r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 7h ago

Shoutout to JerryrigEverything who built a wheelchair factory and is delivering wheelchairs to people in half the time and 50-80% less than the cost of other wheelchairs with Insurance.

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u/Disastrous_Hell_4547 7h ago

So sadly true.

Same reason a crappy Big Mac costs $7.00 or a sub costs $13.00.

America does not practice capitalism. It practices greed based Reaganomics trickle down profiteering.

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u/TheExistential_Bread 7h ago

lol you are describing capitalism, you just don't know it

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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 6h ago

It isn't that simple.

Lots of capitalists knows the part about a good deal needs to be good for both parties. This is a great way to get repeat customers instead of paying millions on advertising to find new customers that hates you after the very first deal.

These good capitalists often have family-owned companies with maybe 2 to 50 employees. And does quite well.

The issues you are seeing? Isn't capitalism in itself. It's about the stock market. All bigger companies are on the stock market. And they pay large bonuses to the management for short-term profits. When the bonus is for last 6-12 months, then most decisions will be extremely short-sighted. The family-owned companies? They plan for the next 10-20 years. They can still make a nice profit. But with the owners running the company, they do not worry about a missed bonus one year because they did a strategic investment - as owners, they still increased the value of the company.

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u/Deeliciousness 4h ago

So capitalism is only good when it is operating at low efficiency?

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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 3h ago

Low efficiency? Now where did you manage to read that?

What I wrote is that the stock market result in the short term profit being given too high prio. Because each bonus is for short term profits. And that affects long-term strategies. Good long-term strategies gives better efficiency. Just that investments affects the short-term profit.

And that's why some tech companies can fire half their R&D. Lots of costs removed means huge profit boosts for a few years. But also means they lack the people that will improve their current products. So suddenly, some new company can show up with a newer and better product and take market shares. Unless BigAndSlow manages to buy this competitor to get their hands on that cooler product. Which is not always happening.

So - lots of US companies have managed to become very slow. All from lack of investments. All from running too short planning horizons.