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> It is set up to make money and return money to investors either via capital gains (buybacks) or income (dividends). Seeing this always saddens me. That the p

> It is set up to make money and return money to investors either via capital gains (buybacks) or income (dividends). Seeing this always saddens me. That the primary purpose of these insanely rich and powerful entities is just 'make the rich richer' and everything else is considered incidental. Is this really the best we can do?

luminaobscura 2y ago
yes. Capitalism is the best system. Even in communist china, only after transitioning to market capitalism they got tech companies producing prosperity. We also allow forming other kinds of companies. You can create worker cooperative tech company that has more diverse goal instead of just making money.
- voisin 2y ago
  I’m not sure it is the Chinese tech companies that produced prosperity. It is due to their low cost manufacturing base for the last thirty years and consequent rapid urbanization. If anything, their tech companies have been largely laggards on the world stage with most being simple derivatives of western brands capitalizing on their large population base and barrier to foreign entry. They don’t have a very good track record of being issued patents outside their jurisdiction either.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > If anything, their tech companies have been largely laggards on the world stage with most being simple derivatives of western brands capitalizing on their large population base and barrier to foreign entry. That is because they started out without basically anything 25 years ago as one of the poorest countries in the world. It takes about 25 years to build up your infrastructure by using capitalism, they are there now, today they can start to innovate. Before they caught up the most productive effort will always be to just build up all the standard infrastructure instead of trying to innovate, so of course they didn't innovate. But today there is no such thing, you will see them transition to an innovative economy just like Japan did 50 years ago. Edit: Note that tech company includes computer hardware manufacturing, those companies are absolutely a core part to Chinas miracle, being able to produce high end computer parts at scale requires a very developed economy. If not for US bans China would be even more dominating there.
voisin 2y ago
To be fair, it isn’t only the rich they make richer. Think pension plans and other regular folk who rely on returns in their portfolio to retire.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  The richest Americans own the vast majority of the US stock market, according to Fed data. The top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded.
  - voisin 2y ago
    Source? I can’t imagine pensions only hold 7% of stocks.
    - neilknowsbest 2y ago
      I was skeptical too, but it's plausible. According to the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts release [0], the bottom 90%'s share of "corporate equities and mutual fund shares" in Q4 2023 was about 13% (5.24 / 39.94) [0] - https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:137;series:Corporate%20equities%20and%20mutual%20fund%20shares;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7,9;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

luminaobscura 2y ago

yes. Capitalism is the best system. Even in communist china, only after transitioning to market capitalism they got tech companies producing prosperity. We also allow forming other kinds of companies. You can create worker cooperative tech company that has more diverse goal instead of just making money.

voisin 2y ago
I’m not sure it is the Chinese tech companies that produced prosperity. It is due to their low cost manufacturing base for the last thirty years and consequent rapid urbanization. If anything, their tech companies have been largely laggards on the world stage with most being simple derivatives of western brands capitalizing on their large population base and barrier to foreign entry. They don’t have a very good track record of being issued patents outside their jurisdiction either.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > If anything, their tech companies have been largely laggards on the world stage with most being simple derivatives of western brands capitalizing on their large population base and barrier to foreign entry. That is because they started out without basically anything 25 years ago as one of the poorest countries in the world. It takes about 25 years to build up your infrastructure by using capitalism, they are there now, today they can start to innovate. Before they caught up the most productive effort will always be to just build up all the standard infrastructure instead of trying to innovate, so of course they didn't innovate. But today there is no such thing, you will see them transition to an innovative economy just like Japan did 50 years ago. Edit: Note that tech company includes computer hardware manufacturing, those companies are absolutely a core part to Chinas miracle, being able to produce high end computer parts at scale requires a very developed economy. If not for US bans China would be even more dominating there.

voisin 2y ago

To be fair, it isn’t only the rich they make richer. Think pension plans and other regular folk who rely on returns in their portfolio to retire.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
The richest Americans own the vast majority of the US stock market, according to Fed data. The top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded.
- voisin 2y ago
  Source? I can’t imagine pensions only hold 7% of stocks.
  - neilknowsbest 2y ago
    I was skeptical too, but it's plausible. According to the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts release [0], the bottom 90%'s share of "corporate equities and mutual fund shares" in Q4 2023 was about 13% (5.24 / 39.94) [0] - https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:137;series:Corporate%20equities%20and%20mutual%20fund%20shares;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7,9;units:levels https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...