What if they were ? That's the whole point of the conversation lol. It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse. Maybe the company should be obligated to redistribute it to her employees, or to the public, etc.
And there's no guarantee my base pay would stay the same if profit-sharing become the law of the land-- it doesn't seem improbable that my base might decrease in this new economic landscape. Suddenly, part of my income waxes and wanes according to strategic decisions that I don't get to play a part in, according to market forces that I can't fully predict. My life overall becomes more volatile.
I'm not against voluntary profit-sharing. The company I work for now does it, after <x> number of years of employment. I just suspect a blanket mandate would come with some baggage.
But we should at least be able to discuss the problem.
Some people seem to think it's totally fine for wealth accumulation to be effectively uncapped, and for ownership to keep concentrating gains no matter how large the numbers get.
Past some point, that seems hard to justify.
> It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse.
No, they addressed that with:
> The only thing that would be non-consensual would be obligating the employer to redistribute her profit over and above what had already been negotiated.
Which would be truly immoral.
"lol"
The disagreement is whether a founder who owns 20% of a company that grows from $1M to $100B should personally receive $20B of the resulting value while thousands of employees and customers contributed to creating that value.
That's the debate.
Any asset value can grow or shrink thanks to effects from people, such as paid services, but I don't lose equity on property/companies I don't own if I vandalize them, just like I don't gain equity when I raise their value somehow.
Employees of a company are just contracted service providers with longer duration contracts, and of the company is public, they are free to buy some of that risk and gain or lose more when the company does so. 20% of $100B is $20B, so there is no need for a debate, math has our back.
PG is absolutely right, if you want to be a billionaire, you need accelerated growth, you need to find something that a large number of people will pay for and you need to make sure you own equity into it as it grows, equity that grows with it.
And that's exactly the source of the debate, this trick to billionaire-level wealth, is that a good thing? Because it wasn't earned through labor, no one can earn a billion dollar through labor, you can only accumulate it through vast equity into market capture of a large market.
If your chickens reproduce because of the bread I provided you, your wealth in assets increases if the value of chickens and eggs don't go down at the same rate. We already traded our money and bread. If I wanted stake in your chickens, we could've came with an agreement (if you are willing to share your assets and risk), and I could then demand a share of your gain or loss. Otherwise it is theft.
Regarding employees, labor has never been tied to wealth. An employee provides a service, which is traded based on the supply and demand of that service, and money (not wealth) is the standard asset people prefer. Some people are paid in a different asset, such as share of the company or a combo of both. That is their wealth. Labor is independent if you decide to trade something else, and it is always a gamble, because values of any two different assets (including money) grow and shrink independently.
Would you want to take a pay cut if your employer was having financial problems? Why not? Because you have an agreement on what your salary should be. It is fair that it works both ways.
This happens constantly in the form of layoffs…