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It feels very arbitrary to claim the employees responsible got the gains. Like take Walmart, the biggest beneficiaries by far are the relatives of Sam Walton. Y

It feels very arbitrary to claim the employees responsible got the gains. Like take Walmart, the biggest beneficiaries by far are the relatives of Sam Walton. Yet they did nothing to build the automated inventory tracking, the statistical modeling, or the digital systems. Or take the programmers who worked on Walmart.com. They didn't invent the transistor, Linux, or Java. They just used them to build a crud app.

cafed00d 6y ago
Yes fair enough. This is why every employee should get paid _stock/rsu/whatever_. The rewards of efficiency gains that Walmart, the enterprise makes, should be shared by the people who made it happen. But then again, not many people would prefer to take that risk and instead prefer to get paid a set hourly wage. Of course, it’s a matter of balance — how much guaranteed income vs. risky income does a person want? I don’t know. That’s a really difficult problem to solve through legislation. Ultimately though stocking shelves in 1968 Walmart is about as efficient as stocking shelves in 2020.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  It is much more efficient these days. They use apps to determine when to stock, how much to stock ect. They need many fewer people, and they run much leaner. Like I mentioned in a comment above, who we consider made it happen is arbitrary. Walmart cannot exist without a functioning society. The daughter of Sam Walton never worked at Walmart, yet she gets more of that gain than any other individual. For other products, it is even more arbitrary who gets the benefits. If facebook disappeared, another company would quickly take the role of social media leader. Likely not much would change from a productivity standpoint. Yet whoever happens to get the role of dominant social media ceo makes billions.
- tacocataco 6y ago
  What if the minimum wage also included x stock per paycheck? Minimum stock options?
marcusverus 6y ago
> Or take the programmers who worked on Walmart.com. They didn't invent the transistor, Linux, or Java. They just used them to build a crud app. Likewise, the shelf stockers who work at Walmart didn't invent pasteurization, the tin can, or the grocery cart. They just move the cans around. What does that have to do with the fact that programmers contribute (on an ongoing basis) to improved productivity, while shelf stockers do not?
- confidantlake 6y ago
  My point is that it is somewhat arbitrary who captures the value, and it is not always clear who produces the value. Say a grocery store is stocking at twice the rate they did 40 years ago because they have an app. Is the guy who wrote the app responsible for all the increased productivity? Not really, writing the app was fairly trivial compared to inventing the transistor, the operating system, and the programming language. Is the guy who invented the transistor responsible? Well it would not have mattered at all if there wasn't a store to make use of his invention. Is the store owner responsible? Well he isn't technical at all, he didn't invent the transistor, write the app or stock the shelf. Besides he would have no one to sell to if there wasn't a town to sell to. Is the town responsible? Well they provided road the stocker drove on to work, the university that the programmer and transistor developer went to, the police force that protects the store, and the customers that buy the cans.
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    I propose a thought experiment. Assume the app was developed in the past five years. Replay the last five years twice, with different circumstances: Once without the shelf stocker, and once without the programmer. In one case, the increased productivity still appears, in the other, it does not. It seems to me that the person who is required for the addition of the increased productivity caused the increased productivity, while the person who is not required for it did not.
    - slg 6y ago
      If you remove the individual programmer or the individual shelf stocker nothing will change. The company will just get someone else to do the job. If you remove all programmers the shelves will be stocked at a slower rate. If you remove all shelf stockers, the entire system falls apart and no shelves are stocked. It certainly seems like the shelf stockers are more important to this process than the programmers. They still provide value without the programmers but the programmers are entirely dependent on the shelf stockers to provide value. Why do the programmers therefore get to claim the entire surplus in productivity if they are dependent on the shelf stockers for that productivity boost to actually materialize?

cafed00d 6y ago

Yes fair enough. This is why every employee should get paid _stock/rsu/whatever_. The rewards of efficiency gains that Walmart, the enterprise makes, should be shared by the people who made it happen. But then again, not many people would prefer to take that risk and instead prefer to get paid a set hourly wage. Of course, it’s a matter of balance — how much guaranteed income vs. risky income does a person want? I don’t know. That’s a really difficult problem to solve through legislation. Ultimately though stocking shelves in 1968 Walmart is about as efficient as stocking shelves in 2020.

confidantlake 6y ago
It is much more efficient these days. They use apps to determine when to stock, how much to stock ect. They need many fewer people, and they run much leaner. Like I mentioned in a comment above, who we consider made it happen is arbitrary. Walmart cannot exist without a functioning society. The daughter of Sam Walton never worked at Walmart, yet she gets more of that gain than any other individual. For other products, it is even more arbitrary who gets the benefits. If facebook disappeared, another company would quickly take the role of social media leader. Likely not much would change from a productivity standpoint. Yet whoever happens to get the role of dominant social media ceo makes billions.
tacocataco 6y ago
What if the minimum wage also included x stock per paycheck? Minimum stock options?

marcusverus 6y ago

> Or take the programmers who worked on Walmart.com. They didn't invent the transistor, Linux, or Java. They just used them to build a crud app. Likewise, the shelf stockers who work at Walmart didn't invent pasteurization, the tin can, or the grocery cart. They just move the cans around. What does that have to do with the fact that programmers contribute (on an ongoing basis) to improved productivity, while shelf stockers do not?

confidantlake 6y ago
My point is that it is somewhat arbitrary who captures the value, and it is not always clear who produces the value. Say a grocery store is stocking at twice the rate they did 40 years ago because they have an app. Is the guy who wrote the app responsible for all the increased productivity? Not really, writing the app was fairly trivial compared to inventing the transistor, the operating system, and the programming language. Is the guy who invented the transistor responsible? Well it would not have mattered at all if there wasn't a store to make use of his invention. Is the store owner responsible? Well he isn't technical at all, he didn't invent the transistor, write the app or stock the shelf. Besides he would have no one to sell to if there wasn't a town to sell to. Is the town responsible? Well they provided road the stocker drove on to work, the university that the programmer and transistor developer went to, the police force that protects the store, and the customers that buy the cans.
- marcusverus 6y ago
  I propose a thought experiment. Assume the app was developed in the past five years. Replay the last five years twice, with different circumstances: Once without the shelf stocker, and once without the programmer. In one case, the increased productivity still appears, in the other, it does not. It seems to me that the person who is required for the addition of the increased productivity caused the increased productivity, while the person who is not required for it did not.
  - slg 6y ago
    If you remove the individual programmer or the individual shelf stocker nothing will change. The company will just get someone else to do the job. If you remove all programmers the shelves will be stocked at a slower rate. If you remove all shelf stockers, the entire system falls apart and no shelves are stocked. It certainly seems like the shelf stockers are more important to this process than the programmers. They still provide value without the programmers but the programmers are entirely dependent on the shelf stockers to provide value. Why do the programmers therefore get to claim the entire surplus in productivity if they are dependent on the shelf stockers for that productivity boost to actually materialize?