6 ms·

It's a classic "great man of history" narrative, painting a Randian picture of the world being pushed forward by the overwhelming efforts of a few people. The r

It's a classic "great man of history" narrative, painting a Randian picture of the world being pushed forward by the overwhelming efforts of a few people. The reality is that nobody works hard enough to earn a billion dollars - that amount of money can only be made by short-changing the people who do the work.

metadat 4y ago
While undeniably true, this view of reality may not be popular in this forum (unfortunately).
- adampk 4y ago
  If a founder starts a company, a company that builds a very helpful product and service, hires employees and pays them creating jobs and ways for them to work on interesting problems, I am not trying to defend the other side of your point, I just honestly don't see where the "exploitation" comes into play?
  - metadat 4y ago
    At it's core, capitalism is about maximally exploiting labor. Some companies treat their employees better (Costco) or worse (Walmart), but at the end of the day it's all a byproduct of the structure and behaviors rewarded in capitalism. The "winners" exploit the hardest, otherwise potential profits are being left on the table and it opens an opportunity for another company (who is willing to go the extra mile to exploit harder) to enter and offer lower prices. Subsequently, the working middle class and poor people (the largest segments of USA population) have their own harsh realities to deal with, and don't have the luxury of choosing more humane yet expensive alternatives when they are purchasing goods and services.
    - mindvirus 4y ago
      Obviously poverty is a major issue, and as a society we can and should be doing a lot more to address structural inequality. However, is there a time or place in history when/where would be better to be poor than today in a modern day first-world capitalist country? To be clear, I'm not arguing that we're anywhere near an ideal or perfect state for this, but what are the alternatives that you see?
    - e40 4y ago
      And who here thinks the way Amazon warehouse employees are treated is a good thing? Drivers, too. Peeing in bottles. 14 hr shifts. Buffer companies between Amazon and the customer, so they can easily skirt labor laws, etc.
    - parasubvert 4y ago
      This falsely assumes that labor is the source of all value. It's not.
      - metadat 4y ago
        I'm open to being wrong, but can you elaborate on what sorts of real value can be created through means other than labor? In my experience, not much happens in life unless someone puts in the elbow grease.
  - beaconstudios 4y ago
    To take a minimal case for an example - if I hire two people, pay them $20,000 each to produce widgets and then sell those widgets for $100,000 a year respectively, and keep the remaining $60,000, would you consider that exploitation considering that I contribute nothing to the continued economic activity? This is the form of exploitation I was referring to. For a contrasting example, I prefer cooperatives where the people involved in the business control it democratically (which can still include directors and managers).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - adampk 4y ago
      Again, I am not trying to to defend the counter but am I missing something or is there quit a large logical gap in your hypothetical? I assume if I am doing the hiring, then I will also be responsible for the additional hiring/firing, selecting the right talent, choosing the right way to compete against existing product/services? Is that not continued activity as I grow my start-up into a category-defining enterprise? How to allocate that profit, into R&D, more people, sales, etc, aka growing a company? Then after doing that for 10 years that company is now worth billions of dollars and I own it. I don't see where in this chain I have done the exploiting?
      - beaconstudios 4y ago
        So what you're describing is the work of a director - work that should be paid but that I intentionally excluded from my example because a lot of people just think by default that directors should "own" the company because that's the status quo. I still think that directors should be well compensated commensurate with their capability and role. I just think that they shouldn't be able to exclusively control and take the profits generated by the work of everybody involved. Corporations are autocratic or oligarchic in that way - this leads to the select few that society seems worthy of profit control having more power in our society. This is because the owners can keep workers' wages as low as the market will sustain while inflating their own total compensation to absurd proportions, as we've seen. With a cooperative structure everybody involved has a stake in controlling the company, so executives have to take everybody's needs including the workers, into account, instead of just looking out for themselves and investors. As for where the exploitation comes in - it probably comes down to different perspectives on the word. To me, it's exploitation if one person is profiting off the labour of another. Of course in a company the shareholders are often also working, but if a company grows to a billion dollars from a million its not because the directors are working 100x harder.
- beaconstudios 4y ago
  I know this place skews libertarian/neoliberal, but I try to inject a little spice where I can ;)
avalys 4y ago
Do you think founders should retain ownership of the companies they create? Fred Smith’s wealth comes from the notional value of his ownership of a small fraction of an enormously successful and societally useful business. It’s not as if he has a bank account with billions of dollars in profits paid as salary in it, which you seem to believe. On what basis do you think he should have been compelled to sell his stake in the company he created? Yes, you’re correct that he didn’t earn a billion dollars. He created a company that investors value at $60B, and his remaining 6% share of it is worth $4B. That $60B was not taken from anyone. It was created - out of thin air - by organizing workers in a way that the world needed.
- beaconstudios 4y ago
  > Do you think founders should retain ownership of the companies they create? No. The idea that a company is something you "own" rather than a group of people doing some kind of economic activity is a social construct, and one designed to disenfranchise the people doing the ongoing work. A company is a collection of assets and people - to own assets makes sense, to own other people's labour in an ongoing capacity does not. > On what basis do you think he should have been compelled to sell his stake in the company he created? I don't think he should - I think we should change the system that allows people to be worth billions off the backs of others. I don't want redistribution, I want reform.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    So, FedEx owns a bunch of airplanes. Billions and billions of dollars worth of airplanes. Who bought them? The owners bought them. So you have three options: 1. The owners get some property rights ("ownership") for the money they put up to buy the airplanes and related other tools. Or, 2. When an employee is hired by FedEx, they have to come up with... something of the order of $60 billion / 100,000 employees, to pay your share of the enterprise you are becoming part of. Or, 3. We as a society don't have any capital-intensive companies. Who's going to buy the tools, if the one putting up the money doesn't get ownership? (And don't say "government". Government running private enterprise almost always winds up with too much mismanagement and graft.)
tomcam 4y ago
How much money can a person make before they start shortchanging others?
- beaconstudios 4y ago
  Infinity, if they're not exploiting people, by definition. If WhatsApp was a coop and still sold to Facebook for billions, they wouldn't be exploited.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Is a co-op as a whole allowed to make a profit? I’m confused. In a previous response you said making a profit is exploitation
    - beaconstudios 4y ago
      Depends on who you ask - I'm fine with it and haven't said otherwise. What is a problem is when one person profits off the work of another (as in, pays them less than their fair share), which is basically all salaried employment.
      - tomcam 4y ago
        If the co-op is sold at a profit, and those profits are distributed to the workers (who obviously all put in the exact same amount of work and time, right?) then they are profiting off the work of others, aren't they?
        beaconstudios 4y ago
        For starters, not everybody in a coop has to earn the same amount or get the same payouut from a sale. They just all need voting rights. The point of cooperatives is to be owned by all their members, not just the founders. Second, yes the profit in the marketplace is still exploitative to a degree, but we don't have a viable alternative so there's not much to do about that. I don't believe there's much point critiquing something when there's no alternative.

metadat 4y ago

While undeniably true, this view of reality may not be popular in this forum (unfortunately).

adampk 4y ago
If a founder starts a company, a company that builds a very helpful product and service, hires employees and pays them creating jobs and ways for them to work on interesting problems, I am not trying to defend the other side of your point, I just honestly don't see where the "exploitation" comes into play?
- metadat 4y ago
  At it's core, capitalism is about maximally exploiting labor. Some companies treat their employees better (Costco) or worse (Walmart), but at the end of the day it's all a byproduct of the structure and behaviors rewarded in capitalism. The "winners" exploit the hardest, otherwise potential profits are being left on the table and it opens an opportunity for another company (who is willing to go the extra mile to exploit harder) to enter and offer lower prices. Subsequently, the working middle class and poor people (the largest segments of USA population) have their own harsh realities to deal with, and don't have the luxury of choosing more humane yet expensive alternatives when they are purchasing goods and services.
  - mindvirus 4y ago
    Obviously poverty is a major issue, and as a society we can and should be doing a lot more to address structural inequality. However, is there a time or place in history when/where would be better to be poor than today in a modern day first-world capitalist country? To be clear, I'm not arguing that we're anywhere near an ideal or perfect state for this, but what are the alternatives that you see?
  - e40 4y ago
    And who here thinks the way Amazon warehouse employees are treated is a good thing? Drivers, too. Peeing in bottles. 14 hr shifts. Buffer companies between Amazon and the customer, so they can easily skirt labor laws, etc.
  - parasubvert 4y ago
    This falsely assumes that labor is the source of all value. It's not.
    - metadat 4y ago
      I'm open to being wrong, but can you elaborate on what sorts of real value can be created through means other than labor? In my experience, not much happens in life unless someone puts in the elbow grease.
- beaconstudios 4y ago
  To take a minimal case for an example - if I hire two people, pay them $20,000 each to produce widgets and then sell those widgets for $100,000 a year respectively, and keep the remaining $60,000, would you consider that exploitation considering that I contribute nothing to the continued economic activity? This is the form of exploitation I was referring to. For a contrasting example, I prefer cooperatives where the people involved in the business control it democratically (which can still include directors and managers).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - adampk 4y ago
    Again, I am not trying to to defend the counter but am I missing something or is there quit a large logical gap in your hypothetical? I assume if I am doing the hiring, then I will also be responsible for the additional hiring/firing, selecting the right talent, choosing the right way to compete against existing product/services? Is that not continued activity as I grow my start-up into a category-defining enterprise? How to allocate that profit, into R&D, more people, sales, etc, aka growing a company? Then after doing that for 10 years that company is now worth billions of dollars and I own it. I don't see where in this chain I have done the exploiting?
    - beaconstudios 4y ago
      So what you're describing is the work of a director - work that should be paid but that I intentionally excluded from my example because a lot of people just think by default that directors should "own" the company because that's the status quo. I still think that directors should be well compensated commensurate with their capability and role. I just think that they shouldn't be able to exclusively control and take the profits generated by the work of everybody involved. Corporations are autocratic or oligarchic in that way - this leads to the select few that society seems worthy of profit control having more power in our society. This is because the owners can keep workers' wages as low as the market will sustain while inflating their own total compensation to absurd proportions, as we've seen. With a cooperative structure everybody involved has a stake in controlling the company, so executives have to take everybody's needs including the workers, into account, instead of just looking out for themselves and investors. As for where the exploitation comes in - it probably comes down to different perspectives on the word. To me, it's exploitation if one person is profiting off the labour of another. Of course in a company the shareholders are often also working, but if a company grows to a billion dollars from a million its not because the directors are working 100x harder.
beaconstudios 4y ago
I know this place skews libertarian/neoliberal, but I try to inject a little spice where I can ;)

avalys 4y ago

Do you think founders should retain ownership of the companies they create? Fred Smith’s wealth comes from the notional value of his ownership of a small fraction of an enormously successful and societally useful business. It’s not as if he has a bank account with billions of dollars in profits paid as salary in it, which you seem to believe. On what basis do you think he should have been compelled to sell his stake in the company he created? Yes, you’re correct that he didn’t earn a billion dollars. He created a company that investors value at $60B, and his remaining 6% share of it is worth $4B. That $60B was not taken from anyone. It was created - out of thin air - by organizing workers in a way that the world needed.

beaconstudios 4y ago
> Do you think founders should retain ownership of the companies they create? No. The idea that a company is something you "own" rather than a group of people doing some kind of economic activity is a social construct, and one designed to disenfranchise the people doing the ongoing work. A company is a collection of assets and people - to own assets makes sense, to own other people's labour in an ongoing capacity does not. > On what basis do you think he should have been compelled to sell his stake in the company he created? I don't think he should - I think we should change the system that allows people to be worth billions off the backs of others. I don't want redistribution, I want reform.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  So, FedEx owns a bunch of airplanes. Billions and billions of dollars worth of airplanes. Who bought them? The owners bought them. So you have three options: 1. The owners get some property rights ("ownership") for the money they put up to buy the airplanes and related other tools. Or, 2. When an employee is hired by FedEx, they have to come up with... something of the order of $60 billion / 100,000 employees, to pay your share of the enterprise you are becoming part of. Or, 3. We as a society don't have any capital-intensive companies. Who's going to buy the tools, if the one putting up the money doesn't get ownership? (And don't say "government". Government running private enterprise almost always winds up with too much mismanagement and graft.)

tomcam 4y ago

How much money can a person make before they start shortchanging others?

beaconstudios 4y ago
Infinity, if they're not exploiting people, by definition. If WhatsApp was a coop and still sold to Facebook for billions, they wouldn't be exploited.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Is a co-op as a whole allowed to make a profit? I’m confused. In a previous response you said making a profit is exploitation
  - beaconstudios 4y ago
    Depends on who you ask - I'm fine with it and haven't said otherwise. What is a problem is when one person profits off the work of another (as in, pays them less than their fair share), which is basically all salaried employment.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      If the co-op is sold at a profit, and those profits are distributed to the workers (who obviously all put in the exact same amount of work and time, right?) then they are profiting off the work of others, aren't they?
      - beaconstudios 4y ago
        For starters, not everybody in a coop has to earn the same amount or get the same payouut from a sale. They just all need voting rights. The point of cooperatives is to be owned by all their members, not just the founders. Second, yes the profit in the marketplace is still exploitative to a degree, but we don't have a viable alternative so there's not much to do about that. I don't believe there's much point critiquing something when there's no alternative.