Hot take on layoffs

A lot of discussion going around Mastodon asserts that the tsunami of layoffs happening right now is all about Bossism -- that people are being laid off to crush any idea that workers might have any power.

There's probably a bit of truth to that -- I'm sure that there are some billionaire-scum CEOs who have wet dreams of following Elon Musk's example of completely crushing the will of his employees -- but I honestly think that's probably mostly not it.

Much of this seems to be coming less from the corner office, and more from the investor set -- in particular, from activist investors who are buying into companies, and then massively pressuring them to cut costs, especially through layoffs. The question is, why?

The most obvious answer is of course the simplest: they think that stripping costs will goose the share price, so they can flip the stock for a profit. That's one form of traditional vulture capitalism (one of the nastier forms of market failure, IMO, since it rewards short-term gains over long-term value), and I'm sure some people are motivated that way, but AFAICT it's fairly dumb if done that crudely: most of what I've seen says that the boost to the stock is brief at best (and sometimes counter-productive) unless you couple it with root-and-branch restructuring that actually makes the company better. (Which very little of this appears to be doing.)

The conspiracy-theorist side of my brain (because who doesn't like a good conspiracy?) has been pondering another, much subtler motive: what if it's all about inflation? This is going to get a bit long, but hear me out if you're curious.

( Fun with billionaire conspiracy theories )