***Massive Cynicism Alert***
Things are looking pretty grim for anyone not willing or able to keep up with the accelerating changes, or for those that invest their precious time and energy on the wrong potential source of income. The profit hungry behemoths do not possess sympathy for those that do not generate wealth.
Notice how I refer to the corporations themselves rather than the people who supposedly run them. For those who don’t already know this frightening fact: in most countries a corporation has the same rights as a natural person. Who owns the corporation? Investors of course. What do investors want? Profit. The people who manage the corporation are not the owners. They work for the investors – do you see the perilous lack of humanity?
The highest person/s in the corporate hierarchy MUST make profits. If they fail, they will be replaced. They almost always get a nice golden handshake for their efforts anyway (nice that) and they will probably end up in another corporate executive position. They live and mingle with the highflyers. Therefore, if you find yourself in this ridiculously high-paying circus you are (if not already) very soon going to be very far removed empathetically from the working slobs at the bottom.
There is a truly horrific rabbit hole here that I have cut and pasted for a future post. Let’s not gaze into the abyss too far too early.
The point I am trying to make is that the CEO we see in the media is not the boss as in the owner of the business. He or she is the servant of the profit machine. The investors put their money in and if the machine is not paying out sufficiently, they will move on to the next one. I am not trying to garner sympathy for the poor suffering CEOs and top executives. I am merely pointing out the futility of appealing to their compassion. If one of these cronies dared sacrifice profit to soothe their conscience, they would be replaced quick smart. It truly scares me to think about!
So, we have established that profit is the paramount concern for the faceless behemoths we call corporations. Comin in at 2nd place would be the customers. They are important only because they are where that beautiful bounty comes from, but just like any other exploitable resource they don’t ‘matter’ in a human sense. Oh yeah, I mean we need to satisfy them of course, but if we can use marketing to mislead them into believing that satisfaction comes from whatever crap we’re peddling that will do just fine. The gist of customer relations to me seems to be this: get the maximum amount of money and try to ensure they keep coming back – to this aim we must respect our need for them and at least make it look like they are our number one priority.
Running a very distant 3rd come the workers – “those fucken pests!”
“I need more money”
“I need to take a break”
“I need to see my family and friends”
“I need to eat, I need to sleep, I need to take a piss/shit”
“Your unsafe equipment has severed my arm. I need an ambulance”
The sooner we can smash the unions and weaken the labour laws the better. Barring that we should outsource as much as we can to countries with more corporate friendly industrial relations legislation. Best case scenario we replace those unreliable whinging flesh and blood assets for machines.
The top brass may or may not share this sentiment; although if you play the game at this level it would grow on you, I’m sure. If you do not make profit and ‘continue to do so’ you have failed! If you do not like the rules of the game, leave. Feel free to sympathise with the plight of the people on the floor, but if your attempt to improve their conditions results in a loss of profit – au revior. This is not a vendetta against humans, it is simply cold, calculated profit driven economics.
There are of course public relations benefits to making your business look like a worker friendly environment (see THE COMMERCIALISATION OF CHRISTMAS: 2 SANTA FILMS 40 YEARS APART: Movie Musings #2), and of course it is extremely bad for business to be carrying a large number of unproductive and medically costly injured workers on restricted duties. An insurance premium nightmare! An actual workers compensation payout? DISASTER!!!!!!
I will end the rant there and try to post something a little lighter for the next one.
Please prove me wrong in the comments and give me a little hope.
MINDLESS MUSINGS 
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