Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other friends?
A question for the ages
The problem is that in theory the workers also are supposed to own the factories and get a slice of the profits. This is what shares are for. Unfortunately, in practice, a larger and larger chunk of people seem to be getting excluded from that bit.
Yeah.
I know enough to know I don’t understand economics, so I try to not confuse my opinions with knowledge, but for a while now I’ve had the feeling that the main defect in capitalism is that it allows things like the stock market.
Companies are beholden to shareholders. When the shareholders aren’t the employees, this creates a conflict of interest, and the shareholder profits are always prioritized over employees.
Allowing investments by anyone other than employees could be made illegal; you leave the company, you get cashed out. I don’t know if this would have perverse effects, like allowing CEOs to accumulate stock and become robber barons, but maybe regulatory charters could address that.
Again, I don’t know, but my observations over the course of my career always lead back to the stock market.
- CEOs aren’t necessarily evil. They’re driven by shareholders to increase profit, at any cost. If they don’t, they are replaced by someone who will. Source problem: the stock market.
- Companies are driven to grow, and growth translates into bonuses. Shareholders, however, get paid first, so even if there’s growth, many employees will still see no bonuses or salary increase. Source problem: the stock market.
- Most companies get squirrely when discussing bonuses, performance, and such because it does at some point come down to: “yes, the company grew, but no there’s no benefit to the employees because we have to pay the market first.” This makes employees unhappy, frustrated, and confused, and really pushes an immoral burden onto managers who have to essentially lie to the people they’re managing. Source problem: the stock market
- People can literally make fortunes doing nothing more that working the market. They produce nothing. They contribute nothing. This just seems fundamentally wrong.
But without The Market, how do we do fund retirement? Maybe when people leave companies, they don’t forfeit their shares. I don’t know. There’s so many questions to address, and the answer isn’t simply “make investing in companies illegal.” Not simply that, but increasingly I think that’s at least part of the solution.
I’m a moderate capitalist. I think laissez-faire economics is criminal, and I don’t believe that communism is an answer. But capitalism, as it exists today and especially in the US, is clearly broken.
I suppose that, even without the stock market, we’d have Elon Musks and Jeff Bezoses: robber barons. So there’s something else needed, maybe regulation about how much more the top paid employee can be compensated than the least compensated employee. Maybe we do away with salaries, and everybody is awarded stocks and receives their stock percentage of profit for the year. Employees can vote to reduce some return on their stocks to grow the company. At least it’d be simple and understandable: we had a shitty year, so everyone gets less return. We had a great year, everybody gets a bonus.
Like I said, I’m not an expert or the right person to propose solutions. Solutions are needed, though.
There is no problem… in theory. You can show mathematically that profit maximisation and utility maximisation can distribute goods effectively. In theory, on paper, where everyone follows the rules and so on. That’s true with any system really.
Often, when you solve these models in economics, you implicitly make the assumption of ‘benevolent dictator’. You need someone outside the system that has nothing to gain by interfering in the system, that can move stuff around at will, that regulates every single agent/firm to behave in ways only permitted by the system etc.
The problem is humans are human. None of these things work if someone decides to not play by the rules. People can blame the system sure, but if the system isn’t even being employed properly in the first place, I think it’s the wrong argument to be having. It’s a bit like ignoring or modifying half the rules of a board game and then saying the game is broken because it leads to weird outcomes.
That’s a bold assertion, and I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to mean.
Are you saying happiness, health, equality, and justice are quantifiable? Because economics plays an enormous factor in all of these, and ignoring them ignores the most important factors.
But, I agree with you about the theory vs practice part. It’s why I don’t think Communism can work: because - I believe - humans are fundamentally selfish. It’s natural for us to care about ourselves. It’s easy for us to care about our tribe. It’s hard for us to care about our greater, regional community, and it’s really hard for us to care about the entire world. Every time the group gets larger, then the more one has to sacrifice things that benefits only themselves, and the more selfless people have to be. Functional Communism requires people are selfless, to give up immediate self-benefit for people they don’t even know. I think, evolutionarily, we haven’t gotten there yet.
Capitalism “won” because all it requires is people to be selfish, and that’s easy. There is no better evidence for this than Atlas Shrugged, a story about thee justification of being selfish.
We basically trade the “law of the jungle” (aka. survival of the fittest ) for “law of the richest”. And it’s being sold to us as a good thing (all hail the free market).
Even the Aliens are telling us to eat the rich.
Clearly, aliens don’t understand the concept of “Junk Food”.
Don’t eat the rich. Compost and eat the veggies.
I do love me some bell peppers.
Its just slavery but global. Anyone with capital is a master and anyone without is a slave, though they are free to swap to any master or starve on the street.
Exactly this, you’re born into a world where by your existence and biological needs owe others.
This needs to flood every garbage post by every CEO on LinkedIn.
