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Re:Why I’m Against Unions at Businesses I Create by aspenmayer on Friday November 03, 2017 @12:25AM (#15616683)
I'm not advocating for this, but it is an interesting thought experiment. I do share your concerns, but I feel that this kind of thing is likely inevitable with the rise of ICOs and cryptocurrency futures trading. Capital flows will make a market of it somehow, even if it's only quants and AIs who are able to operate such a market in meaningful, value-adding ways.
Re:Why I’m Against Unions at Businesses I Create by eropple on Friday November 03, 2017 @12:26AM (#15616687)
I'm gonna be straight with you: it's an interesting thought experiment if you ignore the entirety of the history of the industrialized world. If you don't ignore it, it's not even novel.

ICOs are valueless trash in ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of all cases. This will only change, maybe-if-you're-lucky, if they are securitized and regulated, at which point it's the new "oh but stock!", and it's still not going to be a sane deal for a worker because the worker has no real way to deal with either counterparty risk of exchanges (meanwhile, dollars involve no such risk) short of paying a vig--you know, like how companies pay poor employees on debit cards with fees, how's that reality sound for everybody?--or safety of exchange rate, because LOL your company has a bad quarter and now you can't pay your rent because FacebookForCatsCoin no longer makes the speculators, the only people who are paying attention to it, sufficiently money-horny.

Sprinkling crypto on company scrip doesn't make it anything other than company scrip. And it's a bad idea for companies, too, because a mere, what, ninety-nine percent of companies have no public stock and would very much like to keep it that way?

Re:Why I’m Against Unions at Businesses I Create by aspenmayer on Friday November 03, 2017 @12:35AM (#15616723)
They are not any more or less valueless trash than most fiat currencies, which are stand-ins for the value of assets held and traded in said fiat currency. If the tokens you were paid in have excess utility generated with their production like filecoin for example, I would be more likely to consider it as a means of payment, but not necessarily as a store of value. I don't think you're wrong to frame it as company scrip, but if your company scrip was traded on Coinbase, you might not be so dismissive of the mere concept. Not saying I'd choose to be paid in it, either.
Re:Why I’m Against Unions at Businesses I Create by steveax on Friday November 03, 2017 @12:44AM (#15616762)
“You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store”