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Wandering Existence
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Comments by "Wandering Existence" (@WanderingExistence) on "The Dumbest Business Idea in History" video.

Norfolk Southern approved a $10 billion share buyback program and a 9% dividend increase just before they told their employees that they couldn't afford to give them any sick days and 10 months before they had a giant accident that poisoned a whole town because they wouldn't invest in maintenance and pursued understaffing to save money.
11000
@badluck5647 Capitalism makes people complicit with the exploitative relationship by making owning stock, real estate, bonds, and other financial assets as one of the few ways to be secure in their older years or when they fall too ill to work. A deceptive part of capitalism is that allows people to own equity on a market basis unlike feudalism but it is in such vast inequality and alienation that the Bossism and Landlordism starts to look a lot like a form of neo- (commercialized) feudalism.
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 @badluck5647 I assume you blame serfs for their involvement in feudalism?
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@badluck5647 It is better than feudalism, yes, but you're just continuing landlordism. Capitalism creates massive inequality and companies, like BlackRock and mortgage banks, that basically become neo-feudal lords. Shareholders are put before workers and communities. Yes it's better than feudalism... So that begs the question, if we improved then why can't we create a more improved system than what we have now?
412
@badluck5647 False Dichotomy. Try Again.
176
@luisfilipe2023 Personally, I like cooperative economic systems. It's not private and it's not state managed, it's economic democracy at the level of workers and the community. The Preston and Cleveland models are both very successful!
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@luisfilipe2023 I provided two example of working models that have been exported to other communities. Research before you make prejudices.
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@badluck5647 Nope, it's a cooperative model that helps communities build back after corporations export their jobs. It is built on worker and community goals rather than just maximizing profit.
131
@SpicyBoba7431 😂🤣 wait you're criticizing me for not understanding financial independence through capitalism even though you're calling me a hypocrite for understanding how to be financially independent through capitalism??? WAT? 😅 I'm literally telling you that I understand finance... That's how I knew to look over NFS to see what shady things they did, like buybacks instead of investing in health and safety. I understand the concept of Discount Cash Flow analysis and understand how it promotes short-sided thinking as it literally discounts long term outcomes. Fiduciary responsibility and voting rights creates a bias towards Capital. That's how capitalism works. This isn't new or a crazy concept, this is just how business works in America. This is what they teach you in finance courses.
56
@SpicyBoba7431 Lmao. How would I live congruent with my ideals when there aren't institutions available to live by those ideals??? You cant call me a hypocrite and unable to manage capital. I use your system to point out how bad your system is.
51
@SpicyBoba7431 You know absolutely nothing about me, I do live below my means. Telling you I understand intermediate level finance and you're literally acting like I need personal finance 101??? Lmao. I've read so many books on personal finance and economics, don't come at me with that basic.
49
@kevinlue4756 So you missed the point then? Cool.
34
@strayedarticle2838 Yes, a much larger presence of worker co-ops, consumer co-ops, but often hybrids of the two. Unions could also be a large aspect. Essentially more economic democracy.
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@narwhalsincorporated1181 How does that help the lack of sick days when you could be fired for not coming into work?
32
Capitalism is holding us back. - Sincerely a Shareholder
19
@mvmlego1212 And even "long term" shareholders (10-50yrs) still don't always have the health of a 3 billion year old ecosystem in mind. The problem is capitalism's focus on profit maximization, discounting the future is a part of valuing future profits. It's an inherent part of how we price modern financial assets. You're basing your reasoning on the presumption that humans will act rationally if they know something can harm them. People suffer from many biases, then capitalism adds more capital bias to the mix and that makes things a lot more messy.
18
@mvmlego1212 So? You make the mistake of acting like management is incentivized to care about long-term gains of long term shareholders. Yes, financial sustainability does happen in some companies, but oftentimes C-suite management is incentivized off of quarterly or annual performance. Which sounds good when they sell it to you as "we're performance-based, we are a meritocracy", but it's performance of the recent net income metrics.
16
@badluck5647 I offered an alternative, you had no real argument.
7
@MondoChow777 Why do I have to prove this to you? When it comes to finances I'm not sure I care what some rando on the interwebs thinks, I care what my bills are and what my portfolio does... And we okay 🤪 But thanks for your concern skepticism, lol.
5
@mvmlego1212 Firstly you're missing the difference between private marginal value and social marginal value that leads to negative externalities. How do you expect me to believe this notion that "shareholders will value future consequences" when this post is literally about how Norfolk Southern did NOT do enough to prevent the accident... And the Obama era regulations to improve the braking system were repealed under Trump and not reinstated by the Biden administration. So this is just one of many examples about how you're just wrong. You're assuming people are rational actors- even for private marginal utility people still have "bounded rationality". You know we have behavioral economics now, right? Discount Cash Flow models place a heavier value on the short term. And don't deny that CEO have quarterly and annual incentives to raise the short term stock price rather than think long term.
5
@badluck5647 Serfs benefited from more socio-political stability than in the centuries before. It's a benefit for which they gave social legitimacy too, just like capitalism. (1/5 Cuz it's being pulled)
5
@badluck5647 I'm not saying people don't get anything out of capitalism or feudalism, they did, the problem is that it's a structure based on falsehoods and unequal bargaining power. (4/5 Cuz it's being pulled)
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@badluck5647 Like I had mentioned before one of the main falsehood of feudalism is largely based on the divine right of kings, and one of the paramount falsehoods of capitalism is the idea that people are rational actors and that markets work in people's best interests (behavioral economics has proven that's an obvious lie). Both use violence to reinforce their unequal bargaining power. (5/5 Cuz it's being pulled)
5
@MondoChow777 Lmao! You're the one being accusatory. Since a young age I've had a good cents about money... And Dad jokes that make you go "Oof". Seriously, though, I'm curious; Why would you assume I'm bad with money? Is this just a prejudice against Leftists, where you don't think people who disagree with capitalism ackually understand capitalism? Really now, where does this assumption come from?
4
@adamrussell9389 A bunch of diesel spilled... SMH. I was doing some more research and I guess the CEO got a giant raise just a few months after the accident in Ohio.
3
@badluck5647 The concept of the divine right of kings was a very large impact on why people gave legitimacy to the monarchies of feudal realms. (2/5 Cuz it's being pulled)
3
@badluck5647 While I am an atheist I do believe that religion gives a sense of subjective value in various different ways to its believers. The church reinforced the political power of feudalism by its endorsement. (3/5 Cuz it's being pulled)
3
@Zander10102 😂🤣😂🤣 Is that what you think? Lol, because negative externalities don't exist, right? Maybe rich owners should stop shifting their costs onto innocent people.
2
@Zander10102 What a non-response. What makes you qualified?
2
@Zander10102 "You don't know what it's like to walk in the shoes of somebody that has to choose corporate profit over the lives of innocent people" 🤦😂🤣 Wow, great comeback, kiddo. So how many people do you think have walked in the shoes of a corporate board member? You seem to think that private marginal value is the only way to have an opinion on things. If we aren't corporate board members how could we know how difficult it is to choose between 3 billion in maintenance costs versus enriching shareholders by funneling 10 billion dollars of buying pressure into the stock. Might as well just say "you don't know how it is to be an oligarch if you haven't walked in an oligarch shoes".... the processes that they're utilizing are illegitimate and destructive to society. There is a social marginal cost that others are entitled to advocate on behalf of and that has been violated by Norfolk Southern. Zander, you don't get to talk because you've never walked a mile in the shoes of a former East Palestine resident. Walk a mile in their shoes.
2
@addmix It's really ironic that you never say that to billionaire capital investors... I'm a capital owner and you're going to say that to me? I fully understand that it seems ironic that I'm a socialist investor, but in the same vein you can surely recognize that it's very ironic for you to be a capitalist criticizing somebody that uses capital instead of labor. P.S. I'm disabled and living off of my high return portfolio. But yes, criticize the disabled person and praise the billionaires. How noble of you.
2
@addmix Ironically you never asked who's depriving me of Social security insurance. You're the type of person to toss a disabled person out of their wheelchair.
2
@addmix Because I'm a capital owner; We get to take the product of your labor and turn it into our dividends. Don't like it? Advocate for labor based ownership models if you want the full product of your labor. I'm the capitalist telling you that social ownership is better if you're concerned about your wages... And they literally do profit sharing among workers, so you would get dividends instead of capital owners taking it from you.
2
@TunaIRL Max Weber's The Spirit Of Capitalism: The Protestant Work Ethic describes how reinvestment for further profit-seeking that was a fundamental piece of what kick-started capitalist conceptions of increasing capital wealth to beget more capital wealth, as opposed to many mercantilist or feudalist conceptions of value taking rather than entrepreneuring. Not to mention Milton Friedman literally talked about how the main responsibility of a business is to return profit to shareholders.
2
@TunaIRL It's always funny when people try to tell me "what capitalism really is" and it's painfully obvious that they've never done any political science or economic research.
2
@TunaIRL oh I also think it's hilarious that you think capitalism cares about sustainability... Lmao, that's cerebral comedy.
2
@TunaIRL It's ironic that you think I was never talking about non-profit work and then you have the audacity accuse me of not reading your reply, that's not what I was talking about. That's literally you not reading my comment. I was talking about how government force creates capitalism... That has nothing to do with non-profit work. So I honestly have no clue what you're even talking about and it seems like you didn't read my comment, if I'm wrong please correct me. If you're going to respond I would ask the courtesy of you reading what's being written. And it's weird of you to assume that I've never been outside of the country, I've been to five different countries besides America. If you tell me your country of origin I could probably tell you how capitalism evolved through government force in your area. But you know what that's kind of beside the point, America is a perfect example of government coercion to create private land tenure. So you're kind of just using a logical fallacy to get out from under the point. But hey, you're the one who didn't read my comment properly. You don't get it just put some artificial boundary on what type of sustainable profit motive private interests get to use to denote themselves as capitalists... That's literally half the point of capitalism is that private parties determine what type of prices to set. You don't get to come in and just say "you're not capitalist because you're maximizing profit to an unsustainable level". You're trying to justify a system that doesn't care about sustainability by trying to delude yourself that it does. Sorry, not buying it.
2
@rogerbartlet5720 I did some research... And you're right. $1Billion in corporate bonds! "New issues: Issuer Norfolk Southern Corp released international bonds (US655844CM86, US655844CN69) in the amount of USD 600, USD 400 mln maturing in 2032, 2053 respectively. February 17, 2022 Cbonds On February 15, 2022 issuer Norfolk Southern Corp released international bonds (US655844CM86, US655844CN69). • In the amount of USD 600 mln with the coupon rate of 3% maturing in 2032. The issues were sold at the price of 99.999% at par. The bookrunners of the placement were Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bancorp. • In the amount of USD 400 mln with the coupon rate of 3.7% maturing in 2053. The issues were sold at the price of 99.412% at par. The bookrunners of the placement were Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bancorp." - CBonds
1
@rogerbartlet5720 I did some research and you're right, $1 BILLION in corporate bonds!!! "On February 15, 2022 issuer Norfolk Southern Corp released international bonds (US655844CM86, US655844CN69). • In the amount of USD 600 mln with the coupon rate of 3% maturing in 2032. The issues were sold at the price of 99.999% at par. The bookrunners of the placement were Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bancorp. • In the amount of USD 400 mln with the coupon rate of 3.7% maturing in 2053. The issues were sold at the price of 99.412% at par. The bookrunners of the placement were Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bancorp." - CBonds
1
@rogerbartlet5720 I did some research and you're right, $1 BILLION in corporate bonds!!! "On February 15, 2022 issuer Norfolk Southern Corp released international bonds... • In the amount of USD 600 mln with the coupon rate of 3% maturing in 2032. The issues were sold at the price of 99.999% at par. The bookrunners of the placement were Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bancorp. • In the amount of USD 400 mln with the coupon rate of 3.7% maturing in 2053. The issues were sold at the price of 99.412% at par. The bookrunners of the placement were Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bancorp." - CBonds
1
 @rogerbartlet5720 I did some research and you're right, $1 BILLION in corporate bonds Feb 2022. Just 2 months before the April buyback approval.
1
 @rogerbartlet5720 I did some research and you're right, $1 BILLION in corporate bonds 2 mo before the buyback!!!
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@rogerbartlet5720 I keep trying to reply to you but it keeps blocking my comments E: you're right about the bonds, I can't post the quote I guess but google "NFS 2022 bonds" and you'll find it.
1
@badluck5647 False dichotomy. Try again. You can't tell me that capitalism will exist forever or at least until homo sapiens go extinct... Ya know, unless we over pollute the earth in pursuit of shareholder profits at the expense of the world ecosystem. But that would never happen, amiright?
1
@SpicyBoba7431 What's hilarious is capitalist often tell me that I don't understand capitalism and that's why I can't succeed... Lol, everybody gonna hate. I understand capitalism well enough to let a wider audience know how much share BuyBacks and dividend increases are going to shareholders beyond helping the community- not a lot of Leftist understand finance. Next you're gonna call Marx and Engles hypocrites for using Engles dad's factory money.
1
nunyabidness3075 Why is government ownership the only alternative that you see available?
1
@badluck5647 It's funny that you think "union jobs are driving jobs overseas" rather than "shareholders maximizing profits at the cost of providing decent jobs is driving jobs overseas".
1
@MondoChow777 I understand the importance of owning the means of production... Hence why I'm a dirty Lefty. Started working and investing when I was 13. I opened my first high interest savings account at 10 and my Roth IRA at 20. Frugality only gets you so far because there's a baseline to your needs, investing in LLCs has limited downsides and unlimited upside that earns you more than just pinching pennies, those pennies pinched have to be invested. I'm not going to brag about my tech returns because it's distasteful and honestly it makes me sad that in order to get ahead most people can't rely on just wages, they need to own appreciating assets that subjugate other workers and debtors like they are subjugated themselves. Since we have few and slim safety nets in this country investing is very important for a base level of financial security. Ironically as a leftist I do in fact preach investing, but only because I know there is power in owning capital and I want more lower/ middle class people to benefit. Personally, my largest criticism of a lot of socialists / communists is that many eschew and don't understand finance/ economics, like using price controls that only foster a lack of supply. Understanding capitalism from the inside out has helped me identify specific inherent pieces of capitalism that should be critiqued, like systematic fiduciary and voting rights bias towards Capital. While also understanding important aspects of financial/ economic allocations and production that are necessary to contend with when thinking about the next system, like risk diversification and marginal utility. I hope that's enough examples for ya', cuz I ain't going to show ya' my portfolio, lol.
1
@mvmlego1212 So many fallacies... Firstly you're missing the difference between private marginal value and social marginal value that leads to negative externalities. How do you expect me to believe this notion that "shareholders will value future consequences" when this post is literally about how Norfolk Southern did NOT do enough to prevent the accident... And the Obama era regulations to improve the braking system were repealed under Trump and not reinstated by the Biden administration. So that didn't really work out... almost like corporations lobby the government to make more profits. This is just one of many examples about how you're just wrong about reality. You're assuming people are rational actors- even for private marginal utility people still have "bounded rationality". You know we have behavioral economics now, right? Discount Cash Flow models place a heavier value on the short term because people have a time preference for returns sooner rather than later and the further into the future the higher the level of uncertainty. When investment banks do price targets for company stocks they use projections of the next 12 months of earnings to be a short term guide. Due to the fact that financial returns for shareholders are incentivized as the top priority for businesses they do what they can do to increase their stock price. CEOs are often compensated off of their performance related to quarterly and annual stock movement. They literally have all the incentives to think short term. Stop denying basic corporate concepts, it's no secret they have short term monetary incentives to increase the stock price.
1
@badluck5647 Serfs benefited from more socio-political stability than in the centuries before. It's a benefit for which they gave social legitimacy too, just like capitalism. The concept of the divine right of kings was a very large impact on why people gave legitimacy to the monarchies of feudal realms. While I am an atheist I do believe that religion gives a sense of subjective value in various different ways to its believers. The church reinforced the political power of feudalism by its endorsement. I'm not saying people don't get anything out of capitalism or feudalism, they did, the problem is that it's a structure based on falsehoods and unequal bargaining power. Like I had mentioned before one of the main falsehood of feudalism is largely based on the divine right of kings, and one of the paramount falsehoods of capitalism is the idea that people are rational actors and that markets work in people's best interests (behavioral economics has proven that's an obvious lie). Both use violence to reinforce their unequal bargaining power.
1
@badluck5647 Serfs benefited from more socio-political stability than in the centuries before. It's a benefit for which they gave social legitimacy too, just like capitalism. The concept of the divine right of kings was a very large impact on why people gave legitimacy to the monarchies of feudal realms. While I am an atheist I do believe that religion gives a sense of subjective value in various different ways to its believers. The church reinforced the political power of feudalism by its endorsement. I'm not saying people don't get anything out of capitalism or feudalism, they did, the problem is that it's a structure based on falsehoods and unequal bargaining power. Like I had mentioned before one of the main falsehood of feudalism is largely based on the divine right of kings, and one of the paramount falsehoods of capitalism is the idea that people are rational actors and that markets work in people's best interests (behavioral economics has proven that's an obvious lie). Both use harm to reinforce their unequal bargaining power.
1
@Zander10102 Well, that's ironic, because I don't think you're qualified to make those types of accusations. It doesn't take a genius to realize that doing 10 billion of stock repurchases, which is just illusory financial manipulation, instead of doing 3 billion of maintenance cost is a horrible idea that puts the profits of corporate shareholders above the health and safety of employees and whole towns/cities. To regularly raise dividends and to regularly deny your employee's raises/ sickdays and to push "precision scheduled railroading" is absolutely criminal from a humanitarian standpoint, but at it's core shows the true bias of the capitalist system: Capital Bias. I'm qualified because I look at stocks on a regular basis, which is how I instinctively new to look at their share buyback program and dividends increases. I've also spent over a decade understanding economic concepts, like negative externalities. This is clearly shifting costs onto innocent parties with the clear intention of enriching shareholders. It's really not that complicated to understand it was greedy management that put the health and safety of their employees and countless number of communities at risk. I'm curious if you know what the practice of 'precision scheduled railroading (PSR)" is and why it's dangerous?
1
@Zander10102 Well, that's ironic, because I don't think you're qualified to make that accusation.
1
@Zander10102 Are you aware of what "precision scheduled railroading (PSR)" is, why it is dangerous and why it is currently used?
1
@Zander10102 You don't have room to talk. You can't read a paragraph, but I'm expected to believe you when it comes to evaluating corporate responsibility? Lmao 😂🤣 Get outta here!
1
@alakani You seem to be under many misconceptions.
1
@alakani No worries. Have a good day ✌️
1
@addmix Yes, why care about other people when you got "yours". Super cute angst you got goin' on. Why even have taxes... I agree let's stop this protection of private property by government, they're just taking your tax money to help others. Lol, the irony.
1
@addmix Yes, why care about other people when you got "yours". Super cute angst you got goin' on. Why even have taxes... I agree let's stop this protection of private property by government, they're just taking your tax money to help others. Lol, the irony.
1
@ozzyjames87 Nice pfp poli-compass. What political ideologies do you align with?
1
@trevors6379 You understand what insurance is, right? Paid sick time is a form of short-term insurance that allows you to have income even when you're not able to work, it gives financial safety to workers. You guys talked about this rugged capitalistic morality, but don't understand basic financial concepts of capitalism, like insurance.
1
@trevors6379 This is amazing, you don't think the employee paid for their income by working? That's wild. It's just a negotiated piece of a labor contract to decrease risk for human capital. Do you also not support the concept of paid vacations, workers comp, severance packages, and pensions? If you don't get the need for paid sick days then I don't think you get "humanity" or basic personal finance. It's really funny how you worded your comment, where you're a business owner and I'm an employee. I'm more of a business owner than you, I can't work most jobs so I work my brokerage account. That means I'm literally a business owner and you're trying to preach to me, meanwhile I get dividends for sitting on my butt? Oh, this is good.
1
@trevors6379 Please tell me you also support no paid sick time, no paid vacations, and more strict business travel expense reporting by the C-Suite. Oh, and no severance packages or other golden parachutes... Because that would be like sucking the humanity out of capitalism.
1
@trevors6379 I already explained to you why people don't already do what you suggested. It's called risk management and that's why it fundamentally functions as a type of income insurance. I would suggest starting with learning about what risk is, why we have insurance, and then delving into behavioral economics to understand why this is the case that we do it that way. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be able to convince you until you get beyond your ideology, you have to do the work yourself. Have a great day.
1
@OneNidim I'm sorry. That must have been difficult. How are you feeling now? Can you tell us a little bit about what life has been like after the incident?
1
@TunaIRL lol, what? Max Weber's The Spirit Of Capitalism: The Protestant Work Ethic quite literally describes how reinvestment for further profit-seeking what's a fundamental piece of what kick-started capitalist conceptions of increasing capital wealth to beget more capital wealth, as opposed to many mercantilist or feudalist conceptions of value taking rather than entrepreneuring. Not to mention Milton Friedman literally talked about how the main responsibility of a business is to return profit to shareholders. It's always funny when people try to tell me "what capitalism really is" and it's painfully obvious that they've never done any political science or economic research.
1
@TunaIRL You are aware of how most private land tenure was created, right? Government force. But let me guess you think the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War to facilitate Manifest Destiny that gave way to private land grant policies like the US Homestead Act were voluntary endeavors. It's hilarious how you guys don't even understand how much force is required to create capitalism. You should probably read Debt: The First 5,000 Years by anthropologist David Graeber to get a sense of how capitalism actually evolved in the real world not just your philosophical notions of how things should be. We live in the real world, not your platonic realm.
1
@TunaIRL Lol, I understand capitalism well enough that my family asked me for stock tips and retirement advice. Don't be so rude as to assume 1) that I don't understand capitalism and the importance put on the return on investment, and 2) that I'm valueless as a person.
1
@TunaIRL Please, tell me about your investment portfolio.
1
@TunaIRL No worries. Admittedly I still don't understand what you mean by capitalist sustainability. I'd still suggest reading Debt by Graeber. Let me know your country of origin, I'd actually be really interested to learn the history of land tenure wherever you are.
1