Managerial Capitalism: The Great Swindle We All Pay For
Let’s get something straight from the start: capitalism, in its original form, was simple. A capitalist owned something – land, a factory, a shop – and took the risk. Workers worked, capitalists profited. That was the deal. It was unfair, sure, but at least you knew who to blame.
Today? Different beast entirely. We now live under managerial capitalism. The capitalists are no longer in control. It’s the managers who run the show – and they’re not doing it for you, or for the shareholders, or even for the nation. They’re doing it for themselves. And they’re doing very well out of it, thank you very much.
The capitalists are no longer in control.
Meet the New Bosses: The Three-Headed Managerial Hydra
First, let’s look at who these managers are. They’re not a monolithic group, but they share the same instincts – protect their own, grow their power, and make sure they’re well-compensated for doing not very much.
- Public Managers – These are the bureaucrats, the technocrats, the paper-pushers. Often dubbed “the Swamp”, these people run the machinery of the state. They were never elected, but they wield real power over our lives – drafting regulations, managing public funds, issuing permits and creating whole departments whose actual purpose is questionable at best.
- Private Managers – The corporate elite. CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, and every other C-initial you can imagine. These people are the rock stars of the office world – not for talent, mind you, but for their staggering pay packets, bonuses, golden parachutes, and their ability to keep failure extremely lucrative.
- Military Managers – Generals, defence consultants, security contractors. They command vast budgets and hold sway over war and peace. And when they retire? They sit on the boards of arms manufacturers or advise governments, cycling between battlefield and boardroom like it’s just another job switch.
The borders between these groups? Blurry, at best. A general becomes a lobbyist. A corporate boss joins a government panel. A civil servant takes up a cushy job in a multinational. It’s all one big game of managerial musical chairs, and no matter who ends up where, they all look after each other.
The Real Work Gets Done Below
Here’s the cruel joke: these managers don’t produce anything. They don’t farm, they don’t build, they don’t fix. They manage. Or more precisely, they create work for themselves, invent new job titles, develop processes that didn’t need to exist, and write reports that no one reads – all while raking in salaries that could fund entire communities.
Hefty overheads? You bet. That’s because these managers require a sprawling support ecosystem: personal assistants, executive coaches, brand consultants, compliance officers. Most hilariously, the Human Resources department – supposedly there to help workers – exists mostly to protect the managers from workers. HR is now the final resting place of corporate wokeness, DEI and the utterly unemployable.
Offshore Profits, Onshore Bonuses
Production – that thing that actually creates wealth – has been outsourced. We all know the story: factories shut down in Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool… and opened up in Bangladesh, Vietnam, or Mexico. Why? Cheap labour.
And what did the companies do with all the money saved? Pay the workers better? Lower the price of goods? Don’t be daft. No, the savings were funnelled into executive bonuses, endless consultancy projects, and the “transformation” departments whose entire job seems to be constantly changing logos and mission statements.
The Accountants’ Playground
Let’s not forget the accountancy industry – often dressed up as respectable and necessary. In reality? They’ve become the architects of legalised theft. Their finest trick is helping multinationals avoid taxes through byzantine schemes and offshore loopholes.
You know, the very same taxes that pay for hospitals, schools, roads, and – ironically – the wages of public managers. Without tax, the state can’t function. So who picks up the slack? We do. The little guy. The salaried worker. The self-employed. You, me, everyone who doesn’t have a Big Four accountancy firm on speed dial.
Politicians: Bought and Paid For
But here’s where it gets really insidious. Laws don’t just appear out of nowhere. They are lobbied for – often by ex-politicians now working for private firms, or think tanks funded by corporate interests.
The result? Laws that make it easier for companies to outsource jobs, stash profits offshore, break up unions, and pay executives even more. This is not a bug in the system. It is the system. Managerial capitalism needs these laws like a vampire needs blood.
And we keep voting in politicians who promise to fight the system, only to find that once elected, they too fall under the spell of the managerial class. The perks are too good. The speeches are written for them. The revolving door spins quickly.
The Inevitable Cost – Paid by You
You might think all of this sounds abstract. But it’s not. You feel it every time you buy something. Every time your train is late, your hospital is understaffed, your rent goes up, or your broadband fails – it’s the cost of managerial capitalism.
All the extra layers – the managers, the consultants, the tax dodgers, the legal firms, the lobbyists – all of them push up the price of everything while adding precisely nothing of value. It’s an economy built on overhead, not output.
So when you wonder why everything is so expensive, why your wages haven’t kept up, and why it feels like you’re working harder for less… now you know.
In the End, It’s a Con
Managerial capitalism isn’t capitalism in the traditional sense. It’s not about risk, innovation, or entrepreneurship. It’s a protection racket run by a class of career managers who’ve figured out how to rig the game in their favour. They don’t take the risks, but they sure take the rewards.
They’ve turned democracy into theatre, work into bureaucracy, and the economy into a giant funnel – all leading into their own pockets.
And the worst part? We’re all footing the bill.
