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The profit comes from the labour of people who work for you. Any profit you make is the difference between what their true labour is worth and what you pay them
by maym86 8y ago
The profit comes from the labour of people who work for you. Any profit you make is the difference between what their true labour is worth and what you pay them. So unless the owners are adding billions in value by themselves they are paying people less than the true value of their work.
The extent at which this happens is where some ethical issues lie. If you keep wages low while making large profit there is a point of view that you are ripping off your workers and this can be seen as unethical.
Cooperatives are designed to address this by making all workers joint owners. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
There is also the argument that large corporations that legally avoid paying tax and lobby to keep the loopholes open are making money by utilising public resources and not paying for them. These public resources support their workers and help the company to succeed. Bezos for example is particularly successful at avoiding tax and lobbying to keep it that way. Despite it being legal it could be considered ethically dubious as he is not contributing back to a system that helped him succeed.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoMusk and Bezos haven’t made any profit tho, just grown equity. Is that a relevant distinction here?
- maym86 8y agoIt's relevant in many cases of many large companies, even profitable ones: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/2/16842876/google-double-irish-tax-loopholes-european-billions-ad-revenue https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/2/16842876/google-double-iri... Bezos in particular chooses to actively avoid making profit and hide profits to deliberately avoid paying tax. When Amazon makes a profit they still don't pay tax: https://splinternews.com/amazon-made-5-6-billion-in-profits-last-year-and-repor-1823329221 https://splinternews.com/amazon-made-5-6-billion-in-profits-... He's not doing it innocently, it's tactical. They lobby to keep the loopholes open. Although its not illegal, it could be considered unethical which I believe is the context of the original discussion. This kind of sums it up: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_space/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_spac... He has a lot of power to do more for other humans on this planet and doesn't.
- BjoernKW 8y agoValue creation is not a zero-sum game. A cooperative selling the same products and services as, say, Amazon might not make the same profit. Coherent vision and leadership can contribute a lot to the value creation process.
- maym86 8y ago> Value creation is not a zero-sum game. Who said it was? > A cooperative selling the same products and services as, say, Amazon might not make the same profit. It might make more. It might make less because it's paying it's workers more fairly. > Coherent vision and leadership can contribute a lot to the value creation process. Yes, this is also labour and should receive a fair value. Everyone in the company is a worker but "unless the owners are adding billions in value by themselves they are paying people less than the true value of their work".
- s73v3r_ 8y agoIt's not a zero-sum game, but that doesn't mean that a small amount of people can't extract some 99% of of the value created.