this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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It’s really hard to say no if a big company is willing to buy your company for a ridiculous sum.
Retire 30 years early and have a shit ton of cash?
Not saying it’s right, but I honestly don’t know if I could say no.
And sometimes the original founders go on to do philanthropic things.
This is what makes capitalism so insidious. The incentives it creates drive otherwise well-intentioned people to make immoral decisions.
This is why I wish we focused more on structural problems as a society. It feels easy to get stuck in looking at the superficial scale at which problems exist, without engaging with how the systems and institutions played a role in creating that reality at scale.
"This company sold out", "this cop did something bad", "this person committed a crime", etc.
Why did those things happen? They're all a part of a larger structural issue, and I think there's limited helpfulness in engaging with it on a case by case basis beyond righting wrongs. But our outrage and efforts really need to focus on fixing the structural problems that create all these small examples within the bigger picture
Not saying that to critisize op, I get thats not the point of the post. Just sharing what's becoming a big political realization for me as a learn more about politics and try to engage more critically with how we solve our problems :)
Reminds me of Marshall's career choice dilemmas throughout How I Met Your Mother
That’s assuming these people were well-intentioned in the first place. Capitalism also incentivizes greenwashing. It’s all about selling people the feeling that they’re making a difference, merely by being a consumer of your products, and getting them to pay a premium for it.
Heck, they may have been targeting a Unilever exit before they started the company! Serial entrepreneurs do this stuff all the time. They think of themselves as freelance marketers.
See: zero co. Company was doing fine, then decided to completely retool everything to single use.
It collapsed about a month later.
absolutely! on top of that, you know that big companies don't play fair. they'll drag you through court, costing you millions, and take your IP for pennies on the dollar.
far better to sellout then be hungout.
at least then, you'll have something to show for your hard work. as Kenny said,
That is why we need to set up systems, to allow workers to buy out companies. They can cause a lot of troubles for owners as well.
Yeah unless you are already at least independently secure it take an insane moral backbone to not take ‘go the fuck away money’ and then fuck right off saying goodbye to this bullshit. As others said, its part of why the system is so insidiously resilient