Exploitation? Thousands of people are getting paid $90k to paint pointless characters nobody will ever see. It's not exploitation because one of them succeeds.
It's a technical term. She produced immense value and she didn't receive it, someone else took it. That's exploitation in Marxism.
I also don't get where you get these idea that there's this huge glut of artists producing work that's unpopular and getting paid for it. If you're at the point you're getting paid 90k a year, you're working in studios that almost certainly turn a profit.
The entire reason someone takes the risk is for the chance to have a ‘positive’ expected value, which in startup land means the company gets really big, hires a lot of people, and makes a lot of money for the owners (founders & investors) by selling a product for more money than they pay the workers.
Startup investors often treat this like an odds game, expecting that while 9 out of 10 investments might fail, one of them will return better than 10x, which turns into a net profit on investments.
The “risk” might be relatively big for small investors, but it’s quite low for the bigger savvier institutional investors.
Startups are economically interesting, but they are not the majority of the economy. When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
> Startup investors often treat this like an odds game
Yeah, it's not free profit though. If you're not good at choosing investments you end up with 9 out of 10 failing, and 1 only making 2x. That's what I mean by there are no guarantees of it
It's very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair.. and miss the 9 other shots they took which lost money. Or hell the 90 other shots, and they're still in the hole overall
> When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
Yeah these are definitely a different ballgame. Not sure where I stand on it - I don't know enough about the economics of that
I agree, and it’s objectively true, that there are no guarantees on investment. I don’t think GP was making any arguments that implied otherwise.
> It’s very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair
“Unfair” is subjective and an insanely deep topic we can’t even begin broach here thoughtfully. It’s always true that a profitable company has incomes that exceed its costs, by definition. Since costs include employee pay, it’s always true in a profitable company that employees are collectively providing a greater value to the company than they are capturing for themselves. You’re still arguing from a failed startup perspective, and by and large, failing and failed startups are not running the economy, nor are even a significant portion. The majority of people in the economy are working for someone else’s profitable company. People who have money do take risks on startups for the chance make it big, but those people had money to begin with.
Yeah unfair was the wrong word. I mean just to focus on exploitation in the Marxist sense suddenlybananas was using it
The economics are the same for a startup and established company, no? I was just talking about that because that's what Bluey was. Walmart was also once a tiny business and the returns are still happening today. We're all free to own part of them through publicly traded stocks. Of course the returns are a lot lower now simply because there's less risk
If they're extracting so much extra from employees that they're overpriced in the market, that leaves room for a competitor to offer lower prices. "Your margin is my opportunity"
If they're getting outsized margins by paying tiny salaries, it opens up room for a competitor to get the best people to work for them by paying more
Worker co-ops are still an option under capitalism, also
It's not a perfect system but it seems to work fairly well?
> those people had money to begin with
Well.. are we not posting this on a VC firm's website? There are options to getting money if you're starting with none
I can very much get behind removing generational wealth. That benefits no-one
It’s not weird at all; in other circumstances we call it a bonus.
You get baseline security by trading away the unlimited upside, but you are still incentivised to produce your best work by knowing if you help create a huge success you’ll get additional compensation for it.
This is an insane point of view. I genuinely don't understand how you can hold it. You don't think the person who actually made the product is the one who made the value? Do you believe in magic? Are capitalists just bestowing magic juju that creates value and any actual labour and hard work is irrelevant?
The product is a cartoon (and associated services, merchandise), not the idea. There were countless people involved in creating the set of products, even if just one person came up with the concept.
Sorry, I think we're talking cross-purposes here. I agree that the workers are the ones who should receive the profits. The art director is one such worker (out of many).
I also don't get where you get these idea that there's this huge glut of artists producing work that's unpopular and getting paid for it. If you're at the point you're getting paid 90k a year, you're working in studios that almost certainly turn a profit.