Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by voisin on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @11:11PM
(#23484860)
What if you started a company, grew it and went public and in the ensuing years the markets pushed its value up such that your share was suddenly, and temporarily, worth more than $100m? Are you forced to sell the excess and be forced to pay a capital gains tax and reduce your control over your company?
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by briefcomment on Thursday June 11, 2020 @12:04AM
(#23485098)
I think the increased competition would limit huge valuations, but maybe any overflow could go to other employees. Beyond that though, it's hard to see what would make the most sense. My guess is that we would have a system different than owning stock in a random company. There's probably no reason we need to be tied to what we currently do.
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by sudosysgen on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:01PM
(#23484512)
How do you distribute personal wealth after that 100 million? If you distribute it to the workers that create it and make it 20 million instead of 100 I think you'd be on to something.
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by briefcomment on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:02PM
(#23484518)
Something like that. Obviously the specifics are important, but I think the main advantage from this is the limiting of amassed wealth.
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by sudosysgen on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:04PM
(#23484529)
In that case can I interest you to market socialism? It is almost exactly that, except that you immediately start sharing your wealth as soon as you have a employees, in different amounts.
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by briefcomment on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:16PM
(#23484586)
Market socialism sounds like what China does rather than preventing amassed wealth, but sure any system that accomplishes the goal of not letting individuals unreasonably impose their will on anyone else sounds good. Votes are powerful, but uber rich people can undermine voting.
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by danemorgan on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:23PM
(#23484622)
China has "social markets", but this really just means capitalism with a communist party oversite. They allow billionaires and will soon have more of them than the US.
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by sudosysgen on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:37PM
(#23484696)
China does not have market socialism, sadly. Market socialism directly prevents wealth accumulation. Indeed, the idea of market socialism is that we keep the free market and low government control over industrial matters, and instead make all companies owned by their employees. This would slow down accumulation of wealth substantially, as I don't know of any company you could work at that would make you accumulate more than 100 million dollars as a lowly worker, without any investment.
The closest thing we have to market socialism right now would be worker co-ops, which do not allow massive wealth accumulation, as all wealth created would be shared equally among employees of a given firm.
(Investment would also largely be impossible, because you would not be able to own stocks in such a system. Instead, interest would have to be accumulated via financing, which is much fairer to distribution of power and prevents accumulation of wealth.)
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by briefcomment on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:53PM
(#23484775)
Well that sounds great. I think it would be better to have a somewhat hierarchical compensation system instead of a flat compensation structure. Who's going to want to do hard and impressive work if the .5x intern is getting rich as fast as you are?
Re:Is It Time to Talk About Post-Capitalism in America?
by sudosysgen on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @11:01PM
(#23484820)
Oh yes, of course. Wages would not be flat, they would be determined by a vote of the employees. In real-world examples, people there for longer, that have more education, that do a more demanding job or have more responsibility have different salaries, up to a certain limit of inequality, of course.
Even Karl Marx didn't want total equality, he thought (rightly) that it was absurd.
Crucially though, the thing is that while wages are not the same, ownership is equal. Most of the wealth would be in shares of the company, not in wages, because wages are needed for consumption and because investment would be much more difficult.
Capitalism where you can't amass more personal wealth than $100M.
The only reason I would think you would need more money than that is if you wanted to push ideas that the population would not vote for.
I have much more faith in people closer to issues solving them with more good faith and efficiency than unelected billionaires being effectively philanthropic.
I would rather see more rich people relaxing with their wealth than trying to outmaneuver every last civil liberty we have for an extra dollar. Even better if they use their wealth to make their local community better. That way, there are actual human interactions between those making suggestions and voters.
Makes a good environment for natural competition as well.
Would we have a worse quality of life because of this? Important question, but my gut says no.
I'm all for civil liberties, but uber rich people can get away with weird things because they can ignore all the "no's" and essentially bribe decision makers.