this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
1463 points (99.4% liked)

Late Stage Capitalism

2587 readers
270 users here now

A place for for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited.

A zero-tolerance policy for bigotry of any kind. Failure to respect this will result in a ban.

RULES:

1 Understand the left starts at anti-capitalism.

2 No Trolling

3 No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, or liberalism, liberalism is in direct conflict with the left. Support for capitalism or for the parties or ideologies that uphold it are not welcome or tolerated.

4 No imperialism, conservatism, reactionism or Zionism, lessor evil rhetoric. Dismissing 3rd party votes or 'wasted votes on 3rd party' is lessor evil rhetoric.

5 No bigotry, no racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or any type of prejudice.

6 Be civil in comments and no accusations of being a bot, 'paid by Putin,' Tankie, etc. This includes instance shaming.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Odd how Costco, which pays people well and takes care of their employees so much that people proudly share how long they've worked there on their name tag, doesn't suffer from this problem.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Because Costco isn't run for maximum short term profit. And a lot of people think it's run poorly because of this and is an example of bad business.

The issue is what you think the endgoal of a business is.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Costco tends to focus its locations in large municipalities with high throughput, while Walmart built its business model on rural monopolization of retail where it could be feast or famine any given week. Costco optimized around sales flow, while Walmart optimized around margin per unit sold.

Both have been incredibly profitable over their lifetimes. Both have benefited from cities and states effectively paying subsidies to attract Big Box retailers that would drive out their smaller competitors. Both are, fundamentally, capitalist enterprises fixated on maximizing profit surplus.

The "problems" Walmart faces are problems pushed onto staffers and shoppers in markets where retail sales have declined. The "solutions" that Costco landed on only seem to work in wealthier and denser neighborhoods, where retail sales jobs are still the bottom rung of the economy.