5 ms·

> one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful Assuming all of the risk is useful. I understand the point, but it's undercut by that woefully inaccurate

> one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful Assuming all of the risk is useful. I understand the point, but it's undercut by that woefully inaccurate jab.

dv_dt 7y ago
Workers assume risk taking on an opportunity cost with their employers, and the very wealthy often mitigate their risk by pushing it onto the government.
- awb 7y ago
  But the point is this part: "for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars" is irrelevant. Who has done this besides criminals? It all depends on your definition of "useful", but anyone who's made that much money legally has probably put in a bunch of work (or put in work to educate themselves to be able to make good decisions), or assumed a lot of risk in an investment. There's definitely something to be said for reducing income inequality, but we don't have to assume the ultra-rich have "done absolutely nothing that is useful" in order to be pro-workers rights. Capitalism is designed to produce ultra-rich individuals.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    We also should not lionize wealth. There are many people who inherit a lot of money, have a family that has a business network, that have really contributed nothing but are massively wealthy. There are massively wealthy individuals who have collected value in one area, and use that wealth to negatively influence many other areas. We really should not give money that much of an advantage.
    - awb 7y ago
      > We really should not give money that much of an advantage. What do you suggest as an alternative?
      - dv_dt 7y ago
        In general, tilt the system away from favoring money concentrations. Favor small business formation (and worker coop formation) with higher SBA loan funding. Put required worker representation on corporate boards (like Germany) of larger corporations. Do actual antimonopoly enforcement. Tax large corps more. Create more public ownership of housing and infrastructure.. it's all pretty mundane well trodden and reasonable practice for good governance. Exotic stuff would be government backed individual loan lines for citizens. The limit could be expanded on repayments but zero consequence if never repaid. The idea would be to open a window for entrepreneurship when right now, wages have basically squeezed out the possibility of most people starting any sort of business from savings. If you can make things grow, you get a larger limit. Basically decentralize loans.
- pathseeker 7y ago
  >and the very wealthy often mitigate their risk by pushing it onto the government. No they don't. Not even in the wall-street bailouts did shareholders get money from the government.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    Banks were bailed out by quantitative easing to the tune of $4+T, so at the very least, one can draw a direct line from that government bailout from banks to bank stock shareholders. Just to review: QE bought risky Mortgage backed securities off of banks and finance companies completely absolving them of carrying the negative effects of their bad investments...
kleer001 7y ago
> Assuming all of the risk is useful. I've never seen a multi-millionaire, let alone a billionaire actually take the cost of failure on personally. Risk externalization is the theme of the era.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I think you may be misunderstanding - "risk" here is a financial thing, not a personal risk of being tossed on the street. If someone is worth $10 billion and will lose $2 billion if their company fails, that's still a lot of risk being covered, even though it won't really change their life to only have $8 billion.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Doesn't that mean that all the employees taken on a much greater personal risk? Personal risk seems to have higher stakes than financial risk - so it's unclear why financial risk is so prized. When you lose $2 billion because your company fails, workers are thrown out onto the streets. What makes the $2 billion risk more valuable than peoples' livelihoods? I'd rather be a multi-billionaire who loses $2 billion than a mid-level worker who loses their job (and for a proper comparison you'd have to aggregate all the trouble caused by all the job losses the closing of the company has caused), especially in a country with a smaller social safety net. That alone tells me enough about the value of this "risk" supposedly so greatly undertaken by the owners to entitle them to perpetual gains on it.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Financial risk isn't prized in some moral sense. It's just an instrumentally valuable service. If a factory costs $100m to build, someone has to put $100m at risk to build it; no matter how much the workers self-organize they won't be able to build the factory if they don't have the $100m.
      - claudiawerner 7y ago
eej71 7y ago
If the world gets to the point where it really thinks their work is useless, I hope _they_ go on strike.

> one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful Assuming all of the risk is useful. I understand the point, but it's undercut by that woefully inaccurate jab.

dv_dt 7y ago

Workers assume risk taking on an opportunity cost with their employers, and the very wealthy often mitigate their risk by pushing it onto the government.

awb 7y ago
But the point is this part: "for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars" is irrelevant. Who has done this besides criminals? It all depends on your definition of "useful", but anyone who's made that much money legally has probably put in a bunch of work (or put in work to educate themselves to be able to make good decisions), or assumed a lot of risk in an investment. There's definitely something to be said for reducing income inequality, but we don't have to assume the ultra-rich have "done absolutely nothing that is useful" in order to be pro-workers rights. Capitalism is designed to produce ultra-rich individuals.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  We also should not lionize wealth. There are many people who inherit a lot of money, have a family that has a business network, that have really contributed nothing but are massively wealthy. There are massively wealthy individuals who have collected value in one area, and use that wealth to negatively influence many other areas. We really should not give money that much of an advantage.
  - awb 7y ago
    > We really should not give money that much of an advantage. What do you suggest as an alternative?
    - dv_dt 7y ago
      In general, tilt the system away from favoring money concentrations. Favor small business formation (and worker coop formation) with higher SBA loan funding. Put required worker representation on corporate boards (like Germany) of larger corporations. Do actual antimonopoly enforcement. Tax large corps more. Create more public ownership of housing and infrastructure.. it's all pretty mundane well trodden and reasonable practice for good governance. Exotic stuff would be government backed individual loan lines for citizens. The limit could be expanded on repayments but zero consequence if never repaid. The idea would be to open a window for entrepreneurship when right now, wages have basically squeezed out the possibility of most people starting any sort of business from savings. If you can make things grow, you get a larger limit. Basically decentralize loans.
pathseeker 7y ago
>and the very wealthy often mitigate their risk by pushing it onto the government. No they don't. Not even in the wall-street bailouts did shareholders get money from the government.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  Banks were bailed out by quantitative easing to the tune of $4+T, so at the very least, one can draw a direct line from that government bailout from banks to bank stock shareholders. Just to review: QE bought risky Mortgage backed securities off of banks and finance companies completely absolving them of carrying the negative effects of their bad investments...

kleer001 7y ago

> Assuming all of the risk is useful. I've never seen a multi-millionaire, let alone a billionaire actually take the cost of failure on personally. Risk externalization is the theme of the era.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I think you may be misunderstanding - "risk" here is a financial thing, not a personal risk of being tossed on the street. If someone is worth $10 billion and will lose $2 billion if their company fails, that's still a lot of risk being covered, even though it won't really change their life to only have $8 billion.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Doesn't that mean that all the employees taken on a much greater personal risk? Personal risk seems to have higher stakes than financial risk - so it's unclear why financial risk is so prized. When you lose $2 billion because your company fails, workers are thrown out onto the streets. What makes the $2 billion risk more valuable than peoples' livelihoods? I'd rather be a multi-billionaire who loses $2 billion than a mid-level worker who loses their job (and for a proper comparison you'd have to aggregate all the trouble caused by all the job losses the closing of the company has caused), especially in a country with a smaller social safety net. That alone tells me enough about the value of this "risk" supposedly so greatly undertaken by the owners to entitle them to perpetual gains on it.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Financial risk isn't prized in some moral sense. It's just an instrumentally valuable service. If a factory costs $100m to build, someone has to put $100m at risk to build it; no matter how much the workers self-organize they won't be able to build the factory if they don't have the $100m.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago

eej71 7y ago

If the world gets to the point where it really thinks their work is useless, I hope _they_ go on strike.