DRAFT PUBLISHED FOR FEEDBACK
MORE TO ADD?
Either topics or info for a topic
I genuinely believe businesses are essentially abusive with their business practices.
I think this is currently a part of the late-stage capitalism quandary. Yes, we had issues in the past with large barons owning super large & powerful businesses.
Ok, maybe a magnate or dare I say tycoon vs baron
A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or services are widely consumed.
But then, barons were frequently the magnates of the old life until the people started standing up to “royalty”. They might not have been “Official Royalty,” But they were the noblemen of the era and essentially held ultimate power over “the people”… Their People.
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knight, but lower than a viscount or count. Often, barons hold their fief – their lands and income – directly from the monarch. Barons are less often the vassals of other nobles. Wikipedia
Like those Tycoon’s and Barons of the past, current “Big Businesses” Have become their own tycoon status.
Tycoon’s have frequently become so abusive that the impression one gets of them does not match the Official Definition:
tycoon noun
ty·coon tī-ˈkün
• 1 a : a businessperson of exceptional wealth, power, and influence : magnate
b : a top leader (as in politics)• a person who has achieved great success in business and is very wealthy and powerful
• a person who has succeeded in business or industry and has become very rich and powerful
— a business/media/property/oil/shipping tycoon
I believe that many businesses have essentially done a
Now, what do I mean?
I’m talking about basic business practices to squeeze the last dollar/the last bit of life out of their consumers/customers/clients at the peril of their well-being.
Lets look at a few examples
Back of store & cash register impulse
The first that comes to mind is potentially the least hostile till you look at the long-term effects or the “big business” specifics… i.e., hostility of power of a mega corporation.
Placing the most needed things in the back so you have to pass through the whole store to grab what you need. More time in the store = more potential for the store to make money.
This ends with impulse product placement at the register.
If this were a small business or done with goodness of heart in mind, rather than a nefarious “pay us more” mentality, it probably wouldn’t be so bad.
Let’s examine this. You need to quickly grab something, spend 5 minutes in the store, and be on your way. In a small store that’s 50 feet deep, going to the back might not be a big deal, but with a mega store, they’re now holding you in the store for 20-30 minutes. Sure, you can spend five extra minutes walking to the back, another five walking back up front with tunnel vision, but the store knows the psychological tricks to break you out of your direct mission.
The mega store is not doing this to remind you to grab a few things you might need, but to get you to make impulse purchases of things you don’t need. Sure, spending money helps the business, but spending money you don’t want to, were not planning to, and often money you might not be able to afford, is harmful to the business’s customers.
This harm is not just to the pocketbook, but also to the customer’s mental state, as they fight the urges imposed by the store’s use of psychological trickery. Financial stress is enough for a person living paycheck to paycheck, but someone already weakened from that stress is more likely to make these unnecessary purchases, and thus, this is predatory behavior, given that the primary customer shopping is frequently a lower-income, paycheck-to-paycheck individual.
I was told that it’s not the store’s fault. Um, they are taking advantage of a captive group that often doesn’t have the freedom to choose any old store.
Another Example
Rideshare: UBER, Lyft, Others
This is a whole topic of its own, and will eventually be moved to its own post…
Uber/Lyft. These powerful businesses have employed a ton of tricks… trickery to take advantage of their customers who are, in turn, the products. Yes, both the rider and the driver are customers and products, and they are both being taken advantage of.
Lets take a look at a quick bullet point list pending it being broken out into its own post:
- Surges:
- Leopard Surge Tease: Drivers are frequently teased with surges; these surges often have a leopard-print pattern that is typically near but never directly over the actual driver. (Hostile Teases) (see good faith solution below)
- Chase a surge/Surge Disappearance: Drivers often say, “Never Chase a Surge.” That’s because it’s just a tease. If you try to go to the surge, 98% of the time it disappears the second you’re .001 miles from it. (Hostile Tease)
- My first good faith solution is to return to the broad area surges, and then turn them into a leopard print if the driver is discriminating against riders by picking and choosing not to serve areas that are in areas with marginalized people, i.e., people of color.
- My second good-faith solution is to let people lock in the surge by agreeing to drive to xyz area within x minutes/without delay. This tactic, without the first “area wide” one, introduces its own hostile environment, and can be alleviated to a point with at least two good faith offers.
- Surge Lock in hostility: If you happen to lock in a surge and the surge offer/offers disappear, drivers are frequently given fewer ride options, and those you are given are less desirable. i.e., drivers around you without locked-in surges are being given rides while you get nothing for up to an hour or more. When you are finally given a ride, it’s often very far away and offered at an obnoxiously low hourly rate. Remember the communism of rideshare mentioned below. This $5 locked-in surge brings a $19/hour ride up to $24/hour. Statistically, if you hadn’t had a surge locked in, that very same ride would have been offered at $21 or $22 an hour. Adding a surge bonus should have brought that ride up to $26 or $27 an hour instead of $24. Thus, instead of making $21 an hour ($23.50 with the $5 surge) for 2 hours, you’re paid $24 over 2 hours. i.e. $12/hour. ANOTHER HOSTILE BUSINESS PRACTICE
- The Domino’s Pizza 30-minute effect: I’m super surprised there haven’t been more deaths with rideshare surges. Like the rush to deliver a pizza to a customer within 30 minutes, a rideshare driver pushed to beat the end of a surge, there is a significant risk of drivers getting into wrecks. ANOTHER HOSTILE BUSINESS PRACTICE (Ok, a rewording of the chase a surge listed above)
- Rideshare communism: Another hostile business practice
Rideshare communism: Another hostile business practice
This is where the rideshare companies take from good rides to pay more for bad rides. It’s a part of their concept to pay you as little as their algorithm thinks they can. It’s another hostile business practice. Instead of following the agreed price, they undercut themselves by saying, ‘We’re going to pay you below-market rate because we can get away with it.’
In other words, rather than giving you a bonus to do the less desirable, they remove the bad pay to make the other seem like a good bonus. “We averaged paying you 80% of the customer’s fare”
Um, that means you paid me significantly less on many rides. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad. After all, in the end, we averaged the “agreed price/payout.” However, they aren’t paying the agreed price. Since they use a fluctuating booking fee, they artificially lower the fare while charging extra and pocketing the difference. This can be harmful since the rider thinks the driver is getting a reasonable portion of the “fare” they are paying. Unfortunately, that driver often gets $30 or less on that $80 fare. ANOTHER HOSTILE BUSINESS PRACTICE
NOTE:
This is just a note for me. In the old days. Super Powerful production houses. Sony, XXX, XXX, XXX used to run the music industry. They still do.
But someone once told me. You gotta tell the attendees what you’re giving to the bar/venue vs to the performers/acts. This has really bothered me. This is a negotiation between the two of them. X agreed to perform for a, and Y agreed to host the event for b. This is their own agreement —sometimes a complex one.
Splits & Percentages; Doors, Drinks, Food, Merch, etc. Then there are tips, booking fees, venue fees, and more; sometimes they’re included, and other times they’re broken out and paid in addition to the ticket price. Whether their’s a guarantee, split, or a flat fee to either the venue or performers, that’s all a part of this agreement.
Obviously, these agreements can be predatory. Hence, there is often a push for smaller artists and venues, but these smaller places can also be predatory, and the ticketing groups are often still mega corporations.