Live data from Hacker News

Every company should be owned by its employees

elysian.press

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#931
post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tricky. It wouldn't be employee owned if you could sell your shares to the public or keep them indefinitely after you leave. That's why you have to sell them back to the company/employees. Doing that over a period of time makes you value longer term company performance vs short term.

What do you get out of "owning" shares that you can't sell and that have no market price? Why would someone want this instead of just being paid cash for services rendered by someone else who's bearing all the risk?

time preference slash discounting. so not sure what you mean by "have no market price" bezos is worth XX billion, but not if he tries to sell it all at once

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#932

>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."

You cannot invest money you don't have?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#933
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People thinking their income is to low is not exactly news. I haven't personally met anyone who would ever claim their income is to high. Why do you think I haven't read it? Do you always agree with everything you read?

I believe you didn't read it because your argument is quite poor and doesn't mention some relevant points the article makes. I may not always agree with everything I read, but at least I take the time to read it before openly disagreeing with it.

I'm sorry to disappoint you. I did read it and found it unconvincing to say the least.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#934

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economic illiteracy I respect your opinion but the stats presented before does not “shows“ illiteracy but low investments. Lack of liquidity to invest seems a very plausible raison because a revenu threshold has to be passed to be able to buy food before founds. This stat is probably almost a proxy for how many Americans are below that threshold.

It is really hard to believe that 71.93% of Americans are on the verge of homelessness and starvation. Much more plausible (and even mentioned in the linked article under "Lack of budgeting and financial planning" and "Social pressures") are just bad habits. Of course there are economic literate people who really are struggling, but I doubt they make even half of those 71.93%.

There’s a range of goods and services accessible on may consider after food but before investments : medical expenses, gas to visit family on week end…

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Greeks were lazy, they would not be working towards creating powerful nuclear weapons. Based on my calculations, by 2030, maximum 2035, we will have personal nuclear weapons. By we, i mean millions and billions of people on the planet, including of course Greeks. In general, what an individual is doing with his free time, is no one's business.

"Greeks ... working towards creating powerful nuclear weapons" Source ? I highly, highly doubt that this is true.

Every smart person on the planet works towards nuclear weapons. It's self evident, it doesn't need source.

I am talking very about small nukes, cheap, minimal and for personal use as a self defense. Two grams of gold cheap, 1 km evaporation range and 5 km blast.

Very minimal, but as soon as millions of people have one, gather a lot of them in one place and you do some serious damage.

This lady seriously suggests that millions of Thai's will have their personal nukes, millions of Mongolians or Brazilians will have small nuclear weapons each, but Greeks will not, because Greeks are lazy somehow. I don't know where she reads that stuff, probably some comic series.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#936
post #270
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that for the first N years of Nvidia, he probably made less than minimum wage, AND had immense responsibilities on his back to try to get the company to profitability? That's the risk. He's getting a 30M paycheck today only because he built a trillion dollar company from nothing and sacrificed the job opportunities he could have had at other companies for three decades.

Past is irrelevant. He too the risk and got handsomely rewarded for incredible success as he should. But that is his stock he kept from founding the company. Not today. He should of course still be CEO of Nvidia and get the money(stock awards), because unlike others, Nvidia execution is excellent (see market cap) and has been for decades, but that is not really any risk for him personally.

He deserves massive incentive because he is basically nvidia. There is no other person the shareholders would want to see as the CEO. Company is hugely successful so they have to pay him a lot of money to keep him, works the same if you are a wanted employee, maybe not quite the same amount of leverage though.

Agreed it is not about the risk

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#937
post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to be better. In fact they just need to be 1/5th as good, and then it's worth it. That's the whole point here - CEOs aren't paid proportionately like you or me.

> They don't need to be better. In fact they just need to be 1/5th as good, and then it's worth it. Usain Bolt can run 100m in around 9.58s, and gets paid a lot for that ability (indirectly via sponsors etc). Assume I can run half as fast, say 100m in 19s; do I 'deserve' half of Bolt's fame and half of his sponsorships? Similarly, you can't hire five 20% generals to put in charge of your army, and expect the same res…

I would agree that pay not being proportional is common because as you get closer to the skill ceiling the job becomes more difficult. You need more amount of effort/expertise/knowledge per unit of skill.

However, the jobs you listed are creative jobs. Not methodical ones. A filmmaker, truly, can never be replaced because he is his brain. He invented worlds nobody else could.

A CEO, however, does not make products generally. Nor does he come up with new things. He's a face, a leader, and not much beyond that. He could easily be replaced with an algorithm - if humans were receptive to that. They're not, unfortunately. So for now we need a warm body. Who that body actually is... meh, not really important. Best case, pick someone tall, white, and handsome. That usually works out.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By luck and status. Right place right time. They have some experience, and they just so happen to know X, Y, Z (probably because their dad knew X-1, Y-1, Z-1 and so on) so they get in. Maybe they went to harvard or something.

What opportunity manifests at the right place and right time? What's an example of this? And if it's based on knowledge and experience and an acquirable credential, then we're right back to square 1.

Its complex, because even if something is unattainable by knowledge and experience that DOES NOT mean its equal opportunity.

Simply being born into a richer family means you're significantly more likely to earn a higher education. Simply being born into a white family means you're more likely to finish high school.

And this is leaving out connections. If you know the people hiring, you have a better chance of getting hired. High-status people know other high-status people. If your family is high-status you're at a HUGE advantage.

That doesn't mean the opportunity "manifested" for you. But, it does mean your likelihood of obtaining said opportunity went higher.

I mean, when you look at the proportion of CEO's who are white, tall men as opposed to the regular population you notice that. It's an open secret. Some say its coincidence. I don't think anyone really believes that.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#939
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe "taking over the market" is a bad metric, and we should be optimizing for making a company that makes the workers' lives better. The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else, and a company that forgoes profit to make workers happier must thus be less good. The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing…

> The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else I asked my Greek teacher what they biggest change she experienced moving to the US was, and she said that in Greece, her community prioritized happiness above all else, but everyone she met in the US prioritized making money. I also asked her what the financial crisis was like in Greece, and she said that you couldn’t find an empty…

> and she said that in Greece, her community prioritized happiness above all else, but everyone she met in the US prioritized making money.

Either they were a liar or an idiot.

Greece is the worst example as it is highly optimised for money and not social happiness/success. There is a reason that fraud is rampant and no one pays taxes unless they have to.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#940
post #94

Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. 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. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to…

Then maybe "taking over the market" is a bad metric, and we should be optimizing for making a company that makes the workers' lives better. The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else, and a company that forgoes profit to make workers happier must thus be less good. The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing…

Even I as a somewhat skeptic of capitalism and supporter of coops can tell you this is not a USA only thing but a certain interpretation of said capitalism.
Post reply on HN