12 ms·

Oh yeah I forgot 5 BILLION dollar in revenue is a signal that the market does not want your product

• lelanthran 2mo ago
  > Oh yeah I forgot 5 BILLION dollar in revenue is a signal that the market does not want your product Doesn't matter how big the revenue is if the market is not interested at the price you are selling. I mean, by your logic, if I sell a dollar for 64c, and do $5b revenue, that's an indication that the market does indeed want the product, but not an indication that the market wants the product at the price you need to sell at to stay in business.
  • tommit 2mo ago
    No? By that logic you sell a dollar for 103c and that's not enough to quench your greed. Obviously both statements are gross oversimplifications. But I could not help myself and let that slide just like that.
    • moron4hire 2mo ago
      Just to add to your comment, people do sell dollars for $1.07, they are called mortgages. I've heard it's a pretty big business.
      • jstummbillig 2mo ago
        What they do is they sell a dollar for 1.07$ future dollars (and, realistically, less than that because of defaults but whatever).
        • tialaramex 2mo ago
          It's a lot more than $1.07 future money, a mortgage is more like $2 or these days $5 If you're offering even 25 year 75% LTV mortgages at such a low interest rate it's $1.07 future money you're going bankrupt. And these days people are taking 30 year, 95% LTV or even asking for 40 year 100% LTV which is fully batshit.
  • nayroclade 2mo ago
    They are not selling at a loss though. The real issue here is that businesses such as Microsoft do not exist to serve a market or make enough money to survive and pay their employees. They exist to increase the value of their owner's shares. This is predicated on an unsustainable model of continual growth, with the expectation that every market they operate in can produce high margins and endless expansion. But demand is not infinite and persistent high margins are the exception, not the norm.
    • pfdietz 2mo ago
      Overall they are not selling at a loss, but parts of what they're selling are being sold at a loss. The market is telling them to slim the f- down and get rid of those money-losing parts. This is all normal and justifiable. Where is the logic that corporations need to preserve dysfunctional parts of their operations?
      • tfigueroa 2mo ago
        Corporations don’t need to, no. But they are systems, and it’s a beginner mistake to assume changing one part is going to affect the whole in some simple, predictable, logical way.
        • pfdietz 2mo ago
          That sounds like an extremely lame excuse to preserve money losing activities. I'll counter by saying that pruning off failing things is not only good, it's the core of capitalism. Creative destruction, as Schumpeter called it. You get efficiency by hunting down and eliminating inefficiency, redeploying the resources elsewhere.
          • xerox13ster 2mo ago
            > You get efficiency by hunting down and eliminating inefficiency, redeploying the resources elsewhere Plants do this. What’s it got to do with capitalism?
  • KyleTheDev 2mo ago
    Why is it that every person who tries to make these dumb arguments in favor of destructive capitalistic greed always attempts to make it look like the multi-billion dollar profitable business is somehow self-sacrificing or a force of good? "If I sell a dollar for 64 cents!", yea, as if that's even close to what's happening.
    • Ferret7446 2mo ago
      If capitalistic greed is so destructive than why are you living in the most successful and highest quality of life society in history? You can find a cave somewhere to camp in if you want, or go to North Korea, etc.
      • KyleTheDev 2mo ago
        I'm sadly not living in one of the very nice-to-live Nordic countries. This level of greed is also relatively new, and was pretty well managed by previous (30~ years ago?) administrations. There's an obvious direct correlation between the rapid growth in wealth of the top 1%, businesses becoming increasingly anti-consumer, degrading quality of life amongst the average person, etc. It isn't something inherent to capitalism, it's something inherent to unmanaged 'trickle down economics' capitalism and societies built on individualism above all else.