What if we got rid of stocks?
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I've got a better idea: Make stockholders criminally liable and eligible for prison/execution for the crimes committed by the companies they invest in.
Oh, PharmaCorp knowingly put a medication in to production that causes baby's brains to catch fire? Every single investor in PharmaCorp is gonna serve three consecutive life sentences in Rapesburg-Asspain penitentiary.
Wipe out a few generations of the upper class by getting a couple mass first degree murder convictions to stick and the problem will sort itself out.
I think a more effective idea would be to remove all profits (and maybe executive income and bonuses) from the company for a fixed period of time instead of a fixed fine that's less than the profit from doing the illegal activity.
Investors won't be happy if they're getting nothing, so they'll be more careful with their investments, and no-one will have to pay to house thousands of unwitting investors in prisons.
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I don't, I have no stock portfolio at all. You're probably right there's a lot of bullshit that goes on in the financial world that I would put a pretty swift end to. Hell, "money market" bank accounts and such are probably somehow attached to the stock market.
If I understand correctly, a mutual fund is basically a bunch of people invest in a bunch of stocks managed by a professional stock guesser such that it's almost certainly going to do at least kind of okay. Yeah I'd either outright end that practice or heap a LOT of liability on the stock guesser and a bit on the members.
You invested in a mutual fund, and one of the 60 stocks in the portfolio was Locktheon, and Locktheon just released a chemical weapon killing an entire small town? Your stock broker is now a slave of the state and will die in the mines, you and everyone else who is a member of that mutual fund owe 1000 hours community service each. We're going to have a highway system so clean you can eat off it.
You'd need to rollback the last 70 years of pensions being replaced by 401k plans and/or limit responsibility to the brokers. If you hire a licensed plumber that ends up flooding your neighbor's place, the plumber is the one getting sued.
It would probably also be good to restructure retirement incentives away from the stock market, but that's not going to happen overnight either.
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I think a more effective idea would be to remove all profits (and maybe executive income and bonuses) from the company for a fixed period of time instead of a fixed fine that's less than the profit from doing the illegal activity.
Investors won't be happy if they're getting nothing, so they'll be more careful with their investments, and no-one will have to pay to house thousands of unwitting investors in prisons.
No I think it's going to have to involve large numbers of perforated colons. Consequences should be physical.
Who said we're paying to house prisoners? The US constitution permits enslaving convicted felons. They're all going to the mines. They will WORK or be mutilated.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
We aren't going to get to any of these policy reform ideas without the guillotines, actually. Why would any of the people who can't help their greedy selves from accumulating absolutely everything, ever just willingly give up that power? We will never vote ourselves out of this hole we're in. Even if we all went on a general strike, they would shoot us and enslave us.
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You'd need to rollback the last 70 years of pensions being replaced by 401k plans and/or limit responsibility to the brokers. If you hire a licensed plumber that ends up flooding your neighbor's place, the plumber is the one getting sued.
It would probably also be good to restructure retirement incentives away from the stock market, but that's not going to happen overnight either.
Frankly there are probably a lot of people who need to see their retirements go away and they need to spend their golden years in the mines. They need to have their elderly assholes penised apart for voting for this shit for decades.
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Just go back to needing futures to actually be fulfilled in kind.
And maybe limit/outlaw complex financial products.
These would be a solid start to fixing the issue of the unsustainable, and irrational, not to mention unconstructive economic growth of the last 60 years.
Honestly, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. Completely deregulate markets. This would make the stock market a constant churn of volatility and pump and dump schemes. It would gain a reputation for being a scam. People would be forced to once again invest in local businesses where they actually knew something about the owners and the conditions on the ground. Large financial collapses would cease to be a thing, since a small collapse in one city wouldn't affect the next city over
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
The solution proposed in "After Capitalism" is (with democratically worker managed companies):
A flat-rate tax on the capital assets of all productive enterprises is collected by the central government, all of which is plowed back into the economy, assisting those firms needing funds for purposes of productive investment.
These funds are dispersed throughout society, first to regions and communities on a per capita basis, then to public banks in accordance with past performance, then to those firms with profitable project proposals.
Profitable projects that promise increased employment and/or further other democratically decided goals are favored over those that do not.
At each level—national, regional, and local—legislatures decide what portion of the investment fund coming to them is to be set aside for public capital expenditures, then send down the remainder, no strings attached, to the next lower level.
Associated with most banks are entrepreneurial divisions, which promote firm expansion and new firm creation.
Large enterprises that operate regionally or nationally might need access to additional capital, in which case it would be appropriate for the network of local investment banks to be supplemented by regional and national investment banks.That's for taking care of the investment part that stocks/shares fulfill for a large part right now.
And for getting there:
Legislation giving workers the right to buy their company if they so choose.
If workers so desire, a referendum is held to determine if the majority of workers want to democratize the company.
If the referendum succeeds, a labor trust is formed, its directors selected democratically by the work-force, which, using funds derived from payroll deductions, purchase shares of the company on the stock market.
In due time, the labor trust will come to own the majority of shares, at which time it takes full control via a leveraged buyout, that is, by borrowing the money to buy up the remaining shares.Along with legislation that if a company is bailed out by the government, it gets nationalized and turned into a worker self managed company. If companies get sold, they can only be sold to the state (according to the value of current assets, not stock market cap or similar). And if a firm is not sold, it's turned over to the workers if the founders death. If there's multiple founders, each can sell their share to the state or workers separately.
For stocks specifically, there's the Meidner plan, where every company with more than 50 employees is required to issue new shares each year equivalent to 20% of its profits, these shares will be held in a trust owned by the government, and in an estimated 35 years, most firms would become nationalized (of course along side all newly founded firms having to be worker owned).
Not saying I fully agree with all of Schweickharts proposals, but at least the book is a relatively concrete proposal for an alternative that can be discussed, and how to possibly get there, so I thought it merits sharing.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
It becomes very hard to form a company of any reasonable size without government intervention. At that point, corporations that form need tight relations with the government.
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But why would people take loans out to start businesses if there’s no way to pay the loan back? Where is any profit from the business going?
Without ownership of a company there’s no reason for anyone to start a company and take on all the risk.
aLl ThE rIsK
The owners are risking their fuck-around money. The workers are risking their shelter.
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The stock market shouldn't exist.
Fight me.Poor people are poor just because they don't know how to participate in the stock market. Fight me.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Why do all solutions need to be destructive? The stocks and companies exist to make one thing - maximize the stakeholder value. So, to get rich, one just needs to - hold stocks, and the company works to make you money. Nothing more, nothing less. But why are so little people actually owning stocks? Because you don't get tought in school about financial literacy.
Money is actually on the table for everyone to grab, just that majority of the people lack basic knowledge - where is the table and how to get to it.
Just teach people in school how to manage stocks, and everyone can
be richhave a lot of money. -
Honestly, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. Completely deregulate markets. This would make the stock market a constant churn of volatility and pump and dump schemes. It would gain a reputation for being a scam. People would be forced to once again invest in local businesses where they actually knew something about the owners and the conditions on the ground. Large financial collapses would cease to be a thing, since a small collapse in one city wouldn't affect the next city over
scam=people stop investing
Crypto, blockchain products, NFT's, magnetic bracelets, alkaline water, magic crystals...you are severely underestimating the average human's ability to be constantly scammed
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
Maybe just give rid of the 2ndary market. You can only buy stock directly from the company, and you're entitled to a % of profit share as a result of that. When you're done, you can sell the stock back to the company
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Poor people are poor just because they don't know how to participate in the stock market. Fight me.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I fully agree!
However, participation requirements for winning include:
- Knowledge (obviously)
- Having a lot of money in the first place
- Having power to influence the rules and / or market
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
You just reinvented a Co-Op.
However, at what level does this get enacted?
Does little Tommy's summer lawn cutting "business" with his 3 neighbors as customers need an elected board in order to operate?
If I run a business and need a secretary to take care of some mundane things while I do the actual money making part of the business, doors that secretary suddenly get 50% vote over all decisions?
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unable to be sold or owned
So what incentive is there to start a company? Who funds it? People are expected to start a company, take all the financial risk, for what exactly?
People being billionaires is not the issue people like to think it is. Public servants becoming millionaires by trading and taking bribes/kickbacks and cushy jobs upon leaving politics is the problem.
Billionaires are definitely a problem. Corrupt public servants are also a problem. We can admit there is more than one problem.
I don't think outlawing the existence of stocks fixes things though.
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Maybe just give rid of the 2ndary market. You can only buy stock directly from the company, and you're entitled to a % of profit share as a result of that. When you're done, you can sell the stock back to the company
A return to pure value investing would be incredible harm reduction about, I dunno, sixty years ago. Nowadays the derivatives market is so much larger than the actual market that any attempt to unwind it might literally collapse the entire global economy
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
Our beef supply would vanish overnight
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Why do all solutions need to be destructive? The stocks and companies exist to make one thing - maximize the stakeholder value. So, to get rich, one just needs to - hold stocks, and the company works to make you money. Nothing more, nothing less. But why are so little people actually owning stocks? Because you don't get tought in school about financial literacy.
Money is actually on the table for everyone to grab, just that majority of the people lack basic knowledge - where is the table and how to get to it.
Just teach people in school how to manage stocks, and everyone can
be richhave a lot of money."Everyone can be rich" - no.
For one to be rich, another needs to be poor. Rich and poor are entirely relative terms.
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Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.
What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.
Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?
Why don't you think taxing the super rich is great?
