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Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

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Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#101

Post by refurb »

vladharbuz wrote: post #12
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

If you took all the income from the billionaires and distributed it evenly, the average person wouldn't even get a 2% raise. If you took all the wealth and distributed it evenly, the a average person wouldn't even get $500. In the US - Billionaires have $1.3T: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires/ That's ~$3880 per US person. Globally, there's a lot more people, and countries aren't as rich as the US. Eve…

This is true, but I have a slightly different question to ask. Imagine you work at, say, a game development company, along with 99 other developers. The only other member of the company is a CEO and shareholder, who decides how much to keep for himself and how much to pay the employees, but, importantly, does none of the actual work himself. Let's say the game is wildly successful and the employees are collectively p…

No, absolutely not "wage theft".

Presumably the CEO bring something to the table - capital, fundraising ability. I mean why else have him/her?

CEO hires a bunch of employees, all who get paid. The game is a success and since he put the capital at risk, he gets most the reward. The employees get their salary.

Unfair?

Well, what if it doesn't work out? Employees all get their salary, CEO loses his capital.

Workers can certainly get a similar trade off in some industries - plenty of tech start-ups will pay you $50,000/yr (when you could be making $300,000 at Google) and a chunk of the company.

Why not take that job if you want CEO-type risk and reward?

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#102

Post by vladharbuz »

refurb wrote: post #93
noughts wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the last thing we should do is to go back to the Soviet Union, but its relationship to many of the alternatives available today is a common misunderstanding. The Soviet Union was described as "socialist" simply to cover up the awful inequality and abuse of power that was at the centre of it. The Soviet Union was basically the opposite of socialism, and this is easy to understand if you compare it to the…

My response was a bit - tongue in cheek as that's a quote from Singapore's PM during an election campaign. His point was if you remove the competitive aspects - the individualistic ones, the system grinds to a halt. The USSR and China were abusive because you need to be abusive to force people to give over labour for which they don't own the proceeds of. Small time farmers in Vietnam had riots over the collectivizati…

Thank you for expanding on your point! I understand what you meant a lot better now. If you had any resources that expand on your views, I'd be happy to read them.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#103

Post by badcppdev »

refurb wrote: post #93
noughts wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the last thing we should do is to go back to the Soviet Union, but its relationship to many of the alternatives available today is a common misunderstanding. The Soviet Union was described as "socialist" simply to cover up the awful inequality and abuse of power that was at the centre of it. The Soviet Union was basically the opposite of socialism, and this is easy to understand if you compare it to the…

My response was a bit - tongue in cheek as that's a quote from Singapore's PM during an election campaign. His point was if you remove the competitive aspects - the individualistic ones, the system grinds to a halt. The USSR and China were abusive because you need to be abusive to force people to give over labour for which they don't own the proceeds of. Small time farmers in Vietnam had riots over the collectivizati…

I think your idea of a tongue in cheek comment was a bit simplistic for the subject matter.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#104

Post by zhdc1 »

vladharbuz wrote: post #88
zhdc1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all, shouldn't those who actually form the workforce of a company and shape the products and services it offers be in control? Why not have those who actually do the work collectively control the fate of the company, instead of having to hand over that power to someone else? That is viable in some cases. The underlying issue is that distribution of corporate growth is relegated to a small percentage of all or…

That reasoning makes sense to me. Do you think there actually _is_ some material disadvantage to co-operatives that leads them to be less economically successful than companies where shareholders have all the power and ownership? If so, do you think there is something that can correct this imbalance such that companies structured in more equitable ways can work just as well as the current inequality-laden corporation…

> That reasoning makes sense to me. Do you think there actually _is_ some material disadvantage to co-operatives that leads them to be less economically successful than companies where shareholders have all the power and ownership?

This is hard to say. I think there are two competing trends: 1. Co-operative ownership is becoming more prevalent. This is particularly true in situations where entrepreneurial bricolage (making do with what you have on hand) is a factor. 2. However, there aren't that many examples of legitimate co-operative ownership in larger corporations. They do exist, but the sample size is small.

As far as I'm aware, employee co-ownership is more associated with the concept of 'psychological ownership', where the organization tries to make an employee feel like they own a portion of the company. This can come from actual ownership via RSUs or stock options, or through other factors, such as company culture. The idea here being that psychological ownership increases employee effectiveness.

The issue is that 1. top management generally has more influence than owners and 2. it's not always (or usually) in the best interest of the employee to have more than a small percentage of their net worth tied up in their employer.

Think about it this way. In a (greatly simplified model of) democracy, voters essentially "own" the government. However, the politicians they elect as well as an employed bureaucracy are the ones generally calling the shots. Democracy works because it provides a floor where, if performance falls to a certain point, the top management layer is replaced by a different set of managers.

However, corporations are not governments. Governments (especially local governments) - and bureaucracies - last a very long time, to the extent that they generally survive well after whatever state they were originally part-of goes away. In other words, they're robust. You can have a bad set of elected, or unelected, officials and regardless of what happens, odds are that the entity they represent will still be around decades if not centuries later.

Corporations are the opposite. The failure rate is sizable. Like I wrote in my previous post, a small number of larger companies are adding economic value, while the rest are in the process of fading away. The question here is whether a co-operative model provides enough of a benefit beyond the standard corporate ownership structure to provide some benefit to either of these phases.

My guess is that the answer is no for the growth phase and, depending on the organization/industry, maybe or a slight yes for the later maintenance phase. That said, the sample size of employee owned co-operatives in growth-oriented industries is so small that I don't know if the data exists to take a shot at answering either question.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#105

Post by choko »

becquerel wrote: post #6
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #3

> Only a radical change in how work is done and who controls this can make labor once again an integral part of life, one through which we can fully develop our capacities as thinking, acting human beings. uhh. The article appears to suggest that we change who controls our labor... #1 - we do, we can quit anytime we want and find another place to work for. #2 - I assume they are railing against private individuals an…

We can choose who we work for (sometimes), but we can't choose not to work at all. Our engagement in the capitalist labour market is mandatory; otherwise we starve to death. Doesn't sound like we have much control over our labour to me.

Your need to work is tied directly to your need for food and shelter - in other words, biology. You can alternatively grow your own food and build shelter, but that's also work. Sustaining life requires work. Whether we engage in a market where we exchange some of our labor for vouchers that we can use to exchange for the fruits of someone else's labor or do the work ourselves doesn't change that.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#106

Post by oreally »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #82
zimpenfish wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do the math. A counterpoint with 5 minutes of searching: from [1], Peter Kern (3rd highest paid CEO) got $296M in 2022 overseeing ~15k employees (from [2]). Distribute that salary evenly and everyone gets a ~19k boost which, on an average base of $108k (from [3]), is about +17%, if I'm not mistaken. If you want an even more ludicrous example, David Baszucki (Roblox, 7th highest, also [1]) got $232M in 2022 overseei…

I said you will find outliers. Congratulations. You found one extreme case, and included links to some others. There are many. There are also 5000+ large companies in the US that employ tens of thousands of people. 20,000+ companies globally. This isn't the average. Use a normal distribution, and you'd expect 20+ companies with 3 sigma (where CEO pay would increase pay by 6%+). Corporate profits definitely don't have…

The cynicism is huge in your post.

Still you gotta admit there is a problem with CEOs making off with huge salaries/stock value especially in very hot sectors, with some of them even trying to dodge taxes. Sure you can make an argument for the increased salary with the increased responsibilities and risk, but there is no cap there and little say from the employees.

When CEOs make a few lifetime's worth of money in a year while the employee makes far less in a year, that's going to raise inequalities and eventually render systems unstable. The balance is not there.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#107

Post by worldshit »

badpun wrote: post #73
worldshit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you don't have the choice of living like a hunter-gatherer, because all good lands have been swallowed up by capitalist megacommunities

There's plenty of hunter-gatherers in Siberia or Amazon rainforest.

those in the amazon are being brought to extinction by bolsonaro. those in siberia are subject to putin's whim...

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#108

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

If you took all the income from the billionaires and distributed it evenly, the average person wouldn't even get a 2% raise. If you took all the wealth and distributed it evenly, the a average person wouldn't even get $500. In the US - Billionaires have $1.3T: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires/ That's ~$3880 per US person. Globally, there's a lot more people, and countries aren't as rich as the US. Eve…

The thought that 'billionaires' are the problem is missing the point. There are folks worth the better part of $1T. They are a bigger part of the problem, by several orders of magnitude. The systematic problems are, that the system is rigged so a tiny few skim from everything, leaving the absolute minimum they can get away with for the rest of us.

Look, I'm close to as far left as you can get.

But this is leftist propaganda that makes no sense.

I just disproved that ALL billionaires (including the centibillionaires) do not have a meaningful amount of money to distribute to the country (or the globe) in any reasonably fair way.

Singling out the centibillionaires - Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos and Gates and Buffet - doesn't make my point irrelevant. If you're only looking at them - their contribution is more unequal, sure! But they don't even have half the billionaire total. They aren't even half the problem. Taking their money wouldn't even do half as much!

Do they have disproportionate power? Absolutely!

Are they using that to get even more money? I think it's hard to argue they aren't.

Is that a problem? I think so.

Are they skimming all the money so we have nothing? This idea is laughably wrong, and the amount of times it is parroted is infuriating.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#109

Post by badpun »

vladharbuz wrote: post #12
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

If you took all the income from the billionaires and distributed it evenly, the average person wouldn't even get a 2% raise. If you took all the wealth and distributed it evenly, the a average person wouldn't even get $500. In the US - Billionaires have $1.3T: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires/ That's ~$3880 per US person. Globally, there's a lot more people, and countries aren't as rich as the US. Eve…

This is true, but I have a slightly different question to ask. Imagine you work at, say, a game development company, along with 99 other developers. The only other member of the company is a CEO and shareholder, who decides how much to keep for himself and how much to pay the employees, but, importantly, does none of the actual work himself. Let's say the game is wildly successful and the employees are collectively p…

The employees also get wages if the game craters completely and company looses millions on it. Unless the employees are willing to eat up the losses as well (i.e. pay back some portion of the wages they got earlier), they should not enjoy 100% of the profits.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#110

Post by badpun »

worldshit wrote: post #107
badpun wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of hunter-gatherers in Siberia or Amazon rainforest.

those in the amazon are being brought to extinction by bolsonaro. those in siberia are subject to putin's whim...

I don't think Putin gives a shit about them. Probably the state does not even have the means to track (public id document etc.) a lot of them.
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