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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Actually that pretty much sounds like you didn't really do anything to get it and just profited off the Apple employees' hard work.
Ah yes the classic "providing capital doesn't count" How do you imagine businesses should get initial funding if not via investors? And how much should a person/corporation be allowed to profit from that initial funding?
If they didn't hold the capital hostage from the doers of the world, laborers, as is the point of capitalism, it would be a lot easier.
Instead the do nothing capitalists keep the vast majority of the value generated, and provide just enough for the people that made it to subsist. It's a shame so many they would never let within 100 feet of their clubs, towers, or compounds defend their con.
Not surprising though, we're propagandized through the media they own and the curriculum they influence to deify the con-game that is capitalism. We were conquered by the contemporaries of the traveling snake oil salesmen of old.
Sorry what's your alternative? I'm guessing communism?
In that system how do you efficiently allocate capital? Do you use a command economy?
I'm not deifying anything, it just seems that capitalism is the most efficient economic system we can come up with. And combined with regulation seems to produce pretty good results, see most of the better parts of Europe for example
A system which stores vast percentage of capital inert in the hands of a few entitled parasitic rapists is not "efficient".
Do you want to maybe suggest something practical? I'm not particularly interested in the relentless "capitalists are evil" meme. I am interested in hearing about alternatives with merit Also inert? Are these people really sitting on cash? Or are they investing in various parts of the economy?
t a x t h e r i c h At, say, 90% above 2m earnings and also bring in a generous estate tax - one which would trigger above some large value, say 10m$ so that a lucky rando with a house isn't hit, but someone with 9 digit net worth is.
And yes, they do sit on a ton of this cash. Buying yachts, flipping artworks and building bunkers in New Zealand aren't exactly productive investments. And yes, a large amount gets invested here and there but it would still be better to deconcentrate this.
You want to tax existing assets? How on earth is that supposed to work? You just make people liquidate assets to pay a tax? The idea of taxing an unrealised gain is ridiculous
For the record he is paying 200M in tax on that income. Though I agree 20% is probably too low here, that's up to your govt to fix and isn't a failure of capitalism but of the specific implementation
Yes, I would make people sell off excess property to pay taxes, why not? It would take some fine tuning of course byt how else are you willing to fight the wealth gap?
I don't really care if there is a wealth gap. Even though I'm definitely on the lower income side
What I think we should focus on instead is making sure everyone's base line needs are met. So healthcare (including dental), housing, food, etc. And I don't think you need to tax wealth to do it, rather you'd be better off closing off issues in the current tax system and increasing taxes in the upper brackets For the lower tax brackets you could even implement a negative tax rate to achieve it without having to resort to a blanket system like UBI
"Everything I don't like is communism." There's always one of you morons in every thread. I'm sure this comment will change everyone's mind.
By all means suggest something else. It feels like 90% of the time people that are anti capitalism either suggest communism or don't understand that they just want capitalism with tighter regulation What's your suggestion?
Not GP, but I'd love to see them replaced entirely with crowdfunding. So the public would pay based on our expected benefit from new structures, instead of paying people who own structures. Much of the initial investment is just paying off someone else's mature investment.
Rather than just capping profits with a number, we should be addressing the problems that cause it to exist at all. We're already voting on people who vote on bailouts; might as well just cut out the middlemen who "provide" capital.
How would you crowd fund a company that isn't promising a specific set of products? Normally the way we do crowd funding is to offer essentially a pre sale of a product. Sure sometimes people just put forward cash because they really want the product to exist but it isn't the norm But for a company that will be a service provider what incentive exists to fork over potentially millions of dollars? In a crowd funding scheme you expect no profit share so why would you invest in them?
Compared to in this case buying a percentage of a company early on to provide them with capital on the basis that you may make money in the future
Also those bailouts while somewhat distasteful were played back to the government with interest
The initial cost would be significantly lower because there'd be no previous owner to pay. Property values right now include the net present value of all expected future rents. The incentive to participate in the crowdfund is that the increased likelihood of the event happening is worth more to you than your share of money invested (like any other assurance contract).
Compared to buying a percentage of the company, it eliminates unearned rent; nobody is getting paid more than it costs to bring the factor into production.
Not all of them, no. Especially in 2020 many were forgiven. If it was a profitable endeavor (counting opportunity cost vs just investing elsewhere), then the private sector would have done it using collateral. And we're still paying for those bailouts today [gestures at prices].
I'm confused, you want to have people crowd fund R&D to increase the odds a product goes to market. And then expect no profit on the back of that investment? After the potentially huge initial cost does the company then sell the product at cost? Or do they make a profit now?
Can you give an example of a bailout you disagree with? Pretty much all bailouts I'm aware of recoup their costs Also the reason private equity doesn't bail out these companies is that unlike a government they may not be able to weather a significant period where they aren't getting a large cash flow, as they need to stay afloat as well. A government on the other hand is better prepared to recoup costs over time, and will do so if it means that depositors funds are safe. They are much more likely to let a hedge fund just fold as the participants are capable of withstanding such losses
R&D used to be done at universities for the benefit of all. It still often is.
Why should it all be in private hands?
Good luck moving literally all R&D to universities I guess
I don't think all research should be in private hands. But I don't think it's reasonable to assume we could move businesses to a crowd funding model and then somehow convince universities to do all of that R&D
The only things that warrant investors profiting off their investment at all are the risk of not getting the money back and the opportunity cost of not having the money for other things while it is tied up in the investment so I would say a reasonable profit would be somewhere in the order of magnitude of those and not in the current "infinitely for all time" order of magnitude.
How are you possibly measuring opportunity cost? This is the opportunity. All you can do is use it to buy goods and services or invest via lending in some form
Say you could quantify that and cap profits. What should happen with corporate profits then? After you've "paid" the original investors? Does the owner of the company now reabsorb their shares? And if we instead allocate profits to the workers, do we also allocate losses? Do workers just straight up not get paid if the company loses money one year?
What amount of capital has Ballmer provided? Please give us a number in dollars. You can round it off.
Also, what amount of capital would not be provided if Ballmer didn't increase his wealth by $1 billion off of it? Again, you can round it off.
Actually quite interesting in the case of Ballmer as he was an employee compensated via stock rather than straight up cash
You'd consider that an investment as he was investing his time to be a business manager while being compensated probably less in cash that would be normal for the position
So as early Microsoft didn't have the cash on hand, or didn't want to give up that cash they could use elsewhere they gave equity as compensation
How do you suggest we should remove this situation? Should we not allow compensation in the form of equity? Or should ownership of equity not exist generally?
Ballmer also got Microsoft their first major contract back in the day. He did contribute massively to what MS is today. To that dollar value? No, no one contributes THAT MUCH. But it's not like he wasn't extremely impactful.