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Every company should be owned by its employees

elysian.press

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Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#751

Post by hellojesus »

hgomersall wrote: post #642
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese state takes a rather strong hand in allocating capital, and that has treated it fairly well over the past few decades. The Chinese government has spent massive amounts on vanity projects. A lot of government funds have also been looted by CCP honchos. Thanks but no. I’ll take American capital allocators over the Chinese any day. Most importantly, I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.

There's a big range between living in a dictatorship and having only private entities allowed to invest in things.

Is take the American system every day. What is the moral justification for a state stealing private property?

Billionaires get to invest however they want because it's their property. What you see as a vanity project actually employs workers, feds families, and generates tax revenue. They are massively contributing to the economy.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#752

Post by rangerelf »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #392
piva00 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they in…

> There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments. Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives.

Unions aren't there for "Ownership" of companies or cooperatives, they're for improvement of member's work lives, it can be training, worker contract negotiations, as go-between when dealing with management or owners, etc.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#753

Post by BeFlatXIII »

zby wrote: post #324
rakoo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Pleast don't be so naive. The reason not every company does that is that giving ownership gives power and dilutes your own, reduces the chances at doing humongus profits that can be hoarded by a minority. Business ow…

And yet people overwhelmingly prefer to work for these non-employees owned companies instead of working in cooperatives - how do you explain that? They could take those humongous profits for themselves but they don't do that. My answer to that question is that organizing people is much more difficult than everybody thinks and politics is the biggest source of inefficiencies on any human organisation bigger than a few…

> yet people overwhelmingly prefer to work for these non-employees owned companies instead of working in cooperatives - how do you explain that?

Really? Or are there simply far more non-coop job openings available? Is there data on the applications per listing that directly compares ownership structures to normalize for workforce size?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#754

Post by WalterBright »

keybored wrote: post #671
WalterBright wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad was in the AF, and we rotated back and forth between the US and Europe. A friend of his married a British woman while stationed there, and took her back to the States when the tour was over. She endlessly complained about the US, and how Britain was so much better. Eventually, they were rotated to Germany. As soon as they arrived, she was off to England. 6 weeks later, she was back, and did not complain about…

Legend has it that Walter can smell anti-Americanism in the water, in fact all the way to Germany.

My family did two tours in Germany (tour as in being stationed there by the military). If you're a military family, the military will move you all around the world.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#755

Post by hellojesus »

apantel wrote: post #534
bccdee wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently Efficiency with regard to what goal? The current allocation of capital in the US is quite inefficient if we're interested in the welfare of the public. Billionaires have far more capital than they know what to do with, and since they're unaccountable for their investment choices, they strongly tend to steer the economy toward vanity projects. Meanwhile, many families ca…

The system is not perfectly efficient because humans aren’t efficient. I think the idea is, keeping a market relatively free (with a sane amount of regulation) allows capital to seek returns. This leads to a lot of independent, decentralized value production, like startups popping up out of nowhere because some founders have an idea and attract capital. The thing is, people who pile up capital don’t have to be effici…

Efficiency is measured exactly by people maximizing their utility subject to their preferences and constraints.

What you see as vanity, such as hair extensions, may be a high utility item for others. Consider the hair extensions make them a more attractive mate and provide them the opportunity to breed with a better stock, for example.

Similarly, consider that 20k ft sq mansion in context: all the prior owner(s) of that property were traded revenue for the land. And the construction workers were paid. And now the gov gets taxes.

At every step, each contributor to the end product voluntarily participated and maximized their outcomes. That is maximally efficient, economically speaking.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#756

Post by mantas »

Qwertious wrote: post #435
mantas wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is on the same path. Actually even worse with over-the-top ecological requirements. Making it harded for local businesses, while making trade deals with iffy countries left and right. For now it's rolling on selling assets to China or US. But obviously that's not sustainable long term. Either we need to protect our internal market and tax the crap out of imports, or the party will be over.

>Actually even worse with over-the-top ecological requirements. That seems hard to judge in the short term - if in 50 years some economically-critical ecosystem collapses like the north atlantic fisheries did, they will have been absolutely necessary in retrospect.

No matter what ecological requirements would EU impose on local businesses, the rest of the world would happily pollute to cover its part. And eu itself would by that stuff. Point in case - fertilizers. EU regulations for fertilizer plants are getting stricter and stricter. Local produce prices are sky-high, especially after cheap gas was cut off. Yet imports from Russia (!!!) are massive.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#757

Post by goalonetwo »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #693
goalonetwo wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homes should not be an investment. And Homes are also generally a bad investment even though there is a whole lobby of people that try to convince you that you need to buy at any price. The only reason why homes have been a good "investment" for most people is that it is a forced saving through your mortgage, which most people would have spent stupidly otherwise. But we should normalize renting and investing in actua…

It's been a good investment for many people for obvious macro reasons but also because: 1. You can live in it (thus realizing value directly). 2. Since you live there you can't easily panic and sell in a downturn. 3. Leverage (U.S. gov't FHA provides almost 30:1 leverage) 4. Lenders can't liquidate you simply on account of decline in value (no margin calls)

Even with all those points, you would in most cases end up with more assets renting something equivalent and dumping your down payment and mortgage in the SP500.

Again, the main advantage of a mortgage is that it forces you to save. If you are disciplined enough to save and invest in the SP500, you are way better off doing that.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#759

Post by WalterBright »

rangerelf wrote: post #750
WalterBright wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you buy things you don't want?

No, but it's very probable li2uR3ce bought things that were portrayed as being much better than they actually were. These days "profitable" for the seller rarely equates with "good value" for the buyer.

Most of what I buy is repeat purchases. If they weren't worth the money, I wouldn't buy them. Isn't it the same for you?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#760

Post by its_ethan »

ossobuco wrote: post #185
eru wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nudging people to own a substantial chunk of their net worth in one single company protects them from speculators and exploiters? OK..

When the alternative is owning no chunk of any company? Yes, still orders of magnitude better. Nothing prevents people from investing also in other companies if they feel like. Or are you implying they are "too dumb" to consider the possibility? Shared ownership also protects employees from speculative decisions like mass layoffs made only to give more value to shareholders. It also prevents the alienation of working…

> Nothing prevents people from investing also in other companies if they feel like

I thought you just said that this isn't a viable option for most people? Now it is on the table?

> are you implying they are "too dumb" to consider the possibility

For what it's worth, reading through this thread, it seems like you were the one who claimed most people don't have "market knowledge"...

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