Which is unconscionable
That’s 90B of stolen value from employees who should be the owners of the stock
That’s 90B of stolen value from employees who should be the owners of the stock
That's 90B of value which could have gone to employees had the capital needs of those growing businesses been met by debt (often requiring coincident equity injections or personal guarantees), by bootstrapping, or by those same employees.
Perhaps now there's space for a conversation. What might a world need to look like for it to be made up of those businesses in place of one where ownership can be traded for capital at risk?
So you need some people with money - some capitalists. Do you expect them to work for free? If so, good luck - you can expect all you want, but they aren't investing in your business.
We can have a conversation about how much of the rewards should flow to investors and how much should flow to the workers. But "anything that doesn't go to the workers is theft" shows a complete lack of understanding.
If labor can get the money and buys the tools, then sure, they get the rewards that flow to labor and the rewards that flow to capital. That's perfectly fair. But at that point, they're not just "labor" any longer - they're at least petit bourgeoisie.
You just seem to think that there is no other way for some reason
How can you just wave away the narcissistic psychopathy of capital return requirements?
On what philosophical principle are you basing your position on?
I’m not really sure how you can stand on any kind of principal here when all you’re doing is capitulating to the existing power structures
“It’s just the way it is” isn’t a branch of ethics
If we're going to live a better life than in the stone age, we need tools that are better than stones. The more sophisticated tools are beyond the ability of one person to both make and use them - they take too much time to make. So we wind up with a specialized economy where different people make the tools and use the tools. And they both deserve to be rewarded - the tools enable much more to be produced; those who made that possible deserve to share in the rewards.
But we're a money economy rather than a barter economy, because barter doesn't scale all that well. Well, in a money economy, if someone is going to use a tool they didn't build, then someone has to buy the tool - either the tool user or an investor. If the tool user doesn't have the money, then it has to be an investor.
Do you demand that the investor do so for free? That doesn't sound fair. (It also doesn't sound like it will actually happen - why should the investor invest if there is no expectation of a return?)
So now we have three people who need to share in the rewards - in tool maker, the tool user, and the tool buyer. And it is perfectly fair that all three share in the rewards. It is unfair to expect the investor to invest for free.
Like I said, we can have a conversation about the amounts that different ones receive. But that's a completely different conversation from "everything that goes to the investor is theft".
Ok, but in the case of negative market returns, the expectation is that you get no returns. If the investor randomly demands not having to get market returns then who is going to make up the difference if not the investor? The tax payer? That is the answer the average citizen has chosen and they like it.
In fact this trope about the “stone age” tells me you have a eurocentric idea of the history of humanity - eg:
“people are fundamentally selfish, things were bad, then society developed and now things are better”
Which is just a totally fabricated history
All your questions will be answered by reading, chapter 4 of Prudhon “What is property?”
Except in extremely rare cases, hoards of wealth come from inequitable deals - that is, someone chooses a bad deal for themselves under duress
If you want things to be better than the stone ages then stop acting like “might makes right” is an ethical position, its “stone age” philosophy that needs to end
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudh...
People ARE fundamentally selfish in any groups above 150-200 where the social net breaks down. Most groups of animals don't stay group-serving in giant groups, we are no different.[1] In groups small enough to be inside the social net, tribe survival dynamics work great.
> things were bad, then society developed and now things are better”
Things are not great. Technology makes them better though. Man can't easily escape technology today, but it is the fundamental trade-off society offers at the cost of social health.
Here's one question that it won't answer: Why should I believe Proudhon? Sure, he may sound correct. Lots of other people sound correct, too. What is your basis for saying that I should listen to Proudhon rather than all these other people?
> If you want things to be better than the stone ages then stop acting like “might makes right” is an ethical position, its “stone age” philosophy that needs to end
I did not advocate that as an ethical position - you're imputing that to me. I deny you the right to tell me what my ethical position is. And you should stop trying, not just because you don't have the right, but also because you're lousy at it.
I'm done with the conversation, since you seem quite clearly to be uninterested in listening. I will leave you the last word if you want it.
My suggestion is to read them all and come to your own conclusions
The difference is that the people you ask will be the people who are doing the work and as a result they become the owners
I haven't started a railroad so I can't tell you how to fund that
I have started a residential trash cooperative which is 100% bootstrapped by the employees and needed ~100k to start
I have also started multiple software startups and those are cheap as hell to start and run if you're not trying to waste money on marketing
I mean good for you but personally I'm barely sure how I should do the above for my own finances much less on the kind of scale you're talking about.
Like most opinions, they're an often unknowable mixture of genuine aptitude and naive bravado and it's good to try to stay humble.
My answer is anarchistic syndicalism:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/george-woodcock-what...
In short, labor has to organize our own capital to create syndicates that peacefully outcompete existing unethical structures
Its going to take hundreds of years of organizing and reduction in the pervasive sense of social terror and fear which leads people to hoarding behavior
12000 years of this structure won’t end by force or overnight
It can only be done through steady peaceful direct action to transfer wealth from existing hoarders to individuals
We then disincentive personal consumption and vanity the same way we got here, through Bernays style propaganda (marketing) and building infrastructure that incentivizes community development over personal consumption
But then labour becomes the business owner – exactly what they don't want to be. Labour chooses to become employees because they don't want the headaches of owning and operating a business. They just want a steady paycheque and let someone else take the risk.
Employees take the most risk because they gave the fewest options in the market
The risk a PE or bank takes giving a loan isn’t the same risk a loan holder takes by collateralizing their home.
1. Do the work and find out. If the work was worthwhile, they'll reap the benefits in spades. If not, they are left with the detriments.
2. Sell the work at a discount to someone else who is willing to find out.
Most workers opt for #2 because they don't care to find out. They want the guarantee and are happy to let someone else suffer the consequences when things go wrong, even if that means letting someone else indulge in the rewards when it does work out.
Arthur: Then who is your lord? Woman: We don't have a lord! Arthur: (spurised) What?? Man: I told you! We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week-- Arthur: (uninterested) Yes... Man: But all the decisions of that officer 'ave to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting-- Arthur: (perturbed) Yes I see! Man: By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs-- Arthur: (mad) Be quiet! Man: But by a two-thirds majority, in the case of more major-- Arthur: (very angry) BE QUIET! I order you to be quiet! Woman: "Order", eh, 'oo does 'e think 'e is?
Hard to argue with the logic
Go find a startup right now that is on the Series A-F pathway
Each new investment incurs ownership dilution. Based on what? Did the employees vote for this? Never
PE broadly and dictatorially controls the flow of capital as a class - they also mostly collude for deals - so early employees have zero say about these dilution actions
If the only solution is to not play (eg “well then go somewhere else/start your own”) then the structure is fundamentally flawed and needs to go away
Also even if they are at Seed, they increasingly won’t be
So unless the founding team is a bunch of syndicalists - which almost be definition they aren’t - they won’t ever structure the organization to reduce their own power on behalf of future workers
Thats by design and origination with the modern firm. Capital will not fund companies that don’t prioritize returns on capital
You see how the entire structure is built to prevent even challenging the structure
Companies founded as dictatorships are the only option people think is available and yet it’s not.
However there is no money for expanding this message because it does not benefit the people with money to invest in reducing their own power
What’s a structure that improves upon this flawed structure?
There should exist no single person with the amount of economic power that Buffet has.
That is economic power that someone else DOESNT have that they are creating but not capturing
With the only argument being “but they have a contract” - totally ignoring that contracts are based on laws and capital writes the laws
We can probably figure it out faster once the majority of the population is not grasping for air
This is imminently possible today but the social will isn’t there
>There should exist no single person with the amount of economic power that Buffett has
Why not, then? From a consequentialist utilitarian perspective, we seem to be much better off with Buffett being allowed to do what he wants with his money. From a deontological rights perspective, we reach the same conclusion.
Should anyone be allowed the political power of a US president or senator or mayor?
>contracts are based on laws and capital writes the laws
This seems to lack substance. If I agree to do task X in exchange for reward Y, enforced by the law saying I have to honor what I agree to, and you think I should be getting Y+Z, is your issue really that the law was written by capital? AFAIK, most contract law restricts what I'm allowed to give away and guarantees that I get a minimum in return. Is there a particular law governing contracts that, if removed, would move things in the direction you prefer? Because otherwise I'd think you'd be quite happy with the 'you can't trade your basic rights away, you can't sell yourself into slavery, you must make at least minimum wage, etc.' that we've already got (and that you allege capital is resposible for) and seeking an additional 'you must capture at least 75% of the value you create' or something. Unless you're fundamentally opposed to contracts in general?
We have more than enough resources for that to be true, it’s a matter of will and reckoning how the deck is stacked structurally to actively fight anything that reduces the power of the luxury class
The line of argument you’re developing is a well-explored garden path. I encourage you to continue developing the idea but do not embrace advocacy, for that is where you will lose your way.
It isn't, obviously. But nor was that value stolen. Words mean things.
I wonder what would happen if we tried a system that didn’t allow private ownership of companies?
Oh we have, you say? Many times? Famines, poor economies, mass genocide, dictators? Well, surely none of those experiments were _real_ communism. We better try it another dozen times just to be sure.
How much ownership of the means of production did a slave of the USSR or PRC own?
Who “owned” the property in these cases?
No one is left arguing for Socialism as a centrally planned entirely state controlled economy, just tweaks to our current system to add additional interventions to combat markets' natural propensity to consolidate wealth. Making it so that only employees are shareholders isn't some crazy radical thing, the current system is to levy heavy taxes to recirculate wealth back down from the top. But come on capitalist, do you really think that centrally planned government spending is the best way to do that?
Have you given any thought what that would look like in practice? If you and me started WidgetCorp and needed $5 Million to buy a WidgetMaker, where would we get the money?
(I'm using the numbers for AT&T) Say you work for a big company so at your salary it translates to 0.0004% ownership. Just as before fiduciary duty and all that the company as a whole has the solemn duty to make it's owners as much money as possible and you make record profits to the tune of $72B. Great job really fantastic. Now instead of a $4B stock buyback it's a dividend paid to the owners (which is you) and you just made a cool $1.6 mil. Sure as hell beats that 2% bonus.
You can't sell ownership as a way of raising money anymore and you have to get loans or issue corporate bonds like all those plebeian small businesses do but the value of your work is returned right back to you as an employee/owner. And you're the board -- let's go (representative) democracy at the workplace! It's gonna make it really hard to push through truly unpopular decisions.
This kind of thing isn't without downsides or a magic solution to all of our problems, but like, employee ownership of business / labor owning the means of production that doesn't require state controlled industry, gulags, or whatever, and roughly lines up with current corporate governance.
The worker board will also have the same perverse incentives current boards do to a lesser degree. Why wouldn't they make terrible decisions in the name of short-term shareholder value? What is the crucial difference between a company who sells shares on the public market (where anyone could get a profit share) and a worker cooperative (where employees [re-]invest their wages to get a profit share)?
These two things can't really jive in the same world. There can't be a bunch of investors willing to blow huge sums of money on a business with no revenue in exchange for equity in pursuit of above average returns but no investors willing to buy corporate bonds or a new to be determined IOU structure from a business with no revenue in pursuit of above average returns. The only necessary condition in my view for this kind of investment to not shaft workers in the long run is that the amount paid to fulfill the IOU can't be indefinite or unbounded.
10 richest men in the world owned more than the combined wealth of the bottom 3.1 billion people
That means that in order to utilize that “wealth” it needs to be liquidated and no longer accreting value
The people who own that have no interest in liquidating that capital for anything that doesn’t personally benefit them. Since a company is a zero sum pie for total ownership whomever controls the distribution of equity controls the pie - unless you’re in a coop or a strong union, your ownership is simply at the will of the richest person in the company
If it’s the case that you need capital to make more, then by the power law the only people who can “create wealth” already have it and have no intention of using it for public good
So then how do non owners start something? They convince the ruling economic lords that they will do better with their money to give them more back
You can’t get money unless a ruling lord guarantees a rate of return. How’s that possibly a good system?
Seems a lot like greed based vanity dictatorships
This is objectively wrong. The great majority of owned wealth is capital, and capital is operated. Most of Buffett's net worth is in businesses which he owns: those businesses operate at a profit, creative value for the world at large, some of which accrues to Mr. Buffett. Which he promptly reinvests in more (hopefully) productive businesses.
Please cite your argument that the world is better because the workers of the companies are not controlling the value they create
Is your argument thusly: “because buffet can maintain control, he should because so far he has benefited his shareholders”
I made no such argument.
What I said is that this:
> That means that in order to utilize that “wealth” it needs to be liquidated and no longer accreting value
Is objectively wrong. Most wealth is actively utilized as investment in productive businesses. Perhaps this is easier to see with the example of Jeff Bezos: most of his wealth is ownership of Amazon, which is a productive and profitable business. It doesn't need to be "liquidated" to be utilized, it's being utilized at rest. This is true for Warren Buffett as well, but I already went over that.