Would you support a bill forcing owners of large houses to set aside some of their space for the homeless? Would you give your squatter a vote equal to your own in matters of deciding how to arrange the furniture and paint the walls?

That control is only within the limits on the corporation itself, all within the context of the entire legal system that gives concepts like "corporation" and "shareholder" meaning.

> Would you support a bill forcing owners of large houses to set aside some of their space for the homeless?

I'll see your thought experiment and raise you one. Does share ownership entitle you to direct that the company do something illegal, or immoral? Or that any number of shareholders be able to do so? Of course not. Again, your control only applies within the limits on the company itself.

> Would you give your squatter a vote

Voters and taxpayers are not squatters. They collectively constitute the government that grants corporations certain privileges - e.g. the right to own property or bring lawsuits, even to participate in the political process since Citizens United, all under the shield of limited liability and legal accountability (a corporation can't be imprisoned). The state and its people should receive something in return for that. In the very same language of contracts that you're using, if there's not consideration on both sides then there's no contract.

Don't like the deal? Don't incorporate. Don't try to get that something for nothing. Be a sole proprietor, personally and directly liable for any ill the company does. Good luck. There's a reason others do take that sweet sweet bargain, and not because it's fair to all who are affected.

Changes over time have made shareholders and management less accountable to the public interest generally as charter revocation for gross abuses has fallen into disuse, and have also shifted the balance between shareholders and management (who are, after all, employees.) Shifting the balance between shareholders and employees in a way which applies to the mass of employees rather than management as such is novel, perhaps (though labor law changes, while not specific to the corporate form of business, tend to do that, too), but isn't really different in any fundamental way from the kinds of changes to corporate power relations that have happened through legislative and judicial action throughout the whole period of existence of the corporate form.

Now, if you want to argue the specifics of this proposal, great, but arguing for an expectation-based entitlement for immutability of the privileges and power relations associated with corporate shareholding is, well, indefensible as a reasonable expectation.

Quantity has a quality all its own. You can't analogize the massive scale of enormous wealth to a typical scale of a smallholding without making serious errors.

You're making those serious errors in your analogy.

If you're one of a club of billionaires whose large estates take up all the land, then yes, you should be forced to set aside space for the homeless.

Similarly, if you have massive control over the economy, you have no right to oligarchy. You need to move over and make way for democracy.

> If I bought a share in a company fair and square, I bought that share came with a certain expectation of control. That share is my property. Giving control to people who haven't bought control fair and square is a taking of my property, and as a general heuristic, we should be extremely skeptical of taking people's property for some kind of ostensible good.

Property rights aren't the highest holy, up on some sacred pedestal somewhere. They should only exist to the extent that they serve the public good.

I support the idea of taxing the rich to support the less fortunate so yes, I agree with the general idea behind your bizarrely worded scenario.

I mean this is literally what property taxes are for!!! Sometimes ownership/control creates externalities that require removing some of that ownership/control for the benefit of society as a whole.

So are sales taxes, and income taxes are even worse than that. Which of those do you prefer, and for what reason beyond selfishness? Or are you one of those people who believe all taxes are bad, which is tantamount to saying all government is bad?

This may be zero, since some companies go public with non-voting shares. https://www.ft.com/content/9595e5c4-51db-11e7-bfb8-997009366...

I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. If a democracy can't repeal a law that's proven to be an error, you'll have quote a dysfunctional system.

Ex post facto (in the Constitution, at least) refers specifically passing a law making an action illegal and punishable after the fact. Actions can only be illegal according to the law in force at the time they were taken.

Rent control is a repulsive manipulation of the market that strangles necessary growth in the housing stock. It privileges a few undeserving people who lucked into rent controlled apartments over the interest of society at large.

https://aeon.co/essays/we-should-look-closely-at-what-adam-s...

The linked article is one of those tedious affairs that tries to deconstruct what Smith the man may have thought about contemporary mercantilist politics or something. It's not an indictment of Smith's ideas, which are timeless.

I am sick and tired of people today attempting to dismiss profound and influential ideas by pointing out that the people who formulated these ideas were complicated people.

Aren't the people prone to doing this supposed to believe in the "death of the author"?

If your resistance against something is motivated by a theory, then clearly what you are against exists in opposition to that theory. So by definition the theory, or at least its connection to what you are against, can't, or is very unlikely to, be well-established. At least not among the people acting against it. Which makes your argument faulty and the majority of this discussion meaningless.

I certainly think people have a greater expectation to control their living costs than they have to control companies. But that isn't even the issue.

The issue is that you say that stocks have an expectation of control regardless of justification. But then justify why there shouldn't be rent control with the same justification you were warning people against. You say your motivation for this is that, based on these theories, you agree with control over stocks, but not over rent. Which means that you are effectively saying that an expectation is only as good as its justification and not that an expectation shouldn't be affected by justifications. Leaving little practical argument left about why you can't move control away from stocks if there is a good enough justification.

However, recently I've been starting to realize that the market is already distorted by Prop 13, so perhaps rent control might simply even the playing field between renters and owners.

In my ideal world, Prop 13 wouldn't be a thing, and homeowners would be advocating for heavy housing development around them to keep property values low (and hence keep their tax bill from going up).

And there you have it; the shareholders and CEO would stand to lose directly, they have a huge amount of money (and they're both national and international players; a foreign investor would give less of a shit about US workers), they're in politics (directly or paying for it), etc.

I hope this gets traction, but I'm cynical, and I'm confident the US is already an oligarchy in the pockets of those that made 7 trillion out of their 250 billion investment.

I doubt this will go anywhere (I think it's another grandstanding issue for the Bernie-types), but if it does, I'd expect a challenge (with a reasonable chance of success) on Constitutional grounds (see Article 10).

2) Given that corporations exist only as a legal construct, I'm pretty certain that the government has a great deal of lattitude in what it can compel corporations to do or refrain from doing. It's worth noting that the US law also treats corporations as people; however, it does so because of the law itself (1 U.S.C. §1); modifications to that law can alter the nature of corporations in US law.

Are there any companies with >$1bn annual revenue that do not do business outside the state that chartered them? If not, then it would seem this could fall under the 'power to regulate foreign/interstate commerce', no?

Whether or not this would be ultimately beneficial, or the principle that the constitution is trying to protect here (don't interfere in the affairs of lawful citizens) is more important in the end are value judgements, and difficult ones at that. I don't doubt that if my circumstances were different I would be making an argument like yours.

We already have a process for dealing with this: amend the Constitution. But unless and until it gets amended, it is the supreme law of the land, and we can't just ignore it because we think something it currently proscribes would "benefit the state".

(I also have a problem with "benefit the state" as opposed to "benefit we the people". The state itself is established for the benefit of we the people; it is not a separate entity with separate interests apart from ours.)

You must be joking. Supreme Court jurisprudence already says that Congress can regulate crops grown for an individual farmer's personal use as part of its power under the Commerce Clause (Wickard v. Filburn, 1942). Imposing corporate governance practices seems like small potatoes in comparison.

When an article (or comment) gets flagged, HN accounts with sufficient karma may have the opportunity to "vouch". I used that once for this article already.

This doesn't guarantee that the article will stay for long since there's an HN algo which tends to shuffle off pages with a lot of downvoting and flagging. (Which I think is a really nice feature, by the way. Thanks to the moderators for their good sense and hard work.)

ETA: And that also means that if you want to keep this discussion alive for a while, relentlessly downvoting posts which don't agree with your bent, even when civil and well-argued, is counterproductive. There are some great comments arguing against Warren right now that I hope will be rescued from the greys.

> Maybe it's just because I'm a pinko-European

Maybe.

No, they don't, this is a common misunderstanding. Including all 401ks, IRAs, directly-held stock, mutual funds, etc., the bottom 80% of Americans own less than 4% of all equities. The bottom 60% own 0.1% of all equities.[1]

[1]: https://medium.com/@MattBruenig/who-gains-from-dow-20-000-ba...

First, your stat ignores pension plans. Second, the bottom 60% might only own 0.1% of all equities, but that might be 50% of their savings/pension plan. I'd call that "skin in the game".

That one worker? If stock prices go up he will end up perhaps 1 more month's worth of retirement savings. Meanwhile his wages are being held down and the value he creates with his labor is being spent on stock buybacks and executive pay, the benefits of which go overwhelmingly to the other 999 people.

And yes, the stat includes pension plans.

So sure, the one guy has skin in the game. His wages have been held down, and in exchange he gets a fistful of coupons that entitle him to a few bucks for every million given to capital owners.

Wide scale elimination of pensions started in the 2000’s. Millions of people still have pensions in the US.

Of course the factory workers $30,000 in the market is going to be miniscule compared to the billionaire, but doesn't means it's not critical to the factory worker.

The fact that a tiny portion of workers also own some stocks doesn't change that fact.

And the fact that $30k in a retirement account is critical to a factory worker, doesn't help your case much. That pittance will have been saved out of already-stagnant wages that have been kept down by corporate management in favor of executive pay and stock buybacks, and will be nearly worthless for retirement purposes no matter what the stock market does. All you've done is reiterate the all-too-common disaster scenario for the working class that comes from favoring shareholders over workers.

The workers' real skin in the game is their labor and the value they produce from it, which is increasingly being kept back from them. They can have everything to gain and nothing to lose by gaining mandatory representation on the board.

It's everything to the factory worker, but it's a rounding error to anybody involved in making decisions that effect that factory worker's everything.

Using that definition of "skin in the game," I'm not sure what the point of the phrase is.

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/18/for-r...

Second, there are less than half of the number of public companies as there were 20 years ago [1]. So the investors are chasing a small group with a larger market capitalization. That's due to many reasons, but regulation is a big one (sarbanes-oxley, dodd-frank, etc).

Many people don't have the risk tolerance to be in the market, let alone own a single stock. What happens if that stock were Enron or Worldcom? That's a lot of risk.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/211052/stock-ownership-down-amo...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-09/where-hav...

I am a firm believer that the free and less regulated stock market and a smart and balanced portfolio is the best wealth creation tool Americans can tap into. The alternatives of savings accounts and CD's are laughably low yielding.

You say this like you think it somehow proves a point.

> I am a firm believer that the free and less regulated stock market and a smart and balanced portfolio is the best wealth creation tool Americans can tap into. The alternatives of savings accounts and CD's are laughably low yielding.

And I am a firm believer that most of these people do not have the resources or know-how to even begin doing this. Most are living paycheck to paycheck.

And I'm amused at the idea of loosening regulations on financial services industries ever has any effect other than a massive transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the wealthy.

Fair and that's the fundamental difference in our political ideology. I subscribe that the role of US government is not to transfer wealth or interfere with the free market. If I am in a room with another person and I have five dollars in my pocket and the other person has one dollar, am I suppose to give the other person two dollars to make everybody whole? The writer of this article and bill might think so.

That may not directly be its role, but if it isn't at -- least to some degree -- an outcome of the government's activity, then I think we're in trouble.

To a first approximation, wealth = power; and human nature being what it is, those who have wealth (and therefore power) will tend, in the absence of control/restraint from government, to use that wealth and power to gather more wealth and power for themselves, without regard for any impact (often negative) on those who have less.

Governments (in my opinion) have a responsibility to protect and help those who, for all kinds of reasons, do not have the wealth or power to adequately take care of themselves. That doesn't mean arbitrary handouts. But it does mean that a relatively larger share of centrally-managed resources should be directed towards helping those who need it most.

And so I'd expect one of the results of a well-run government to be a tendency to reverse some of the flow of wealth towards those who already have it.

1: https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/jobs/survey-grea...

2: http://www.fox19.com/story/22676408/bankratecom-finds-76-of-...

3: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...

4: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-living-paycheck-to-pa...

Some people are poor, but some are just dumb. I wish I could fix poor, but I can't fix stupid. And there is a lot of stupid around.

I know many people who make a few hundred thousand dollars (in Texas, not silicon valley or NYC), and they live paycheck to paycheck. That's stupid, not poor.

So when I see stats like that (thank you for the links), I always wonder what the real number is - how many are poor, and how many are just stupid.

I get that there are people living genuinely frugally and still struggling. It may just be observational bias, but I suspect there are a lot more people struggling who are not choosing to live frugally and where that choice would help them quite a bit.

Obviously, I didn’t study economics when I was 5, but this seemed to be the norm in that era and community and would be viewed as abnormally (perhaps unacceptably) frugal now.

To be clear, they did get married, have children, live a decent life, and retire on pensions, but they and their neighbors lived a lot more frugally than seems to be normal/accepted today.

It's rigged for the rich, I promise.

http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ric...

No system has ever provided such high quality, low cost financial instruments with great liquidity and marginal trading costs accessible to anyone with a checking account.

The financial markets we have today are equitable and highly accessible. They are anything but rigged.

Now, you have to have enough money to buy a full share of whatever company you want. So Amazon has a minimum buy-in of about $1,900. One good argument for stock splits is that it makes your stock more accessible.

I don’t know what you mean by “poor people economics” but it sounds like you think saving and investing is beyond their reach. I disagree and I think it betrays more about you than I.

There are certainly times when spending all (or even in excess of all) your annual income is a rational and smart decision. But no matter what your income level, it is always true that some years you must save money aside from paying down loans.

The market is irrelevant for a vanishingly small number of people. The market is ignored by a large percentage of people who could benefit greatly from it.

I’m well aware most people don’t have $500 in their bank account. I would argue that makes equitable market access more important.

What? That's the key method by which people pay for their retirement. Of course they are gaining real money.

Joe six pack's biggest problem is their own ignorance.

Nobody has said anything of the sort here.

Nowhere is it even remotely implied that the market only benefits the ultra-rich and CEOs.

Because the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households own 84% of American-held shares, the obsession with maximizing shareholder returns effectively means America’s biggest companies have dedicated themselves to making the rich even richer.

To imply it's a cry that the game was designed to be rigged is a straw-man.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've posted uncivilly elsewhere too, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17766899. That's not allowed here, and we eventually ban accounts that do it. If you'd review the guidelines and post civilly and substantively only from now on, we'd appreciate it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany#Int...

I assume that a civilised discussion can still be held in the US.

Inequality declines as Union membership rises[1], aka worker representation.

https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequalit...