> on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well.
This is a very important point and the strength of capitalism. Even a self asshole like Elon Musk is incentivized to provide useful goods and services and create jobs that raise people's standard of living.
I mean, Musk is currently being sued by a bunch of his old employees for not paying them properly, so not sure if he’s the best example here. He also fired like 80% of his workforce at twitter/X so not sure how incentivized he actually is to “create jobs.” And arguably the changes he has made has made his product worse in the process.
This is a very important point and the strength of capitalism. Even a self asshole like Elon Musk is incentivized to provide useful goods and services and create jobs that raise people's standard of living.