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Every company should be owned by its employees

elysian.press

11–20 of 1001 posts

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#11
post #6

It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union

is it so insane, in a world of disparity and outsized influence of CEOs and billionaires, where people cannot afford houses? maybe the insane thing was how for hundreds of years we let the rich dictate the rules as if they knew better for having taken advantage of others.

People can absolutely afford houses. They can so easily afford houses that they buy them quickly, often for over asking.

If people couldn't afford houses, they would sit unsold until sellers lowered the price to a price someone could afford. Luckily so many people can afford houses in most areas they don't have to do that.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#13
> After they leave the company or retire, the complete balance of their accounts will be paid out to them over a six-year period.

Hmmm, so that line is a little misleading since they don't really "own" the stock in a conventional sense. They can't sell it to anybody else and they can't hold on to it indefinitely.

To the extent they "own" it they are are forced to only ever "sell" it back to the same company at some market-defined rate. (Arguably a form of stock-buybacks by the company.)

However that does sidestep the other tricky problems of taking money from retired employees (via diluting their stock) to award an ever-growing pool of shares to current employees every month.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it so insane, in a world of disparity and outsized influence of CEOs and billionaires, where people cannot afford houses? maybe the insane thing was how for hundreds of years we let the rich dictate the rules as if they knew better for having taken advantage of others.

People can absolutely afford houses. They can so easily afford houses that they buy them quickly, often for over asking. If people couldn't afford houses, they would sit unsold until sellers lowered the price to a price someone could afford. Luckily so many people can afford houses in most areas they don't have to do that.

You're confusing some entities, often private equity or similar corporations buying assets, often to rent, sometimes just to park, being able to buy, and the general public being able to afford to buy. In many desirable metro areas, you need two high incomes (two people in tech or lawyers or finance) to be able to afford to buy anything. What about everyone else?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#15

>Every year, those employees get a percentage of their salaries in company stock. Ok? Anybody can choose to do this if they work at a public company. But what happen if it's mandatory and the stock goes down? Now your labor was stolen at below market rate! Then we will hear "employees compensation should be resilient to market fluctuations."

I like this caricature of the spoiled entitled employee because it completely ignores the concept of shareholders having a say in governance. If stocks were only a proxy for money and nothing else the example would be spot-on.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#17
post #6

It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union

is it so insane, in a world of disparity and outsized influence of CEOs and billionaires, where people cannot afford houses? maybe the insane thing was how for hundreds of years we let the rich dictate the rules as if they knew better for having taken advantage of others.

I see. And you keep looking at billionaires instead of regulations or the things that make it possible, like housing regulations (talking Europe now, Idk America well enough).

If you really set the market more free, you will automatically have more reasonably wealthy people bc of competition. When thede few billionaires exist due to governments favors we should think what is wrong with some people selling favors to others without providing services to others.

If you start regulation after regulation you create an elite of people and normal people suffering those regulations.

The elites are basically, in this setup, a collusion of sellers of favors (politicians favoring employers) and people who buy those to avoid competition and favor their business.

This is not possible by definition if you see that with bad eyes and watch out permanently.

However, people want more and more regulation bc there are always things that are "wrong" and eventually those things take you exactly to the outcomes you complain about right now. But you want more of it. Guess what you are going to have if you ask more of it: more of that.

There is a sentence from Javier Milei that I think is very correct regarding this matter: "the politician cannot sell you a favor he does not have for selling".

Think of it. We cannot reduce all problems to that sentece but there is a very big part of truth in it.

I recommend you to take a look at the profiles of billionaires there are around the world. Some are very different to others. But the more regulations you have in a country, especially the ones that did not develop first, the less wealth transfer you have and the more money stay in the same people's hands. This is something to think about very seriously: the path to derregulation is a better choice to keep things balanced.

If you choose the other way, no matter how good it looks to you, you will get what you are asking for. Basically, "The great taking". Look for that book if you do not know it yet.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#18
I think the most surprising thing about trends in modern executive class pay is just how steep it is compared to the median employee. It makes me wonder why shareholders outside the company are happy with it.

For example, the Boeing CEO made 22M in 2022 and 32M in 2023. I'd argue that he did a much worse job in 2023 than in 2022 but somehow got paid almost 50% more. Even Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is "only" being paid $34M in 2024.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#19

It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union

It’s the opposite. In the 60s and 70s many western countries were semi-socialist. Just look at Britain, the state owned a significant proportion of the industry, housing etc. the unions were extremely powerful (by modern standards). Same in other European countries.

Arguably the US was generally much more left leaning than now, even somebody like Nixon might struggle passing off as a moderate/rightwing Democrat let alone a Republican just based on his domestic economic policies…

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#20
I suppose a side effect might be employee loyality, which might be a good thing. And the wealth disparity we have now is obscene. But all this is predicated on the company doing well, where's the story about the companies set up like this that struggle or fail? Are the employees worse off than those in a traditional company?
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