• m0darn@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    One of the challenges is of course that the wealthy don’t get paid. They own and control assets that appreciate in value.

    What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don’t mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses.

    I’m not actually advocating this (yet), just curious what people think would happen if we did this.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      The same as now

      The people that own it privately will have controlling public shares. Can’t force them to sell at a given value and if you did they would just have a diverse portfolio that they swap between each other

      I think finding a private company that brings people the levels we are talking about here are not an issue

      Profit sharing works better, after x earned, everything is divided up between workers

      • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        Taxing profits is a good idea but they’ll figure out some creative accounting to avoid making them.

        I think we just need to straight up take ownership of a portion their shares that increases based on how little tax they are paying.

    • chingadera@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Enshittifcation would be mandatory via forced infinite growth to profit shareholders.

      Instead, we can make the employees up to middle management and lower own a minimum of 60% shares of every company that way they’re not constantly getting fucked and they actually have a voice.

      • J Lou@mastodon.social
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        8 months ago

        I would have 100% of voting shares be inalienably attached to all workers in the firm. Non-voting preferred stock can continue to be free floating property rights @canada

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        If employees own 60% then they should invest 60% of a company capital.

        • chingadera@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          They are. With their time, whether that probationary or goes away if you do + some other obvious grey areas. This whole “business owners are taking all the risk so they have more money they can ever spend” nonsense is costing us, costing the government, and costing the environment. Shit has got to go.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don’t mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses

      Not sure if that would really lead to any significant change. Most billionaires “own” publicly traded companies. In fact, most billionaires became billionaires when their companies initiated an IPO.

      The problem is that rich people can use their stock as collateral for huge untaxable loans. What we need to do is figure out a way to classify and tax these loans without taxing things like mortgages.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      imho I think this is the wrong way to go - there are some companies out there that continue to exist and thrive because they’re not jerked around by shareholders. Valve, being a great example.

      tax the fuck out of every asset imho, but no private business? eehhhh extreme solution that doesn’t really fix the problems.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don’t mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses.

      There’s something to be said for mandatory stock awards to all employees (with no contractor sub-contractor loopholes) calculated to enforce a controlling interest among current staff.

      Of course, arguably, I just described a union with more steps.

      Edit: I think this won’t necessarily need to be mandatory, after current shareholders wise up that their current crop of CEO’s aren’t actually serving their interests.

      But, if it works, there’s an argument to be made for making something mandatory to set a baseline expectation for human decency.

      Which I suppose amounts to crowd-sourcing to staff things not currently handled by OSHA.