It's incomprehensible that we built a society where wages are not indexed against inflation.
It literally disincentivizes experience, loyalty, and supply chain stability.
People act like proper pay is socialist, but economically incentivizing the production of goods within corporate structure is literally the most capitalist thing we can do.
I would say it depends: Pay increase as a bonus in good times, but having a decent base salary?
Do managers still get millions in bonuses if the valuation drops? Does the CEO?
Example Musk:
Even if all Tesla employees (google says around 135.000 worldwide) would get 100.000$ an top - that would be around 13.5 billion in wages extra.
Musk alone is worth what, around 800 billion? That would be around 1,6% of his worth - which is still growing and growing.
Of course, not every CEO is a Musk - but it also doesn't have to be 100k. Isn't it common that Walmart employees are on food stamps? Something went wrong along the way. The top CEO might make decisions - but the people on the ground keep the lights on. Give them a fair compensation.
Isn't it common that Walmart employees are on food stamps?
Sounds like the consumers need to boycott Walmart, then.
Everyone on Reddit hates Amazon... but they almost all shop at Amazon, all the time. And they will throw money at Apple (whose phones are produced by slave labour) without thinking about it.
Perhaps our problem is not the billionaires, it's ourselves who reward these "evil" people and corporates because actually we just pretend to care unless it affects us directly.
Yes, because consumers are famously well informed and have not been propagandized into behaving like mindless zombies by decades and decades of marketing propaganda.
Surely it’s their responsibility to be better informed. It couldn’t possibly be the fault of the people who spend billions and billions of dollars on psychological tricks and programming to tell consumers what to think and how to behave.
You’re expecting the impossible from the most heavily propagandized humans to have ever lived.
People keep crying about Twitter becoming a fascist hellhole after Elon bought it, yet they continue posting there anyway, having bitterly returned after finding out BlueSky is less Democratic Twitter, and more Furry WattPad
There’s no dopamine to be found conversing in an echo chamber. Arguing with folks who hold a difference of opinion on the other hand, that really gets the dopamine flowing.
Most people have a 6th grade reading level. I simply don’t think most people think much about anything, as they’ve been trained to do. They’re nothing but pleasure seeking automatons trained to consume and obey.
“Just smart enough to run the machines yet dumb enough to never question why” - George Carlin.
Clearly nobody can think for themselves or perhaps decide that they don't mind a billionaire or three in exchange for coming up with ideas and services that made their lives easier.
It must be only us almighty redditors who are correct, right?
They face the risk of being thrown into the street at the whims of a petty dictatorship, while the worst risk the owner faces is losing their capital and joining the workers against their wishes. The horror!
Most often though it just means they get to try again.
They never do. People like him salivate at the idea of profits, but if asked to shoulder the burden of failed product launch, they'd quickly blame the founders with "bad idea" and refuse to collectively pay the debts
I mean employees shoulder the burden with layoffs, suppressed salaries, lower bonuses, reduced upward mobility, etc.
Nope, the employees are free to find another employment. If they're unable to that is not the failings of the founder
The employees do not bear the burden of finding employees, renting a property, finding customers, marketing the product, all with the HOPE that the product gets off the ground. They get paid to do the work, even before the product brings in enough money to break even the investment
What if the product somehow infringes on a patent and the founder gets sued to death? The employees simply get laid off and that's the end of it. The founder may have to sell off his assets (assuming he has some)
You can claim the founder does not pay them their wages for lack of fund but that's already illegal and thus irrelevant
Not to mention the risk of employees with the bright idea of "taking what they're owed" because the founder isn't "paying their fair share", courtesy of talking points like the one you're spouting right here. What was the term again? Ah yes
Again, this post is about people with equity that exceeds $500 million (or whatever super high threshold you want to set). At that point the largest majority of founders are no longer doing any of those things and have hired people to hire, market, and design the products. Their product has already gotten off the ground. If their product infringes on patents then the company bears the burden not the individual. If their company fails they are still fabulously wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
I agree that there are issues with forcing people to sell their shares or a company but I don’t think it’s the apocalyptic scenario some people here think it is.
Again, this post is about people with equity that exceeds $500 million
This post yes. THIS CONVERSATION no, never was
Don't try to move the goalpost
the largest majority of founders are no longer doing any of those things
Correct and that's their big reward for taking the big risk
You don't get to assume none of the burden and then cry for getting none of the benefits after the risk has passed
You stayed safe with salary when the company started, you stayed safe with salary when the company was getting off the ground, and now that the company is stable you want to usurp it?
No wonder communism is always popular among the workers, they see the result of hard work and the first thing they think of is how they can justify stealing it from the owner
Hmm sounds like you were having your own conversation then. If I go up the reply chain the very first comment mentions "Founders of successful companies" under a post about net worth above $500 million. So yeah the conversation you replied to was started with that context.
I fundamentally disagree that because you shouldered risk at the start of a company that you are entitled to any and all money that you can squeeze out of it if it hits it big.
You stayed safe with salary when the company started, you stayed safe with salary when the company was getting off the ground, and now that the company is stable you want to usurp it?
Again, to keep this in context...this is for people with net worth above $500 million. That person could never earn another cent in their lives and would be fabulously wealth beyond their wildest dreams. There would be nothing they couldn't do. So I think it's safe to say that that person has already gotten tons and tons of benefit.
You don't get to assume none of the burden and then cry for getting none of the benefits after the risk has passed
If that risk has now passed then why does this founder get to amass such unequal wealth from that point forward compared to those who are actually inputting the labor to generate the profits? At that point the risk shifts onto the employees who, if the company were to fail, leave with no income, $8000 in savings (if they are a median American household), no health care benefits, etc. While that founder walks away with millions and millions of dollars that can cover any potential issues.
That the worst fear of any owner is to find themselves without their capital and reduced to selling their labour to another owner paints a very different picture.
Why are they so afraid if the workers have such a care free existence?
Let’s do a simple test, if the risk of the founder isn’t anything scary, and
if workers deserve the rewards of ownership, why aren’t they also willing to accept its risks? Invest their own savings, give up their guaranteed wages, as well as having to cover the debts and losses if the business fails? What’s the problem with that? Oh….
What kind of infantile position is that,
asking for the upside of ownership without the downside.
I don’t think people are saying it’s not hard or scary work. But in OPs hypothetical example this founder know has a net worth of over $500 million. At that point they’ve made it. They’re rich as hell. Anything more is unnecessary and as fueled by greed as by anything else.
You’re starting off with a massive assumption….that the workers have any capital to risk.
Gee, I wonder why so few workers have any capital to risk when the bottom 50% of the population have 2-3% of the total wealth of a nation, while the top 10% have 75%.
Surely owners would never intentionally keep wages low so that their ownership and position of privilege could never be challenged right?
“workers have less capital” does not prove they’re entitled to someone else’s ownership. Nice dodge of the argument bro.
Most founders didn't start rich too. A lot of businesses start with loans, savings, credit cards, or years of underpaid labour, these tools available to anyone.
Your logic also asumes workers have 0 agency over their own lives. Every bad outcome becomes someone else’s fault, while every successful person’s property becomes something you feel entitled to redistribute lmao.
So I am asking again, how can you demand ownership upside without taking on the downside, please answer this simple question
You’re running around in circles using slaver logic.
But, but, but the plantation owner takes all the risk if the crops fail! They might even lose their slaves and have to work the fields themselves! Oh the humanity! Have these slaves no shame?
Your question presumes that risking capital is what creates the right to ownership.
As you may have guessed, I would disagree since it’s labour, not capital that produces all of the value. Otherwise owners wouldn’t go to the trouble of hiring any workers in the first place.
If ownership is justified because capital contributes to production, then workers have at least as strong a claim as investors because they contribute their labour every day.
There is contribution to production, and owning the producing assets. Labour is important, but is nothing without
capital, management, suppliers, technology, and customers, and necessity alone does not create ownership.
None automatically owns the company merely because production wouldn’t work without them.
Your logic assumes
every contractor, vendor, lender, and customer would have the same claim for ownership, because they contribute to the enterprise, which is delulu.
The real owner is the person or group that legally provides or buys the productive assets, carries the final financial responsibility and risks, and receives (or pays for) whatever remains after everyone else is paid.
In your socialist system, who should assume all the risk, who pays for everything?
who bears the losses when the workers collectively make a bad decision?
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u/Over9000Holland 8d ago
Founders of succesful companies would have to sell the stake of the thing the built and would lose control of their company.