🔥

@cjd for the same reason, co-ops that work without 'exploitation' should be able to run more efficient than traditional capitalist companies, but they generally don't.

@cjd if i save up for 14 months i might be able to get a driver's license, not even a car. this is delusional rich kid thinking

@lucy @cjd

It's about the working class overall:

"When you buy stock, you pay not only for the capital assets of the firm—buildings, machines, inventory, and the like —but also for its experience, reputation, and organization. If workers really can run firms better, these are unnecessary;
all they need are the physical assets. Those assets—the net working capital of all corporations in the United States in 1965—totalled $171.7 billion. The workers could buy that much and go into business for themselves with 14 months' worth of savings."

@lain @cjd > 1965
ah yes

@lucy @cjd I don't know if the relation of the numbers has changed, so it might be different now.

@lain @lucy @cjd im just betting on real madrid u bet bayern

Exploited workers think that the owners of the company are the ones making fat money off their backs and that's just not the case.

The owners are also exploited. Anyone with even a few hundred $ can go to the stock market and buy some stock in any company. You'll quickly find out that being an owner is not really that big of a win either.

Then maybe you imagine that the CEO is the exploiter, but the CEO is nominated by the board, who are elected by the stockholders. The stockholders don't want to pay the CEO or board any more than they need to - because they want to pay themselves dividends instead.

The problem is that CEOs who are GOOD at what they do are in short supply and they happen to demand a lot of money. Of course the stockholders don't have to hire them, but they do - because paying an exorbitant amount of money to a CEO is better than losing everything on a company that goes bankrupt.

You wanna know who the real exploiter is? It's politicians. They take money from EVERYONE, workers, owners, CEOs, etc. And they give it to their friends.

@lain @cjd delet this

You might think the tax rate is 30% and they use the money to build roads (and by roads I mean wars).

In reality, the tax rate is closer to 99% and I'll tell you why:

1. Shareholders can't elect a CEO who is ACTUALLY best at running a company, because they have to elect one who has the connections to politicians that will get the company the contracts to build the roads (weapons).

2. And it's not just the CEO, look at all of the "made up" desk pilot positions. Why are companies paying 200k a year to Lumbergh to drink coffee and mumble about TPS reports? Because Lumbergh went to the Right School and got the Right Connections that they NEED to hire him so that the other guys in the other companies - who also went to the Right School and got the Right Connections - will consider your product to be Enterprise Grade and be willing to buy it.

3. Who decides which are the Right Schools and the Right Connections? The politicians and their infinite money firehose. Wherever they send the government contracts to AUTOMATICALLY becomes the one who everyone needs to be connected to.

4. But it gets worse (of course it does). It's not just the obscene amount of spending, it's ALSO regulation. Sure you can hire people who are GOOD at crossing every t and dotting every i, but regulations are impenetrably complex and in the end, they're subject to the discretion of the regulators. What is this "revolving door" of people moving between regulatory agencies and corporations? It's corporations paying EXTORTION to the political class by hiring them in do-nothing desk pilot jobs. You think the shareholders WANT that? No way.

The end result of all this is that everything is expensive, wages are stagnant, and millions upon millions of people are paid big salaries for nothing more than their political connections.

You're a slave Neo. The tax rate is 99%.

@cjd i worked for an avionics company i experienced all of that first hand... it's sad, regulations in this sector go so far they actually make aircraft not just unnecessarily expensive but also not even as safe as it could be.
we literally had the "stand around and drink coffee" guy hired, because they wanted his name and phd on a project. he never contributed shit and left the company as soon as the project was sold.

We need to bang the drum on this, people don't get it. Government ruins absolutely everything.

Small victories count, in any industry.
I am score for decades regarding to what is happening in Manufacturing, where the "global standards" organizations control the narrative. Look just what is happening to solar, wind and EVs. Every engineer I talk with say the same thing, all of that Green Shit is delusional.

I would be happy of other industries would be flocking to the Fediverse, but unfortunately its the IT pro, academia and the jurnos so war.

@cjd @lucy
Reality would like a word.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highest-paid-ceos-are-the-worst-performers-new-study-says/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shivaramrajgopal/2022/10/23/most-us-companies-pay-ceos-under-a-competitive-pay-policy-but-dont-confuse-it-for-pay-with-performance/

Why do you think shareholders keep voting to overpay these "bad" CEOs?

Are they ALL so stupid, these people who have learned to reliably make money investing?

Perhaps they didn't read Forbes and realize this magical secret of investing in companies with cheaper, higher performing CEOs...

Or maybe, just maybe, your little study here is bullshit.

@cjd @lucy
Or maybe, just maybe, the CEOs are also large shareholders in their companies, thanks to modern compensation standards.

Boards keep voting to overpay CEOs because of Compensation Consulting firms, who they hire whenever they are looking for a new CEO. The CC firms tell them what the average compensation package is, and they - figuring that if you want above avg performance you need above avg pay - pay above avg. Thus the avg increases regardless of performance.

@cjd @lucy
Also you have your interlocking boards of directors, where CEO A sits on CEO B's board and vice versa and they both vote to pay each other more.

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/corporate_community.html

What you're describing is the financial equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It SOUNDS really plausible, but it cannot possibly exist.

If a company is poorly run, and there's a way to objectively KNOW that its poorly run, then there's money to be made shorting the stock.

Anywhere that there's money to be made, there is always going to be SOMEONE making that trade, and if it's reliable money then word is going to spread quickly until EVERYONE piles into the trade. In the public markets, a truly bad company would go down in flames overnight.

You might think these people are overpaid, and some academic might think they're overpaid, but the people who are the best in the world at making profitable investments are not convinced.

@cjd @lucy
An opinion informed by conversations with and writings by people with long experience on Wall Street, including being tasked with training corporate boards of directors, so...

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/06/new-study-debunks-myth-that-exorbitant-ceo-pay-results-from-talent.html

You have memes, I have studies. Forgive me if your ideology fails to persuade.

You think I'm trying to convince YOU ?

@cjd @lucy
Let me introduce you to 401k plans and index funds.

At any rate, I will say that we do agree that there is plenty of unnecessary government regulation. However, you should consider who it is that pays for lawmakers campaigns and gives them cush jobs after the fact, i.e. whose interests those regs are likely to be written in. Anyway, cheers.

@cjd @lucy This is a big reason I left the First World. Incompetency and petty corruption is so rampant in the Second World that the government can't even oppress you effectively.

By official government statistics, two thirds of the Mexican economy is under the table (or "below the water" as they say in Spanish.) The real number is probably even higher.

@FourOh-LLC @lucy @cjd Don't forget about the core of the non-leftist Parallel Economy:

Coffee subscriptions.