Woot! Woot! Meyer Burger Is Going Bust!
Or, you know, not going bust, but not having a good time of it
All too many people - and all politicians - believe that companies making good profits, lots of people getting employed, is a good economy. This is not true. A good economy is one in which everyone’s going bust and no one has a job because there’s nothing left to do.
Note something - everyone going bust and lots left to do is not a good idea. Everyone going bust and nothing left to do is just great.
So, Woot! Woot!
One of Europe’s largest solar panel manufacturers has announced it will cut about 200 jobs as it battles to return to profitability amid stiff competition from China.
Meyer Burger said its chief executive is leaving the company as it announced plans to reduce its global workforce from about 1,050 to 850 by the end of 2025, predominantly in Europe, as it focuses operations on the US.
It said Gunter Erfurt would be replaced by executive chairman Franz Richter immediately, with chief financial officer Markus Nikles stepping down in September.
Meyer Burger reported a loss of 292m Swiss francs for 2023, which it blamed on “severe price undercutting in the European solar market”.
It comes amid a flood of Chinese products onto the European market.
The thing we want is the solar panels. We - as consumers and all that - don’t give two shits about who makes them. Cheaper is better, that’s all.
Of course, the same is true for the planet. The cheaper solar gets then the less likely Flipper will be broiled in the fumes of that last ice floe. Cheaper is better.
OK, so instead of now getting our solar - expensively - from pristine Swiss factories we now get it from equally pristine* but cheaper and Chinese factories. We’re better off. To the extent that the price of solar drives installation - a bit at least - then the future Flipper - or Flipper’s future - and the planet are also better off.
And, you know, great. We need to use less labour to gain our solar cells, less money too. This means that those 200 folk can be redeployed by the magic of market economies to doing something else. Fuel cells, frankfurters or feng shui. We are now richer by whatever value we place on the fuel cells, frankfurters or feng shui we can now afford to buy with the money left over from our cheaper solar cells. And the people producing the fuel cells, frankfurters and feng shui are employed by that extra money we’ve got to pay them with. We are richer.
We need to recall that the entire point of technological advance - hell, of economics, capitalism, markets and civilisation itself - is to destroy jobs. Because that then frees up labour from drudge and toil as the machines - or J Foreigner - replaces it and the labour can rest or do something else.
But this idea really does have a hard time embedding itself in the heads of all too many. So, a simpler proof of its validity. This will make Naomi Klein cry. QED. There is no better possible proof of a logical contention than that now, is there?
*Because you can’t do electronics, even easy solar electronics, in anything less than pristine conditions
The destruction of agricultural labour created the NHS. Mass healthcare is impossible if 80% of the population are scraping a living out of the ground. If people want moar NHS the only way is by destroying all non-NHS.
"Because you can’t do electronics, even easy solar electronics, in anything less than pristine conditions."
Yes - so the inside of the factory will be just as pristine as the Swiss equivalent. The outside will look like a slag-heap - because China. That being said, so what? - the locals, be they Swiss or Chinese, have set the level of local pollution that they are willing to tolerate. We should leave them the autonomy to make their own local decisions, and as consumers still seek out the best cost (or price / performance - whatever we value) and get on with it.