[didibus]

> If the company makes an unexpectedly large profit, the employer is not obligated to redistribute that to her employees in addition to the already agreed-upon and paid compensation.

What if they were ? That's the whole point of the conversation lol. It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse. Maybe the company should be obligated to redistribute it to her employees, or to the public, etc.

[roguetoasterer]

Compulsory profit-sharing seems like it might have some unexpected downstream effects. I think we already see some fairly creative book-keeping in industries where there's utility in reducing your company's apparent profit. The loopholes are many and the regulatory burden of identifying and closing them all is significant.

And there's no guarantee my base pay would stay the same if profit-sharing become the law of the land-- it doesn't seem improbable that my base might decrease in this new economic landscape. Suddenly, part of my income waxes and wanes according to strategic decisions that I don't get to play a part in, according to market forces that I can't fully predict. My life overall becomes more volatile.

I'm not against voluntary profit-sharing. The company I work for now does it, after <x> number of years of employment. I just suspect a blanket mandate would come with some baggage.

[didibus]

For sure, we'd need to be careful about implementation. Maybe we can't come up with a good version and decide not to do it.

But we should at least be able to discuss the problem.

Some people seem to think it's totally fine for wealth accumulation to be effectively uncapped, and for ownership to keep concentrating gains no matter how large the numbers get.

Past some point, that seems hard to justify.

[brigandish]

> That's the whole point of the conversation lol

> It's like you're side stepping the entire discourse.

No, they addressed that with:

> The only thing that would be non-consensual would be obligating the employer to redistribute her profit over and above what had already been negotiated.

Which would be truly immoral.

"lol"

[didibus]

You make the law whatever you want and those become the terms. Either agree to them or you're not allowed to operate a business here. That's how taxation and other regulation work. You're free to operate a business in another country if you don't like it, just as an employee is free to look for work elsewhere.

The disagreement is whether a founder who owns 20% of a company that grows from $1M to $100B should personally receive $20B of the resulting value while thousands of employees and customers contributed to creating that value.

That's the debate.

[eks391]

If I pay a plumber to fix a pipe in my house, and the value of my house is assessed now to be higher, I neither owe the plumber any more than the agreed rate for the pipe fix service nor equity in the house. If I owned 100% (or 20% per your company example) before, then I still own 100%. If the plumber was already a shareholder, then he will reap the additional reward.

Any asset value can grow or shrink thanks to effects from people, such as paid services, but I don't lose equity on property/companies I don't own if I vandalize them, just like I don't gain equity when I raise their value somehow.

Employees of a company are just contracted service providers with longer duration contracts, and of the company is public, they are free to buy some of that risk and gain or lose more when the company does so. 20% of $100B is $20B, so there is no need for a debate, math has our back.

[didibus]

Why do you think ownership should be uncapped and allowed to capture majority of wealth?

PG is absolutely right, if you want to be a billionaire, you need accelerated growth, you need to find something that a large number of people will pay for and you need to make sure you own equity into it as it grows, equity that grows with it.

And that's exactly the source of the debate, this trick to billionaire-level wealth, is that a good thing? Because it wasn't earned through labor, no one can earn a billion dollar through labor, you can only accumulate it through vast equity into market capture of a large market.

[eks391]

Wealth isn't tied to labor though. It is tied to ownership of assets and the value of those assets as defined by economic pressures such as supply and demand. Money (not to be confused with wealth) is an asset that is conveniently fluid, a good medium for trade, since if I have bread, you have eggs, and our friend has milk, but none of us line up perfectly for a trade with each other, we can use money as that asset exchange so all three of us can end up with the amount of eggs, milk, and bread that we decide of our own volition is the best distribution for us, competitively.

If your chickens reproduce because of the bread I provided you, your wealth in assets increases if the value of chickens and eggs don't go down at the same rate. We already traded our money and bread. If I wanted stake in your chickens, we could've came with an agreement (if you are willing to share your assets and risk), and I could then demand a share of your gain or loss. Otherwise it is theft.

Regarding employees, labor has never been tied to wealth. An employee provides a service, which is traded based on the supply and demand of that service, and money (not wealth) is the standard asset people prefer. Some people are paid in a different asset, such as share of the company or a combo of both. That is their wealth. Labor is independent if you decide to trade something else, and it is always a gamble, because values of any two different assets (including money) grow and shrink independently.

[carlosjobim]

... and to you, right?

Would you want to take a pay cut if your employer was having financial problems? Why not? Because you have an agreement on what your salary should be. It is fair that it works both ways.

[davemp]

> Would you want to take a pay cut if your employer was having financial problems?

This happens constantly in the form of layoffs…

[carlosjobim]

Would you prefer to stay and work without pay and not be allowed to change jobs? Millions of people have also had that experience in countries without a free labor market.

[davemp]

Just because it could be worse doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better.

[didibus]

Uh, pay cuts due to financial problems of the business happens all the time.