Relationship of Marxism to Progressive Policies and the Virtues or Risks Thereof

[Emily's Cat]

Bollocks.
Not all Shareholders are equal - in fact, most don't matter at all except as pay pigs.

All shares are equal. That's how shares work. Someone who owns more shares can have more influence, certainly. I don't think you understand how shares work.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Anyone can be a capitalist! Anyone! All it takes is a modest emerald mine or a small loan of a few million dollars from your dad to get your foot in the door. Did those poors even think of that?!

This is ridiculous.

All it takes is a 401K or an IRA or a simply stock purchase to be a capitalist.

 

[Emily's Cat]

In the UK the single best predictor of a person’s lifetime wealth is the wealth of their parents. It is amazing the biological process that has ensured that most of us are born into the right and just wealth bracket.

In the animal world, the single best predictor of a critter's survivability is the survivability of its parents.

Of course the stability and success of parents influences the stability and success of the offspring. Duh. I'm all for helping out others - a strong social group increases success for all members of that group. A strongly bound village survives hard times.

Do you think that parents should have no influence on their children? Or that all adults should be required to spread their influence to other people's children?

 

[acbytesla]

Pretty sure this is entirely wrong. You're treating this like it's a zero-sum situation. As if the manufacture of a plan prevents someone else from manufacturing a car - and that's obviously and observably not the case. There's no lack of cars out there. Alex having a plane doesn't in any way at all prevent Sam from getting a car.

No, it's right. It's Econ 101. It is always a zero sum calculation. You can't do two things at once. Ever. You can't use a welding machine at two places at the same time. You can't use a crane at two places at once and you can't use the same capital simultaneously. You can only hope that you can turn it over quickly.

There are in fact a lack of affordable cars. Companies have dropped making high volume low margin automobiles to sell low volume high profit automobiles. As Ford recently did with their successful Escort model. Oh they still sell an Escort model. It is however a different vehicle no longer described as an economy car, but an SUV priced $5,000 more. And that has an effect on the used car market making them unaffordable

You can get a full understanding of the distribution of income by looking at the industries that are profitable and industries that are struggling. Are the products for the masses or the wealthy? The private aviation industry is soaring, as is the yacht building industry

There are plenty of rules and regulations that I think provide too much protection to corporations... but that's completely irrelevant here. The fact that corporations can have limited liability and
embed arbitration requirements into their sales contracts doesn't support your assertion.[/HILITE] Nobody is having a car taken away from them so that someone else can get a plane.

Yes it does. That they are allowed to do this is scummy and uses their wealth and power as leverage. And by the way, these customers didn't sign something with that clause, they wrote the clauses deep into the owner's manuals and on the packing that was discarded by the installers before the installers. And along that line, I have never heard a single customer ever demanding binding arbitration

Profits aren't Value. Tesla's value is significantly higher than its profits. You're conflating income and net worth.

FWIW, I also think it's absurd that anyone should be paid a salary that high... but I don't think it should be illegal. Additionally, you really should try to make the distinction between salary and compensation - they're not the same thing. And when someone's compensation is heavily based in stock, there's a significant risk involved. What's worth a lot today could be worth nothing tomorrow. It's not actual money, you know that right?

And value isn't profit. But if you're not creating profits, what the hell are you doing? This is a shell game. The so called value in the case of Tesla is the possibility that some day it will generate profits that warrants it's stock price. And if it doesn't, the original stockholders and board will have sold enough of their ill gotten gains, I mean stock, long before. Musk may not have received his trillion dollars, he'll stll walk away with billions.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

All shares are equal. That's how shares work. Someone who owns more shares can have more influence, certainly. I don't think you understand how shares work.

in theory.

in practice, a company will always do the bidding of one person with 100,000 shares rather than 100,000 persons with 1 share each.
That's how humans work.
Again, that is what happens when you think that Economics is anything more that simple models that only very poorly map onto human interactions: never mistake the model for reality.

 

[Emily's Cat]

in theory.

in practice, a company will always do the bidding of one person with 100,000 shares rather than 100,000 persons with 1 share each.
That's how humans work.

That's how shares work. Each share is a vote, essentially. One person with 100K shares can cast 100K perfectly identical votes. Unless the 100K people with 1 share each all have exactly the same view, they're not going to have the voting power that the one person does. If a company has 200K shares, and half are owned by Alex, and the remainder are owned by 100K individual people, then of course Alex has more influence - Alex owns half the value of the company!

I will reiterate again that I have a philosophical objection to publicly traded shares in the first place, and I think stock markets are a bad idea, and secondary markets an even worse idea. But my objection to them doesn't mean I don't understand how they function.

Again, that is what happens when you think that Economics is anything more that simple models that only very poorly map onto human interactions: never mistake the model for reality.

I don't think economics is a simple model - and nothing I've said suggests such.

 

[Emily's Cat]

No, it's right. It's Econ 101. It is always a zero sum calculation. You can't do two things at once. Ever. You can't use a welding machine at two places at the same time. You can't use a crane at two places at once and you can't use the same capital simultaneously.

You know we're talking about two different people, using two different vehicles, manufactured by two different companies, using two different welding machines and probably two different welders, right?

Alex having a plane manufactured by Gulfstream has no effect on Sam buying a Kia.

 

[acbytesla]

You know we're talking about two different people, using two different vehicles, manufactured by two different companies, using two different welding machines and probably two different welders, right?

We're talking about the use of available capital. Money chases money. Companies don't manufacture products for customers who don't have money to buy those goods. Instead, you focus your capital on those that do. So they don't manufacture welders to produce goods for those people.

Alex having a plane manufactured by Gulfstream has no effect on Sam buying a Kia.

It totally does. Alex buying a plane for his own personal travel is investing his resources in an industry that creates little to nothing in capital goods. Capital goods being described as goods that create capital or consumer goods. The plane is a consumer good. And unlike consumer goods for the masses, it turns slowly. That's another reason it is best for society to widely distribute income and wealth. Wealth and income turn faster. Economies rebound from down cycles faster.

Income inequality by itself is not a bad thing. In fact from a technology perspective it's required. Customers with extra income being early adopters. Lots of industries including electric vehicles wouldn't have developed unless people with money to burn weren't buying Teslas in 2010.

But like everything, it's a matter of degrees.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Z

I don't think economics is a simple model - and nothing I've said suggests such.

All of economics is piss poor models.
It's not a science, but it pretends to be.

And a company should give Exactly The Same attention to 100,000 single share owners than to a single 100,000 share owener, but they don't. This is a system that intrinsically favors the already rich and excludes small owners.

 

[acbytesla]

Z

All of economics is piss poor models. It's not a science, but it pretends to be.
And a company should give Exactly The Same attention to 100,000 single share owners than to a single 100,000 share owener, but they don't. This is a system that intrinsically favors the already rich and excludes small owners.

I disagree. It's absolutely a science. And it really isn't that hard to understand. But greed and stupidity get in the way. Everything happening today pretty much happened leading up to the Great Depression. The Gilded Age, isolationism, tarriffs and their retaliation. It's history repeating itself. As much as Putin is inflcting great pain on Russia, Trump is doing the same to the United States. He has turned the United States into a pariah nation. nation. Nobody wants to do business with the US any more.

The wealth and income inequity has killed consumer demand. It was inevitable.

 

[Darat]

I disagree. It's absolutely a science. And it really isn't that hard to understand. But greed and stupidity get in the way. Everything happening today pretty much happened leading up to the Great Depression. The Gilded Age, isolationism, tarriffs and their retaliation. It's history repeating itself. As much as Putin is inflcting great pain on Russia, Trump is doing the same to the United States. He has turned the United States into a pariah nation. nation. Nobody wants to do business with the US any more.

The wealth and income inequity has killed consumer demand. It was inevitable.

Economics is a subset of social science that tries to look 'arder than social science in general by throwing maths around and pretending it's making realistic models when all it is doing is the old physics jokes about "if we assume cows are perfect spheres"; it is still a soft science. Any hard science of economics is going to come from AIs which can cope with massive data in ways humans can't, I dread to think what that will result in.

 

[steenkh]

And a company should give Exactly The Same attention to 100,000 single share owners than to a single 100,000 share owener, but they don't. This is a system that intrinsically favors the already rich and excludes small owners.

If all 100,000 single share owners could agree (they can't) then theoretically they could have the same influence as the single 100,000 share holder. But even then, they wouldn't, because the chairman would cast the deciding vote to support the single share holder.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I am quite fond of the mix of welfare and capitalism with restraints that we have in the Nordic countries. When the balance is right, it works really well.

The thing about welfare, and universal health care, and good, free schools for everyone, is that it benefits the capitalists as well - healthy, well-educated people are very useful employees. It also makes for a stable society in general.

Welfare states don't mix with capitalism, because the defining characteristic of capitalism is that there are no limits placed on the owners of capital whereas welfare states place significant limits on the owners of capital.

What welfare states or the social democratic model work with is allowing private for profit enterprises to provie wants whereas the state provides needs, a kind of regulated mixed for profit/socialist model.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I think most of the slop we hear today about "Marxism" is Critical Theorist (re)interpretation of Marxism.

No most of the slop we hear today is third reichist nonsense like the above quoted.

 

[acbytesla]

Welfare states don't mix with capitalism, because the defining characteristic of capitalism is that there are no limits placed on the owners of capital whereas welfare states place significant limits on the owners of capital.

What welfare states or the social democratic model work with is allowing private for profit enterprises to provie wants whereas the state provides needs, a kind of regulated mixed for profit/socialist model.

I really don't have e clue of what you're trying to say. Perhaps you can reword it. Are you saying we shouldn't have a social safety net?

 

[Darat]

in theory.

in practice, a company will always do the bidding of one person with 100,000 shares rather than 100,000 persons with 1 share each.
That's how humans work.
Again, that is what happens when you think that Economics is anything more that simple models that only very poorly map onto human interactions: never mistake the model for reality.

Limited liability was a good idea - for its time - it needs to be readdressed, probably a sliding scale - make shareholders of more than 1% lose some of their limited liability protection and you keep doing that until say you get to 25% and then it is all lost, your capital, your wealth is then on the line.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I suggest the traditional Arab model: Investors get half, the people who actually do the work the other half of all gross income and gain in value.

The basic hero in Middle Eastern stories is the daring merchant who risks life and limb to discover far-away places and make fantastic deals, coming back with riches beyond imaging.
The basis for this is the concept of one Party (investors) having all the financial risk (their money) and the other Party (merchant) all the bodily and legal risks. Hence the equal share of gross income and gain in value.
If either party is unhappy with the way the venture is going, they can dissolve it, paying out whatever income has accumulated equally, returning the remaining assets to the investors.

Sindbad is of course the second most famous tradesmen, after Mohammed, who successfully manged to haggle God down from a minimum of 50 prayers per day to only 5 (true story in Islam).

 

[Emily's Cat]

Limited liability was a good idea - for its time - it needs to be readdressed, probably a sliding scale - make shareholders of more than 1% lose some of their limited liability protection and you keep doing that until say you get to 25% and then it is all lost, your capital, your wealth is then on the line.

I dunno, maybe. I think limited liability is a good idea for investments, regardless of the form which those investments take. It seems reasonable to create a dynamic in which nobody can lose more than they put up. If you go beyond that, it's going to severely hamper investment.

The older I get, and the more I watch the world change... the more I think that the problem isn't limited liability, it's the stock market. It's the process of turning shares into commoditized items to be traded without a real connection to the underlying value and expected outcomes of the company on which the shares are based.

It would complicate a lot of stuff... but if shares could only be purchased directly from the company, and not traded in a secondary market, I think a lot of problems would be mitigated.

 

[Darat]

I dunno, maybe. I think limited liability is a good idea for investments, regardless of the form which those investments take. It seems reasonable to create a dynamic in which nobody can lose more than they put up. If you go beyond that, it's going to severely hamper investment.

The older I get, and the more I watch the world change... the more I think that the problem isn't limited liability, it's the stock market. It's the process of turning shares into commoditized items to be traded without a real connection to the underlying value and expected outcomes of the company on which the shares are based.

It would complicate a lot of stuff... but if shares could only be purchased directly from the company, and not traded in a secondary market, I think a lot of problems would be mitigated.

There are two components to the stock market one is a measure of ownership, the other is gambling, plain and simple, oh its tarted up and made fancy, and you have experts that can read a horse's form sorry a company's form but if you keep in mind it is gambling it all makes sense. The problem is that we have a class of gamblers who have managed to con society into giving them wads of other peoples' money to bet with, yep just what you want to do, give an addict a never-ending supply of their drug.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There are two components to the stock market one is a measure of ownership, the other is gambling, plain and simple, oh its tarted up and made fancy, and you have experts that can read a horse's form sorry a company's form but if you keep in mind it is gambling it all makes sense. The problem is that we have a class of gamblers who have managed to con society into giving them wads of other peoples' money to bet with, yep just what you want to do, give an addict a never-ending supply of their drug.

The gambling aspect has gotten far out of control, and that's made even worse by derivative markets. The problem, as I see it, is that I don't see any reasonable way to eliminate (or even reduce) the gambling aspect, so long as stock remains a publicly tradeable commodity in its own right.

I don't have any objection to companies selling portions of their value or future profit, whether that in terms of explicitly limited fundraising via bonds or in terms of stock. I understand the utility and flexibility that such mechanisms enable. It's the market for stock that I view as creating more risk than it mitigates.