Post #1578594

2026-04-19 20:14 UTC

When it comes down to it, I think the stock market (and indirectly, human greed) seems to be the root of most of tech ills, including enshittification, subscription hell and the AI apolocalyspe. The market&#39;s demand for constant expansion causes boards of directors to insist on all sorts of awful behaviour, all in the name of revenue growth. Once your favourite tech project gets bought, or goes public itself, it&#39;s only a matter of time before it dumps the &quot;Let&#39;s not be evil&quot;, even if it already had one.

Replies (2)

@aligorith@mastodon.nz 2026-04-19 21:24

@colinburgess@mastodon.nz Yeah... all this constant chasing of "double digit, constantly increasing GROWTH" at all costs to "satisfy the shareholders" is just crazy and unsustainable! So much of what's wrong in the world can be traced back to that! 🙄 Growing up with Hong Kong TV shows, you'd always here things talking about a marker of success being that your company "went on the stock market" (aka "got big enough" to do so) However, over the years, I've never really understood why on earth that matters or is even a good thing: 1) How does "stock price value" even translate to "money in bank" that can actually be spent exactly? What if they spend such money and then rhe price drops? 2) Once you're on the sharemarket, then your company is apparently constantly fair game for immoral greedy leeches / vultures whipping things up with the sole aim of easily gobbling all the shares in your company and doing hostile takeovers... 3) Companies that big just start getting WEIRD! And then the "rules" of that world then start demanding "quaterly" reports, and hence, all the evil stuff about profit number chasing Yeah nah... if the "market based" approach that is often espoused by capitalism's loudest cheerleaders as being "a good thing (TM)" equates to "everything must be sold at auction, under fierce bidding rules" then yeah... I don't really like or agree with that! (I don't agree with the govt owning everything either though)

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@toa5t@mastodon.nz 2026-04-21 10:44

@colinburgess@mastodon.nz @phil_stevens@mastodon.nz Agreed. But private equity is just as evil, they just get to do it when no one’s looking. By which I mean the happy, happy land of start ups and scale ups is the absolute worst side of capitalism.

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