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  • The problem is that in theory the workers also are supposed to own the factories and get a slice of the profits. This is what shares are for. Unfortunately, in practice, a larger and larger chunk of people seem to be getting excluded from that bit.

    • Yeah.

      I know enough to know I don't understand economics, so I try to not confuse my opinions with knowledge, but for a while now I've had the feeling that the main defect in capitalism is that it allows things like the stock market.

      Companies are beholden to shareholders. When the shareholders aren't the employees, this creates a conflict of interest, and the shareholder profits are always prioritized over employees.

      Allowing investments by anyone other than employees could be made illegal; you leave the company, you get cashed out. I don't know if this would have perverse effects, like allowing CEOs to accumulate stock and become robber barons, but maybe regulatory charters could address that.

      Again, I don't know, but my observations over the course of my career always lead back to the stock market.

      • CEOs aren't necessarily evil. They're driven by shareholders to increase profit, at any cost. If they don't, they are replaced by someone who will. Source problem: the stock market.
      • Companies are driven to grow, and growth translates into bonuses. Shareholders, however, get paid first, so even if there's growth, many employees will still see no bonuses or salary increase. Source problem: the stock market.
      • Most companies get squirrely when discussing bonuses, performance, and such because it does at some point come down to: "yes, the company grew, but no there's no benefit to the employees because we have to pay the market first." This makes employees unhappy, frustrated, and confused, and really pushes an immoral burden onto managers who have to essentially lie to the people they're managing. Source problem: the stock market
      • People can literally make fortunes doing nothing more that working the market. They produce nothing. They contribute nothing. This just seems fundamentally wrong.

      But without The Market, how do we do fund retirement? Maybe when people leave companies, they don't forfeit their shares. I don't know. There's so many questions to address, and the answer isn't simply "make investing in companies illegal." Not simply that, but increasingly I think that's at least part of the solution.

      I'm a moderate capitalist. I think laissez-faire economics is criminal, and I don't believe that communism is an answer. But capitalism, as it exists today and especially in the US, is clearly broken.

      I suppose that, even without the stock market, we'd have Elon Musks and Jeff Bezoses: robber barons. So there's something else needed, maybe regulation about how much more the top paid employee can be compensated than the least compensated employee. Maybe we do away with salaries, and everybody is awarded stocks and receives their stock percentage of profit for the year. Employees can vote to reduce some return on their stocks to grow the company. At least it'd be simple and understandable: we had a shitty year, so everyone gets less return. We had a great year, everybody gets a bonus.

      Like I said, I'm not an expert or the right person to propose solutions. Solutions are needed, though.

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