What if we got rid of stocks?
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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?
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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
Both point 2 and 3 are false. You have examples for both in the current US affairs. Please elaborate if you know something that the rest of us doesn't.
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"Everyone can be rich" - no.
For one to be rich, another needs to be poor. Rich and poor are entirely relative terms.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Pardon my expression, everyone can have a lot of money.
A man who doesn't want anything is rich, even if he doesn't have money. I adjusted my comment accordingly.
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Why don't you think taxing the super rich is great?
answered this one here : https://lemmy.world/comment/17993835
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Both point 2 and 3 are false. You have examples for both in the current US affairs. Please elaborate if you know something that the rest of us doesn't.
Holy crap your effing president is running pump and dump schemes and a lot of politicians made wins on stocks that they Coincidentally sold or bought with the right timing.
Do I need to explain that?
That is blatant misuse of power and conflict of interest.
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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?
Your questions at the end are what distinguish this from a co op.
Im not saying i have an answer for every case, but a co op has strictly one vote per employee.
I think itd be okay to build on top of that and let co-ops of more than 2 people set up some sort of charter or constitution that requires periodic re ratification.
3 is the minimum amt of employees that makes sense imo.
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Why not instead have public and/or worker ownership of stocks, as the Meidner plan proposed, or in the form of a Social Wealth Fund as Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project has suggested? This give people both democratic control and socializes the profits. As long as we have corporations, having them owned either by the public or by their workers (in the form of cooperatives) seems like the way to go.
I think the people that built a company are better qualified to elect their ceo than the bulk populus. Gotta be democratically elected by workers imo, though a simple majority isnt always the best way.
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Well that would eliminate the whole point of corporations, which is to make it easy to raise money.
Let's start with an understanding of why corporations suck in the first place. The root of all good and evil in a corporation is limited lability. This allows investors to not have to worry that they're going to lose more than their investment, so they don't need to think too hard before putting their money in some company they just heard of. This is great for investors and for the corporation.
But this comes with a cost to everyone else. There's the direct cost that if the corporation ends up owing people money through excessive debt, negligence, or illegal activities, they can declare bankruptcy and the investors don't have to worry any paying for those (other than their losses on the stock). But I suspect the more pernicious effect is that the investors' lack of concern over their investment as anything but a vehicle of profit basically leads them to pick sociopathic CEOs and demand profit maximizing behavior at the cost of social good and even long term stability. And since all this sociopathic activity is really great at amassing money, it's kind of a big power boost for sociopathy overall.
However, the ease of investing can be a good thing for society too - basically it allows a lot of people to retire at some point, and allows for rapid funding of new ideas. So is there a way to get corporations back under control without throwing out the baby? I tend to think we should tax corporations higher if nothing else, as it is we do the opposite thanks to Trump's last tax cut plan.
I dont think taxing them will accomplish much. its also trivial for corporations to evade taxes, and all of the big ones do.
I think the ease of raising money is part of the problem. Loads of tech companies way over-raise, and develop into bloated cancerous messes that have no way of ever realizing the growth that would have to exist to warrant the investment theyve been given.
In the first place, the only way their investors even expect make anything back would be by reselling the stock, making it a ponzi asset.
The entire system is just propped up by peoples 401ks being funneled to institutional investors. Its inherently unstable.
Make social security good enough that middle class citizens dont need to invest, and the overinflated value of stocks plummets back to earth.
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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?
I read through almost the whole thing wondering how it would connect to “socks”. Is he a shill for “big footwear”?
You need a way to invest in companies, especially for any to grow, and you need to motivate people. A central economy might budget tax revenue, typically on a multi-year plan, but it tends not to be responsive to real world messiness nor motivating. Capitalism means anyone can invest in a company, getting partial ownership and partial benefit from gains and responding quickly to the whims of the market. People are motivated by profit. Are you proposing a third way?
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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?
I still think capitalism is a useful tool. But by are we letting it use us rather than the other way around?
Government was arguably created to establish a market, needed for any economic system to work. You need consistent legal structure, money, a way to do business.
But our failure is government getting owned by the market rather than shaping it for the good of their constituents. Let capitalism be our tool in a market that factors in externalities, fairness and that rewards work.combine that with a progressive tax system like what we claim, and things are looking up, with what seems like minor changes.
- why does the market fail to account for environmental destruction in the cost of doing business?
- why is the market based on a legal structure that exploit individuals?
- why do the richest people have the lowest effective tax rate?
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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
At least some of that is tax rates. A few tweaks to unrealized income and losses, capital gains and losses, treatment of dividends, and we can step back from the brink of “financial engineering” and get back to using the profit motive for actual engineering. Basically repeal most of the tax changes since Reagan
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At least some of that is tax rates. A few tweaks to unrealized income and losses, capital gains and losses, treatment of dividends, and we can step back from the brink of “financial engineering” and get back to using the profit motive for actual engineering. Basically repeal most of the tax changes since Reagan
Whisper of a dream
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Oh so now you need a group of people to decide they want to start a business and take out a loan? So right there we've now eliminated small businesses run by a sole trader, yay? So now you need a bunch of people to all put their livelihoods on the line, and as soon as they hire more employees their share of the co-op is diluted while their loan portion is not. Again - yay?
So if one of the original starters quits or is fired from their job, what happens? What happens to their part of the loan? Do they get a payout when they leave? If not, again, why would they ever take the risk?
For the communist question
So there are no communist countries that exist where everyone is equally wealthy and there is no poor underclass and no super rich upper class rulers? That's what it sounds like to me. Hmmm, I wonder why communism has failed literally every time it has been attempted? But I'm sure this time communism would work, right? The others just didn't do it right, right?
Could you explain what financial risk is still there if you make an LLC? My understanding was the whole point of an LLC was to guard someone’s personal assets from risk if the company goes under.
You can't just make an LLC, take out a huge business loan, and then wipe your hands of it if the business the LLC runs goes bankrupt lol.
I don't think your understanding how this works, the loan is on the co-op as an entity, not the individuals. A single person or group of people can form a co-op, just like how they form an LLC. That co-op can then take out a loan just like a company can take out a loan. That loan is the co-ops liability, not any of the members. If any or all of the original members leave that loan will still be on the co-op, the original members will not be responsible.
I think you have a misunderstanding of limited liability in general, per wikipedia:
Limited liability is a legal status in which a person's financial liability is limited to a fixed sum, most commonly the value of a person's investment in a corporation, company, or joint venture. ... A shareholder in a corporation or limited liability company is not personally liable for any of the debts of the company, other than for the amount already invested in the company and for any unpaid amount on the shares in the company, if any—except under special and rare circumstances that permit "piercing the corporate veil."
So yes you can just make an LLC , take out a huge business loan then leave and wipe your hands of it. The bank knows this and that's why when they give out loans they evaluate whether the company can pay it back, not an individual. The loan will also probably come with stipulations ensuring some sort of corporate governance so you personally can't just drain the company account and walk off with the money. Doing that would be embezzlement.
As for the communist question, were soviet style communist countries perfectly equal, no, but the situation your describing of a poor underclass and super rich upper class rulers is way more reflective of capitalist countries then communist ones. Yes there were high ranking beuracrats at the top but they weren't living in the lap of luxury, the highest ranking soviet officials lived in the house on the embankment where the largest sized unit was 3,200 square feet and the average unit was 2,000 square feet. Compare that to a millionaires mansion in the u.s. Communist societies were far more equal then capitalist societies and the idea that there's some gang of rich exploiters at the top hoarding all the resources is your projection.
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Our beef supply would vanish overnight
WHERE DID THE COWS GO
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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?
So to answer your questions
- Depends on how they have their business registered. I once worked at a company that had 7 people total working there, but because it was legally a corporation it had a "board", which was just the 3 guys who owned the company.
- Not necessarily, going back to my previous answer, but there is no legal requirement to sell your stocks when you hire someone. And if you decide to sell stocks you can do a private sale of any amount of the company that you want.
Just because a company is a registered corporation doesn't mean their stocks are sold publicly. But because they are a registered corporation, they have to have a board.
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aLl ThE rIsK
The owners are risking their fuck-around money. The workers are risking their shelter.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]You think everyone that starts a business are rich already?
The people taking the risk by starting the company are the ones risking everything, not the employees that they hire lol
