4 ms·
> all of his assets are tied up in company stock, so like how do you go about redistributing that? Something that was tried in Sweden in the eighties was Emplo
by Ma8ee 5y ago
> all of his assets are tied up in company stock, so like how do you go about redistributing that?
Something that was tried in Sweden in the eighties was Employee Funds [0]. In short, tax the companies and use the money to buy stock in the same. Put the stock in funds controlled by the employees, which, in practice meant the unions. I think the original proposal was meant as a way to softly introduce a true socialist society, where the means of production (the capital) eventually would be completely owned by the workers.
The funds were never particularly popular outside the big labour union. Even the ruling Social Democrats that implemented the solution did it reluctantly after pressure from the unions. The funds was scrapped in the early nineties.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_funds
- robbiep 5y agoThat works when a company is profitable, which it seems spacex isn’t; and as a musk style startup I (presume, with no evidence) that employees would have some stock. Perhaps.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoAnd then wait for an Enron style fraud to emerge and wipe out the employee’s assets? Why not invest in broad market index fund instead if cash is being spent? I would be pretty pissed if my compensation was being tied up in the risk of 1 company like that.
- Ma8ee 5y agoNot one fund per company. Just a few funds that owns a lot of companies. Also, it’s not clear how the proceeds of those funds would be distributed.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThis is all been tried before. It is the same as defined benefit pension funds with a board of trustees made up of union members. Anyway you cut it, if there is a board tasked with allocating a big pot of money, there will be corruption. So far the least corrupt method is a low cost broad market index fund. There are fewer people in the chain of decision making, hence less agency risk. Passive index funds do the job better than human investors with lower probabilities of corruption.
- Ma8ee 5y agoWe have surprisingly little corruption in Sweden. Not that it doesn’t exist, but it’s far from the norm. Anyway, I’m not arguing for the solution. I just brought it up as I think it’s an interesting historical footnote. Even the finance minister of the ruling party that introduced them famously wrote a poem that goes something like (in fine translation by google) The wage earners' funds are fucking crap, now we've dumped them all the way here. Then they should be filled with every union bigwig who supported us so strongly in our struggle. Now we do not have to go more rounds, until the whole of Sweden is full of funds. I think this whole affair is hilarious, but I’m afraid it is somewhat lost in translation.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoSorry, I should not have written my post in a way that insinuates you were advocating for that. It is interesting history. It does seem something is lost in translation for the poem.