i cant see it right now it isnt real), and part ego confirmation, as their primary mode of social interaction requires an in person power disparity where they are above others.
Its for the perpetuation of bullshit 'company culture', the sociopathic 'your work is your personality, is your life' kind of insanity that they require to feel validated.
2: As you laid out, if we switched to a paradigm of most office work being done remotely, even though this would be overall better for the mass majority of employees, it would blow up the commercial real estate market, probably so significantly that office buildings would start being converted to residences, which could also blow up the residential real estate market.
Forget how many vacant homes and apartments there are per homeless person, add in how many vacant offices there would be, or already are, as well.
...
We know that shit like RealPage has been caught just literally doing cartel price fixing for residential properties across the country.
But also, this is almost certainly going on, widespread in commercial real estate as well.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2Trz65P1gnA
Here's a vid where Louis Rossman explains that basically, amidst tons of other false advertising bs in the New York office space market...
... people can just publically say they're paying a high rent, under an NDA, while actually paying a much lower rent.
So all the public facing commercial real estate prices stay high, and thats whats called 'market rate', whilst those in the know are paying way way less, and are mandated by an NDA to lie to everyone else about this.
Everyone works for the banks.
A 1 hour commute would be great
Orphans must be crushed
“The only good orphan is a crushed orphan” — why are ppl glorifying a terrorist, shit’s kinda makin me feel a lil uncomfortable rn about my millions smh get me some xanny bars stat
I had to read this three times. I learned a lot from you today. Thank you. :)
You’re quite welcome
From experience, the office leases could be 10 or 15 years long, although there are probably break clauses every 5, so they probably can't get rid of them immediately. You'd really hope they were making plans to reduce their office estates over the next few years and shift more people to wfh, but corporate inertia is hard to overcome, so who knows?
They can sublet tho
Not on a lot of leases, and on the ones where you can, there tends to be fees and a pile of paperwork. Yes, sufficient foresight would have seen the possibility that needs might change, but foresight is in surprisingly short supply in general. For those who can sublet, as I said, corporate inertia is hard to overcome. The businesses that thrive will be the ones who find a solution that works for both the business and the employees.