this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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Except instead of 25%, it’s 250%.
It must be hard not knowing even the most basic math. How is this CEO getting more money than I pay for the meal?
Sorry, I probably should have explained better, it’s a bit of intentionally misusing the meaning of the term “value” for a joke - the original greentext said “25% of the value of the food”, so if you think of the amount of money required to purchase the raw ingredients and the labour required to create the final meal, that could be considered 100% of the food’s value. So if the food cost $5 to make, the company would sell it at $12.50 to get 250% of the “value” of the food.
But the term “value” usually refers to whatever the customer is willing to pay in exchange for a product, so the joke has an extra meaning - the CEO demands to be paid 2.5x more than anyone is actually willing to pay for it.
Ironically though, CEOs getting paid more than the value of any of the actual sales they generate isn’t uncommon, especially in tech. There are a number of economic sectors (like tech) that function effectively as ponzi schemes. “Venture capitalist” firms invest in tech companies which never actually generate a profit, in the hopes that they will at some point hit it big and make a shitload of profit - which does happen, every now and again: Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.
Eventually, most tech companies reach a point where they’re pretty much about to collapse, then they’re bought out by some other company - either a larger tech company that wants to acquire their intellectual property, or some other company to strip them of assets or just hold onto the company for some other purpose.
The majority of the VC-funded tech sector is completely unprofitable and held up entirely by investment. For example, OpenAI has billions of dollars worth of debt and has never made any kind of profit.
We are well overdue for this bubble bursting and having another crash akin to the .com bubble
Hey, that's fair, and I obviously didn't get the play on meaning.
And as for the rest, I was flabbergasted when Amazon only had losses of $400 million one year and their stocks went up. Amazon went on to produce some value, and profits, and then screw over a number of businesses and employees with their market dominance in the online store business before completely abandoning any standards for the sake of profits. So the only thing I'm certain of in the stock market or industry values in general is that I'm woefully unqualified to determine what's valuable or not.