What does a company do? - Companies of old used to create pr

[DazedandConfuzled]

I was considering todays so called MultiNationals. Common knowledge shows that they nolonger produce products as such, more they create brands in the companies image. Gone are the days of companies actually "producing" a product. Most large multinationals now "out-source" production of their final goods to cheap third world, sweat shop style labour.

So what exaclty does a company do in todays society? To steal some great economic thought on the matter; was it not the Physiocrats who said that people (who in their time were the merchants of the the World, particularly in Europe) who do not add any intrinsict value to a product should be considered as the lowest form of all classes and should duly receive returns accuring to this status.....

Also John Kenneth Galbraith also said that any good which has to undergo excessive marketing to sell, should be considered an inferior good. And yet despite this multinations firms are considered to the gem in the crown of todays society, leading the way for improvements in standards of living?

How can this be so, as they sell goods that are worth less than there utility (utility from the consumption of goods is kept high due to marketing), and they exploit workers in poorer countries (usually at the cost of jobs from workers in their own respective country). They merly pass on finished goods that they have purchased from said sweat shops (no sporting brand named ala tick) to consumers who belive they are getting something worth more than its value, usually taking a large profit to fill their bank accounts in the process.

And yet these firms are the classed as the jewel in the eye of capitilism. Is it that people do not realise what exactly what actions such firms undertake? Or rather that ignorance is bliss. What can be done about these ever more evident and increasing monstrousities?
[appologies for my poor spelling].

[El Che]

greetings,

in your post you have enumerated a series of facts and actions relating to the practices of corporations. Now corportations are the cell of the capitalist sistem`s body, they were and are still responsible for the production of goods but thats not all they do. The main issue now in this tiwisted logic of the capitalist mind is competition for market. There is a determined market for something, for example shoes and all the cells. of this complex sistem that is globilization capitalism, compete for the market that exists. Thats where marketing comes in, the pratice of influencing you to by from corporation A and not for corporation B. When you buy a pair of nike shoes 90% of the price you play is the brand not the shoes, this is an example of the kind of waste and sick logic of the sistem in question. Nike in turn spends 1/10 of the money it sells the shoe for, making the shoe. Its free to use almost slave labor to do this and has infact bin condemened for using child labor. In any case one intersting issue is presented and you refer to it, the shoes value of use, not its value in the store as a merchandise comodity but its "real" value. The one that derives for its usefullness and intrinsic caracteristics. What this means in short is that whenever you buy a brand or lable you are in fact being ripped off by that brand because it is abstract and adds nothing of empiric value to which ever merchandise you might want to consider in this equasion. Now that is why everthing you buy has a lable and that is also why corporations love marketing. Marketing is the tool that enables them to add more "ficticious" value to there lable and there for make a bigger gape between the value of use of what it sells and the final value of the merchandise for of the product. In short the real value of the nike shoes are what they cost to make, and the price nike sells them for is ten times that. That constitutes the profit of nike and it also constitutes there crime against others, both the workers and the consumers.



Many other issues could be discused such as how and you objectively put a price on human labor? these prices a different from nation to nation and are in some cases almost slave labor.