domain:amphobian.info
pigeonburger
17hr ago
But profits go up, share holders are happy, so every year it continues. At least on paper. It's almost impossible for me to reckon that this can continue forever. That they aren't eating their seed corn in some fundamental way. That at some point the tech debt they continually accumulate won't cause the Microsoft ecosystem to be such a risk to run, that there is an institutional push to abandon it.
The hard part, though, is that if that is true, if you know for certain that they are eating their seed corn, then my friend you have tremendous alpha and should put all your money betting on Microsoft going belly up.
These risks are not separate from the valuation, they are priced in. And while I also really, really dislike the direction Microsoft has taken, they are making a killing on cloud licenses, especially Office 365. Pretty much every company I work with and for has to pay a monthly per employee tax to Microsoft.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
17hr ago
This is missing the point. Do you think anyone complaining about starbucks unionizing would be satisfied if starbucks stock instead grew at 10x the rate of the s&p500?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
17hr ago
Really, Starbucks is your example? Starbucks? In the year of our Lord 2025, Starbucks?
The CEO of Starbucks has been around for a year. Starbucks has lost 16% of its value in a year that the SP500 has gained 13%. Relative to just parking your money in an index fund, the CEO of Starbucks has during his regime lost you 30%.
Same store sales sank year over year continuing a downward trend. 70% of customers plan to visit less. Corporate plans to emphasize Starbucks as a 'Third Place' have fallen as pearls before swine. Starbucks' customer base is getting older, cutting their spending, and less committed than they used to be. Starbucks is closing locations at the same time that competitors, from Dutch Bros to Wawa (sieg heil!) are expanding their espresso offerings to take bites out of Starbucks' market. Dutch Bros stock is up 65% year over year. Starbucks is cutting jobs and locations at a time when their competitors are growing.
So sure, the CEO's pay has little to do with the hourly pay of workers. But, what kind of boot licker looks at a $95mm salary and says he earned it without asking what his VORP is? Because I'm sure they couldn't have done too much worse for $50mm.
It's one thing to talk about Elon Musk's pay package, as without Elon Tesla's valuation probably halves overnight. It's one thing to talk about Jeff Bezos' wealth, who built a dominant and revolutionary company. But Starbucks? GM? HP? It's hard to justify what these guys are getting paid to be mediocre.
No one has quite solved these kinds of incentive problems.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
17hr ago
I think it's all of the above, but is largely operationalized as a gut reaction/feeling versus a conscious choice. Person doesn't like thing, person chooses the "negative" option, whether that's a downvote, 1 star, or whatever. I think it's almost entirely a system 1 decision though.
It's also really funny because that behavior in endemic here as well. It's a very human reaction.
"But where is a social network for the people who aren't sewage?"
"The what now?"
MollieTheMare
17hr ago
I had an apartment with almost the same layout as your build. Very functional and reasonably comfortable for two. Of course we only had windows on one side, unlike your build. We did host another couple for a total of four for a while, and it was fine. Probably could have squeezed another person in if needed. I wouldn't want to live that way long term, but seems very reasonable for two for now, hosting up to five.
Given current construction prices and the size of your build, you either got a great deal or live in the middle of nowhere or both. If you really are staying for a while, I think the splurge is worth it. We can't all build a Monticello, but there's something to be said for living in a house of your own design.
Opening a window is a good option for ventilation as long as the weather is good and there's not too much outdoor pollution. Unfortunately the number of places that have good weather most of the year, don't have wildfire smoke or car exhaust outside, and are affordable is pretty small. For a house that small though, you probably are fine with just exhaust fans and some makeup air to a small air handler. The extra energy cost over an ERV/HRV is probably pretty small given the small square footage.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
17hr ago
I really enjoy getting downvoted on Reddit for doing the "CEO pay"/"# workers" = "incredibly small number"
This is like 50% of what drives me crazy. What are people clicking downvote even doing? Do they think you're making the very easily checked facts up? Are they mad that you're spoiling a good circle jerk? Have you simply signaled that you're a member of the outgroup and must be destroyed? This is a fact that should cause a complete crash to their worldview and it does. not. register.
NewCharlesInCharge
17hr ago
Many possibilities.
Maybe driving the company into the ground was the goal, they're raiding it for its assets.
The CEO has off-the-scales charm and is able to snooker a board into hiring him despite his poor track record.
The board isn't offering enough and is only able to attract bottom tier candidates for this kind of role.
The board is corrupt and is getting some personal benefit.
pigeonburger
17hr ago
I kind of feel like you're someone entering a cult, eyes wide open, saying "Sure, I see their game, but it won't work on me," even as the bait is perfectly obvious. But there are worse cults to fall in with, I guess.
Is it that, or "Sure, I see their game, and honestly? I wanna be taken in. It's mostly upside compared the status quo."
cjet79
17hr ago
I have been absolutely addicted to the song "Golden" from k-pop demon hunters on Netflix.
I'm not the only one, apparently it's a huge chart topper.
The story of the lead vocalist is pretty fascinating. She was part of some k-pop training academy but they never launched her career cuz she was "too old" 7 years ago. She left them and went into composing songs. She was good at that, got some of her songs picked up by other famous k-pop groups and then got tapped to write the songs for the k-pop demon hunters movie. Well she was demoing the songs for the studio, and they thought "you sound great" so she got the lead role. Now she is the biggest (maybe second biggest) k-pop star ever.
The group just recently did their first live performance on jimmy Kimmel.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
17hr ago
I'm still wrestling with this one personally.
Sometimes you see CEOs that roll into a company, drive it completely into the dirt, but in a way where all the board members get filthy rich. Weird structured mergers that saddle the brand with insane amounts of debt, and then it declares bankruptcy and then the board makes a killing selling it piecemeal. There is a suspicion this is what Intel's board/CEO are planning on doing. Just rip the company to shreds and make themselves filthy rich selling the x86 license, the fabs, the business to business contracts to the highest bidder.
You see this constantly with Indian CEOs and their ruthless value extraction. Every year, Microsoft for example, gets exponentially worse. Every year they shitcan more Americans, hire more H1Bs, treat customers more adversarial while offering a worse product. But profits go up, share holders are happy, so every year it continues. At least on paper. It's almost impossible for me to reckon that this can continue forever. That they aren't eating their seed corn in some fundamental way. That at some point the tech debt they continually accumulate won't cause the Microsoft ecosystem to be such a risk to run, that there is an institutional push to abandon it.
But I suppose the phrase "There is a lot of ruin in a nation" goes for trillion dollar companies too. There is a lot of value left to extract, and a lot of enshittification yet to pursue with a trillion dollar market cap. But I'm sure they'll find some way to convert all $1,000,000,000,000 into H1B Visas.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
18hr ago
Even if the math did work, there’s always the CEO’s perfect out— outsource their front-line labor to a company that does staffing and then only be compared to the C-Suite officers who make 80% of what he does. And I can’t imagine putting all coffhouse staffing under a temp to hire company is going to improve conditions let alone pay as it now makes wage competition nonexistent.
Reminds me of a bit from back when I read a biography of Lewis "Chesty" Puller. General C.A. Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence chief, had come to X Corps HQ in Wonsan from Tokyo, along with his staff. Evidently, when Willoughby asked General Almond how things were, Almond told him about the seventh division fighting the Chinese, and that both sides had taken casualties, to which Willoughby replied, "that's another goddamn Marine lie." Almond promptly led him out to the POW stockade and showed him around 80 Chinese POWs that the 7th had captured. Willoughby reportedly departed without saying another word and that evening, the situation map from Tokyo that showed detailed positions of the troops suddenly showed 500,000 Chinese troops scattered around the map. It was clear from Puller's point of view that the issue was political. Quoth Chesty:
Now that's the fastest damned troop movement in the history of the world, gentlemen. You'll never see another such. And don't forget this lesson: Tokyo wouldn't admit that we had Chinese fighting us even after the Eight Army was in flight, because some damned staff officers hundreds of miles away willed it to be so. You can't will anything in war.
ThenElection
18hr ago
You can require the military to purchase only e.g. equipment made of rare earths that are mined and processed in the USA or its allies, with a rigorous supply chain verification. Expect to pay out of the nose for it. (And if you don't get any takers with your initial offer, you're not paying enough.)
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
One question would be how related not paying a lot to the CEO is to the CEO destroying the company. I mean, there have been CEOs which have made disastrous business decisions, but are their cases where we can say "if only the company had been willing to pay 100M$/year instead of settling for the kind of incompetent fool you will attract if you offer only 50M$/year"?
ChickenOverlord
18hr ago
airlines are a cutthroat awful industry to be in with 3% net income margins (5% operating) which can be seen by them constantly getting bailed out
One of my favorite jokes:
What's the easiest way to become a millionaire?
Start out as a billionaire and buy an airline
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
18hr ago
Each day I think my opinion of people has hit rock bottom but somehow they manage to drill further into that bedrock. Such a person being given the vote is the root cause of I'd wager at least 50% of modern evil.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
18hr ago
I can't tell if there's some massive moral hazard involved, or just plain incompetence on the part of the board.
It's just politics on a very small scale. In theory the shareholders should keep them in check, but unless someone has majority ownership, it's a lot harder for them to coordinate than it is for the board.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
18hr ago
Should governments have some sort of enforcement mechanism to prevent offshoring? Specifically first world governments, where offshoring is mostly profitable in the first place.
Thinking of this after reading this post on X which details how a CEO basically took the U.S.'s major manufacturing of rare earth elements or refiner or whatever, and sold it off to China. This seems like a huge issue for all sorts of reasons, but especially national security.
However, obviously this offshoring has happened in many industries over the last few decades and seems to present a bad equilibrium. If all your competitors slash their labor prices by offshoring, how can domestic manufacturing compete at all? Tariffs seem like a way to do this, but apparently everyone and their mother who has any economic understanding says they're evil and bad. I really don't know.
That being said I mean... are there ways to legislate outside of tariffs to prevent this sort of major sell off of strategic business to adversarial nations?
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
Personally, I would not put any more stock into that announcement than in the announcement about the autism-paracetamol link. Trump has been known to chicken out before.
I am also unsure what the CCP really wants. Perhaps getting full access to ASML products is really the hill they want to die on. Or they could be satisfied with a bunch of AI chips. Or it might be about Trump's tariffs.
My understanding is that REE refining infrastructure is something the US could easily sink a whole lot of money in before getting anywhere, even if the goal is just strategic and not competing on the REE world market.
That is kinda the difference between REE and chip manufacturing: if you can only build chips which have a feature size 10x larger than the latest TSMC fabs, there are still a lot of niches you can compete in. If you can only refine REE at 10x the costs that China has, you will not be able to compete once they undo their embargo.
I think the market-based way the US could handle this is to commit to buying a certain amount of REE which is refined without tech from China per year for their defense sector for the foreseeable future. Of course, future presidents may not honor such a commitment. The alternative is that the US directly invests in such firms.
Personally, I think Trump will try to give the CCP what they want, especially if it is just some AI chips instead of the capability to build their own.
NullHypothesis
18hr ago
Sounds like McDonald's should've sold a 1/5 burger for the same price then.
pigeonburger
18hr ago
Yeah, but if you were to have to explain to someone why CEOs compete for 7-8 digit salaries while "normal people" compete for 5-6 digit salaries, even if you accounted for time spent in education and risk taken, it would be hard to make it seem fair. And if you told them that in the end, everyone ends up with more if they just shut up about fairness and let the market do its thing, it'll be hard to convince them it's not self-interested rich capitalist propaganda (or bootlicking), because, again, of how unfair it seems.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
A bad CEO can absolutely destroy a company
What's your opinion on the CEOs that seem to continuously get hired after driving companies into the ground?
I can't tell if there's some massive moral hazard involved, or just plain incompetence on the part of the board.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
18hr ago
I really enjoy getting downvoted on Reddit for doing the "CEO pay"/"# workers" = "incredibly small number"
It's always a good laugh
Another fun one is when people get shitty about airplane ticket prices, insist on how airlines are ripping them off and how "back in the day" flying was luxurious and nice.
Shockingly, pointing out 1) airlines are a cutthroat awful industry to be in with 3% net income margins (5% operating) which can be seen by them constantly getting bailed out, 2) "back in the day" airplane tickets were something like $10,000 in today dollars, and 3) if you want the "back in the day" experience, you can actually have a better version of it right now by flying first/business class results in screeching and downvotes.
Companies producing weapons and military vehicles already have tons of laws on them that would prevent them from being purchased or suborned by a foreign power.
Literally all that needed to happen was for the government to identify that REE was critical to defense and apply the same rules to them that they do to other defense critical industries.
Unfortunately, the time to do that was around 30 years ago. But in 1995, with the Soviet Union having fallen, and the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in recent memory, and HK still under British control, the government just wasn't thinking about China as a strategic level threat. Thinking ahead 30 years? Eh, they'd probably collapse like the Soviet Union by then anyway, right? Mid/late 90s US was on top of the world, why worry about some rinky dink mining company or two getting bought out by the Chinese?
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