Are the employees also funding the next project out of their own pockets?

> The idea that a corporation should only benefit like 3 people at the top is a relatively new beleif So the caricatures of ultra wealthy factory owners from the 19th century were just visionary fantasy?

Mid century capitalism was certainly more worker focussed. CEOs salaries were more like single digit/low double digit multiples of average worker salaries. Profit got reinvested into development. Companies would literally brag about how well their employees were paid. This is the era that saw the US become a powerhouse globally. Then Jack fucking Welch came along. He's the motherfucker that started this crap with closing marginally profitable departments because it increased the overall profitability of the company as a %, which increased the stock price.

Companies can make a lot of money + pay shareholders without ever declaring profits. Look at Amazon for a case of weird accounting. More generally, I also disagree with this idea because the incentives to become an employer would be decreased and ultimately it's the business owners who are taking risks.

What if instead of zero profits, all employees are paid in part via some amount of ownership stake in any company? My issue with the "we take all the risk, tho!" argument is that I'm never even *allowed* to take the risk, too. For example, my current company is small, compensation has grown disappointing after we were acquired by VC, and there is no pathway for me to begin purchasing any kind of ownership stake. We're *just* the labor, despite all of us having been here longer than the new owner, in many cases having been here to build the thing the new owners bought. So it must be pretty damn attractive, actually, for those at the top to continually offer that to one another, while withholding it from anyone below executive leadership. I'm pretty tired of hearing it as a justification when those "taking all the risk" end up doing so goddamn well, and the rest of us are locked out of it in the first place. It's just abusive language we've all internalized.


I don't understand why you can't set up your own business if you want to take the risk yourself.

Yeah it is really funny how an entity that controls dozens of people's lives only benefits the "king" at the top. I was raised to think we were above having kings and slave masters in the modern era.

Yes 1.5 lifetimes ago is not a long time

If they were born into the same wealth that their master was then sure they would.

Its referred to as barriers to entry. These are anything that prevents new startups from occuring. These can be natural or contrived. As somebody who finally started their own business after 25 years of effort and a lot of luck I know these well. The largest barrier is usually initial capital. Banks don't give out loans to startups without assets. So if you have overall negative personal assets like large student loans, renting, car loans, etc you are fucked in getting a bank to fund your startup. I can't get a line of credit for at least a year, probably 2. At least not one at a reasonable interest rate that doesn't eatup all of my profit. I ended up taking a draw against expected revenue from a vendor who believes in me. Health insurance (U.S), literally the reason I didn't start my business 10 years ago & 5 years ago when I had 2 opportunities. Business insurance: it took me 5 months to find somebody that would cover me. Laws and regulations that create barriers to entry. These can be minor annoyance like fees and paperwork or major regulatory hurdles depending on the industry and country. Infrastructure to conduct the business. I need highly specialized warehousing for 4 months of the year. I ended up renting from a company that is in a similar business as me that runs on a different cycle (they are empty when I need space). Building my own would require a loan... See above. Available resources: Do competitors limit your available resources by market manipulation and anti-competative behavior. This is a huge one in industries dominated by oligarchies. There are many more of these that are around. Most of these can be alleviated by a fair sharing of revenue. 10 years ago I increased the companies net profit from $500K to $10million. They gave me 5% pay raise and $10k bonus out of a "Theoretical" $200K max.

Thank you, very useful to have someone who has done it in the thread. Would you agree that being born into one of the wealthy families in America would dramatically reduce the difficulty and risk of everything you've described above? All that stuff sounds *so much easier* if you're rich enough to pay others to do a bunch of it, and rich enough to still be fine (even still rich, usually!) if it doesn't work out.

That's a super naive understanding of how it works to "setup a business", outside of I guess a sole-proprietor tiny little situation. And regardless - let me ask you, why must it be all or nothing? Under your scenario, I either take all of the risk myself by founding the business, or I am strictly paid in dollars by someone who did, and nothing in between - but *why*? What's the argument that this is *a good way to do things*? I'm not arguing that it's *impossible* to start a business, or to work and scrape and get lucky and transition into the ownership class in some small capacity. I'm saying having only a few people have true skin in the game for any business is frickin stupid, a bad way to do things, likely to produce half-hearted efforts from employees, and guaranteed to produce the extreme wealth inequality we see today.

I was referring to a sole proprieter situation. Like I'm a web dev and I could start a PLC, then I could work on a contract basis with whomever I wanted to. At that point I am assuming risk in terms of choosing the correct clients to get involved with and receiving increased financial renumeration.

You're not really engaging with my points or questions so I'm gonna move on. I understand how the current situation works *quite well*, having been involved in many businesses in many different roles throughout my life. Most of us agree the way things work today is awful. I was here to explore fruitful changes to make to the status quo. Not to be told how one can, in fact, seek risk through the joys of sole proprietorship. Cheers, have a good weekend.

Ok happy to agree to disagree. Have a nice weekend too!

> If they were born into the same wealth that their master was then sure they would. If they were, they wouldn't work for anyone but enjoy their life. So no, it would not be funded by anyone and there would be no product at all. > I don’t think buisness owners being lucky enough to own things Owning things isn't lucky. There's countless businesses that do not inherit an emerald mine. Pretending like every business is founded because of wealth parents is stupid at best and dishonest and manipulative at worst.

The money companies use to fund projects comes from the value of employees' labor. It would be unusual, at least in the US, for an owner/CEO to be funding company projects out of their own pocket. The company's money comes from the employees' efforts.

> It would be unusual, at least in the US, for an owner/CEO to be funding company projects out of their own pocket ??? Bruh what. Of course many owners have to fund projects themselves. You're thinking only of huge stock traded corpos, but there's a lot more businesses than those lmao. > The company’s money comes from the employees’ efforts. Yes, and the employee receives a monthly monetary compensation that was previously agreed on. The employee has 0 risk involved - if the company goes bankrupt, the employee just looks for a new job. The owner of said company might face life-long debt. I'm gladly willing to criticize CEO pay and the stock market in general because those things are fucked up, but this tankie clowning "MIMIMI MEANS OF PRODUCTION" is so fucking cringe. Businesses are more than that, and pretending otherwise is stupid at best and dishonest at worst.