>I have a friend who buys apartment complexes and houses on the company for his employees to live in
When railroad and heavy industry did this exact thing in the 19th century we called them robber barons and broke up their obscenely powerful and corrupt monopolies via antitrust legislation.
> So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from?
In the modern American sense, absolutely yes. Standard Oil and all that lot. Further back there were literal robber barons with castles on the Rhine charging illegal tolls to shipping.
> but the railroads would rather chase higher profits and cut down on salary expenses.
All companies will do that. The reason rail companies can do this so ruthlessly and recklessly is complete lack of competition and exceedingly generous industry deregulation.
The company owned the land, built the stores, so it only seemed right that they payed their workers in scrip and only allowed merchants to accept scrip in the town, yes? Eventually the country decided that such monetization platforms were too controlling and unfair...
> You can go hundreds of years back and companies and businesses were already then busy at pushing through special privileges to keep their profits high.
Guilds are probably the prime example. Government-enforced cartels established by the industries to keep up prices for centuries.
> Many of these SMBs and large corps took years to establish and have domain knowledge, trained work forces, supply chains that can’t just spin up easily.
And the value of all that will help get them a higher price when they sell the company.
Investors too scared to snap up these bargains? Cool- the government buys it and nationalizes it.
A little collective sacrifice and collaboration goes a long way all the time- not just when you get run over by the steamroller you were picking up pennies in front of.
> Obviously the entire reason for a companys' existence is to make money why should we expect anything else?
The way this is supposed to work is that you make flour and I want flour so I give you money and you give me flour. Then you make more money by automating the production of flour so you can sell it to me for a lower price even though you now have higher margins, and try to take market share from competitors who are doing the same thing. The profit motive increases efficiency. This is growing the pie.
The nefarious way to make money is to swipe somebody else's piece. This is rent seeking. It causes prices to increase with no increase in value. It is to be destroyed.
> Someone who builds a company worth 100m didn't have to steal money from me (or anyone else) to do it.
Wage theft makes up the major part of all theft in the US [1]. At least some part of the value of companies is coming from this theft. As an example, look at Amazon and how they treat their warehouse and delivery workers. They're not just working them like this for the sake of it, but rather it's an example of concious wage theft in order to save money and, thus, increase the value of the company.
In countries with very wide reaching conglomerates, like Japan and South Korea, I can almost predict a cyberpunk like future where you become a citizen of a company and cradle to grave live out your life in that company. Eat feed grown on company farms (farmed with company equipment), live in a company apartment, drive company cars, wear company clothes, watch entertainment on company TVs etc.
Samsung is an example of a company that I think has almost that kind of reach. And to put it into perspective, Samsung has revenue about the same as the GDP of Finland, Israel or Chile. And exceeds countries like Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
Which actually benefits us as the consumer. Would you prefer a less greedy corporation that goes where the most expensive labor is which then increases the cost of production which then increases the cost of the products you buy from said company?
Greed is what keeps prices low, and competition high.
> Anymore, most corporate gains aren't being passed along to the workers, just to the owners
Was this ever the case? I mean, look at the Victorian era and what amounted to forced labor camps in the coal mines of West Virginia – seems like profits are almost always sucked up to the top.
When railroad and heavy industry did this exact thing in the 19th century we called them robber barons and broke up their obscenely powerful and corrupt monopolies via antitrust legislation.
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