this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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Thank you for sending me down a delightful little rabbit hole looking into this
I came here to mention this. What a lot of us fail to realize is that businesses weren't always seeking to cut corners to simply benefit shareholders. There used to be a more varied model of looking at what made a good business and part of that was being a bro to your customers and a good citizen of your national community. They didn't just print flour bags with patterns for reuse, they had multiple patterns to choose from because they knew that stigma would arise for people clothed in repurposed flour bags if it was one specific look so they did a range of fabric patterns to ease the stigma of people just trying to get by.
The concepts of social responsibilities of business has fundamentally changed to a model of performative abstention of harm rather than an actual visible bettering of anything other than the lining of pockets
Yeah, I was quite surprised by this as I'm so used to how capitalism ruins everything.
https://adirondackgirlatheart.com/feed-sack-fabric/
This is what I read and it was a shock to me that companies not only improved the quality of the cloth when they realised people made garments from sacks, but also strove to provide fashionable designs and wash-off labels. There are some really gorgeous prints on here.
Nowadays, it feels like they would make the original packaging more coarse, then sell the product with nicer packaging at a premium, whilst making sure their logo was indelible.
We are dealing with a really not great situation currently. Capitalism has become an all gas no breaks situation but that wasn't always the case. Like there didn't used to be many billionaires not because of inflation but because you had a lot of cooling effects. Banks in the US used to not be able to invest with the funds of the individual patrons. They could only invest with their own funds which made banks very stable in comparison to now. Being taxed 70% personal income at the top bracket also had an effect. After awhile aiming for profits just brought diminished personal returns so what they did was reinvest those funds elsewhere in their own businesses. Offering competitive wages to attract better labour, providing kickbacks to customers to foster brand loyalty, donating to create things like museums, parks, halls and university amenities.
Not to say it was at all perfect. Like those resources tended to be very personal glory focused and fell often along classist and racist lines but it did mean that you didn't have as much dragon hoarding or the purchase, hollowing out and dumping of businesses that are thrown out like used tissues after extraction of all the potential value that is common in our modern age.
If you're ever trying to convince a friend on the fence about capitalism, try leading with recommending "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." (If they read books, like some kind of nerd)
The author doesn't quite make the next leap but it describes the problems with our modern interpretation quite well.