Ask Lemmy

I don't think that's really the point that the person you're responding to is making.

I was discussing this is another sub the other day: The real issue is the stagnation of worker pay and businesses turning to business-to-business sales since consumers no longer have money. Corporations have money, and they're happy to sell products and services to each other, and make a lot more money doing it because they sell far more computing products (for example) at the Enterprise level than the consumer level already. Micron bowing out of the consumer market isn't the first in a line of dominoes, it's the last in a line that stretches back to the late 90s where business-to-business sales began to boom. The consumer market has been priced out in the West, and very arguably the vast majority of the Southern and Eastern hemispheres of the planet were always priced out of the consumer market either through trade embargoes or straight exploitation of labor. You really think the folks making Nike shoes for a few dollars a day in third world countries constitute a large portion of the consumer market? They don't, and never were. Corporations were fine without those people being part of the consumer equation, and they're aiming to be fine without us. As corporations keep more and more of the profits and less and less goes to consumers, they're building an economy that effectively doesn't need average consumers to continue to function. This is all honestly horrible, and I hate it, but the dark reality is that voting with your wallet does basically fuck-all because they already gave up on consumers a while ago. This is evidenced by stats like in the US the top 10% of earners accounting for 50% of all economic activity in the country, while the bottom 90% of earners, (the vast majority) make up the other 50% of economic activity.

Vote with your wallet all you want, but stop pretending it does more than you think it does. It doesn't mean it does nothing, but it does a hell of a lot less than it would have fifty years ago. This is purposeful, the corporate class wants us to be priced out of being able to vote with our wallets. So don't get it twisted, nobody is saying "throw money at corporations anyway" they're saying "maybe don't bank on voting with your wallet accomplishing much at all."

If all you're doing is voting with your wallet you've missed the bigger picture by a mile and just are barely making a real impact at all. In the USA, the bottom 90% is still over 300 million people, since USA is roughly 350 million people. Unless you get a massive, absolutely massive, amount of those 300 million all boycotting major corporations, you're really accomplishing fuck-all.

But by all means admonish other people for trying to open your eyes to how far down this hill we already are.

EDIT: For some proof, here's some numbers from Microsoft in 2025 -

• Devices: $17.31 B
• Dynamics Products And Cloud Services: $7.83 B
• Enterprise Services: $7.76 B
• Gaming: $23.46 B
• Linked In Corporation: $17.81 B
• Microsoft Three Six Five Commercial Products And Cloud Services: $87.77 B
• Microsoft Three Six Five Consumer Products and Cloud Services: $7.40 B
• Search And News Advertising: $13.88 B
• Server Products And Tools: $98.44 B

So for Devices, Gaming, LinkedIn, Office 365 for Consumers, Search and News all added together is $79.86 Billion, which is still less than just the Office 365 Commercial division alone. Also, LinkedIn and Search/News aren't strictly consumer, either, but I bundled them in anyway to make the point here. The income businesses make by serving other businesses already fucking dwarfs the consume market, and has for a while now.