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Half of world's wealth in hands of 1%.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/oct/13/half-world-wealth-in-hands-population-inequality-report

Do you think it's fair? You hear "businessman creates place for work", but who is this businessman? Often it's guy like Elon Musk, who has no real skills and just happen to benefit from work of specialists. Of course he gets more money than others.

Is he really necessary? People often think that nothing would work without that one guy who is basically slave-driver. But is it really true? He would be nobody without workers, while skill is a resource by itself.

Government controlled production could work just fine without slave drivers who exploit people for relatively low wage. Anyway, discuss.

Counterpoint: 80% of the Fortune 1000 got bumped off the list over the past decade. Technology is better at redistribution of wealth because most business owners are clueless about how the world is changing.

For example the company I work at is doing online shopping but charging more just for in store pickup and they're wondering why it's not working out financially.

1% controlling 50% of the world's wealth isn't fair, sure.

What also isn't fair is taking it from them for the simple reason of it not being fair.

Believe it or not, not all rich people are dishonest slave drivers who exploit people to get every cent out of them. Punishing everyone for what some parts of their community do is not justice, nor is it fair. People who think managers are people who sit on their ass and order people around have never been in a management position before.

Why not have a company democratically controlled by its workers along with consumer oversight?

This discussion won't probably end well

Let me get my stock of Torch and Pitchfork to sell first

Also, there is nothing wrong with Wealth inequality.
Just like how some people born with talent or gain an ability that other don't have/get

Some people born with shitton of money or acquire shitton of money. There is nothing wrong with that, there is always Top and Bottom in this world.

…who is this businessman?

It generally works like this: 1) Person has idea, 2) Person hires other people to implement idea, 3) Use money made from idea to fuel business, 4) Grow stagnant as corporate bureaucracy overtakes idea, 5) Person has idea to replace old idea. Of course, this is more on the "entrepanuer" side of business that's so often looked at. Most businesses are based around more fundamental things (manufacturing, food, industry) that don't see revolutionary ideas nearly as quickly as tech or communications do.

…he gets more money than others.

Because he's the one who's taking all the risk. The employees don't have to spend millions of dollars on payroll, materials, buildings, etc. The employer makes the profit because he's the one spending the money.

Government controlled production…

Doesn't have a great track record. Think of it this way: when a company is run badly--when its CEO is incompetent or its business plan is stale and not working--it'll go bankrupt and maybe die. What happens when those people are in charge of a whole country's economy?

All centrally managing things does is make what would be many small potential failures focus onto a single point. A bad decision by the Secretary of Jobs or his economists, some politician trying to score points, etc. and it spirals out of control.

Then there's the economic issues involved. Economies are vast and incredibly hard to manage and control. It's impossible for a government or any entity to pefectly manage every facade of and economy. There's just too many variables, too many employees. Too many goods and services. Mistakes (under/overvaluing things, poor distribution of goods/services, mismanaging employees and their skills, etc.) will happen and that leads to instability which leads to more mistakes.

olors64 said:

Why not have a company democratically controlled by its workers along with consumer oversight?

They do have that. Publix, a supermarket chain which employs 170,000, is currently the US's largest. And from the few vacations I took in Florida over the years, I must say they are one of the better supermarket chains around.

What you just described is a proof that cooperation is superior to the worker/consumer-side economic theorems.

Economy work best under slavery.

In the event that worker-consumer co-operatives are heavily improbable, then the workers become enslaved by the consumers.

If races are integrated with one another, everything will be fine

The British Empire, while on a map it looks like the Indian Subcontinent was fully conquered as much as the other subjects of the empire, the truth is: India's population is too high, its people are culturally different, and there had no political formula for governing a place with those who shared Gandhi's worldview at the time.

Complaining about work is something supporters of worker-side economics support too, is it not?

If the firms' consumers elected workers via semi-annual election, the two parties are satisfied with one another economically and politically.

Capitalism is great, I wouldn't have it any other way. However, what we are leaning towards is Corporatism, where top corporate leaders are influencing laws and bills of the United States with lobbying and Super PACs, aka legalized bribery. This is used to give bought politicians the upperhand in elections, but of course, the lobbyists want a return on their investments.

If the consumers have de jure and not de facto control over a company, the workers are influenced by those responsible for generating wages; the consumer is able to consume, as they know workers are out for consumers' best interests.

The reason I began posting in this thread is not because I deny the needs/wants of either consumers or workers, but because I deny the need/want for companies to have a corporate structure that is unjust towards workers, the latter of which ends up being indifferent and, by proxy, unjust, to those who give the company income.

You can't have corporatism without capitalism.

Corporations wouldn't be able to influence government decision through lobbyists if there was no reason for them to do so.

The co-operative is capable of lobbying when whomever controls it notices an injustice in government policy.

xTSGx wrote:

Because he's the one who's taking all the risk

That's an after the fact rationalization to justify the status quo. The reason that business owners get insanely rich is that they own the means of production. Because they own the means of production they have power over potential employees and can select for the ones that will accept their terms.

The default terms in capitalism is that the person who owns the means of production is entitled to everything created using his or her property and that the people who actually use the means of production are given a stipend based on the specifics of their contract. When Bill Gates makes $23,148 per minute, it isn't because he is generating that much revenue for the company. It's because his employees are making that much more money than their salaries and company expenses combined, and as the owner of the company, he gets to keep it without having to lift a finger.

Reply to Paragraph 1:

When I say the consumers must oversee the means of production that are de-facto controlled by a companies' workers, it is to ensure that the workers don't produce a given good/service with malicious intent.

Reply to Paragraph 2:

You referenced the fact that a given company is dictated at the whims of one or few people in an economic system that encourages individualism. A company designed to generate capital for those who do nothing is fundamentally flawed; there is always, unless the internet's existence disproves the following, the potential for a given head-of-company to forget about what is in the workers' best interests, and only responding to unrest when it threatens the branch/company as a whole.

Tchefuncte Bonaparte said:

That's an after the fact rationalization to justify the status quo.

No, it's how business fundamentally works. The owners/creators of a business undertake the risk in spending the money to get things rolling. In some cases, it makes them tremendously wealthy, but a third of all companies in the US fail before five years. Those owners likely don't have any money left at the end, as they had to burn through it to stay afloat, whereas what employees they had still have the money they were paid.

That's the trade-off. If you're an employee, you do your job and you keep the money you make. If you're the owner, you do your job and hope your company is profitable enough that you're able to keep the money it makes. Otherwise, you have to dump it all back in to keep things going.

It's because his employees are making that much more money than their salaries and company expenses combined, and as the owner of the company, he gets to keep it without having to lift a finger.

Bill Gates doesn't own Microsoft. He holds 4% of their stock right now. Very, very little of the current wealth generation he has is from Microsoft. Most of it comes from his investment firm, Cascade Investments, which he dumped most of his money into. Like anyone should, he took his extra money and invested it to make more money.

A better argument would use Satya Nadella, Microsoft's current CEO, who makes $84 million per year, compared to the $91,500 the average employee makes. But he doesn't own Microsoft either, the shareholders do. And they're apparently fine paying the CEO that--as most publicly-owned companies are.

And if you're curious, Publix, the employee-owned company, pays its CEO nearly two million. Far lower than Nadella, but still much higher than the average employee (who's average pay ranges from 18-103k depending on the job). CEOs always seem to make a lot more, which I'd say is due to the specialized services they provide which narrows the "supply" of candidates, thus increase the cost.

The social classes are not divided between the "haves and have nots", there is a third class: those who moderate to balance the needs of those who lack and those with enough.

- An economic system that relies on individual control of economics devolves into capitalism when the individual is overcome with greed. A real-life example is the U.S.

- An economic system that guarantees workers' rights and not consumers' rights devolves into totalitarianism when the worker is overcome with pride. A real-life example was the U.S.S.R.

- An economic system that attempts to balance worker and consumer interests devolves into fascism when the moderating force is overcome with power. A real-life example is China.

- An economic system that attempts to balance the interests of consumers, moderators, and workers devolves into anarchy when everyone is overcome with lust for one another. A real-life example is Japan (lgbt rights, although de jure restricted are, to my knowledge, de facto unrestricted.)

My point is that it is fundamentally not risk that entitles people to profit in capitalism, it's ownership. If I invest $5 in stock at a certain company that's only worth $100 then I receive profit proportional to the percentage of the company I own. It doesn't matter that my risk was next to nothing, because I own a percentage of the company. Once that company is successful and reaches a much higher value, say $1,000,000, then someone wanting to purchase the same amount of share of the company would have to pay $50,000 at which point they would be entitled to the same percentage of the profits as me, because they own the same amount of the company as me. Their risk was much higher, because they were putting 10,000 times as much money on the line as I was. But because they own the same percentage as me they are only entitled to the same amount as me.

Risk is an inherent part of operating a business, and it is definitely something you should consider before investing to see whether or not it would be a good decision, but it is not what actually entitles people to profit from their investments. Ownership is.

@olors
Does your dealer accept paypal?

@olors
Does your dealer accept paypal?

Out of the many transaction mediums I've seen on the internet, like Patreon and Amazon Pay, I notice PayPal being most common amongst websites.

Let me drop of Nuke of context on those oft quoted and spooky wooky numbers.

>Half of the world wealth is in the 1%.

Let's talk about income

According to the Global Rich List, a website that brings awareness to worldwide income disparities, an income of $32,400 a year will allow put you into the 1% income in the entire world. $32,400 amounts to roughly:

30,250 Euros
2 million Indian rupees, or
223,000 Chinese yuan

70% of the American workforce alone makes more than 35,000….

That means, 70% of America's workforce, is part of the global 1%.

60% of Americans are working. Roughly 192 Million People. Of that 192 Million people: 134 Million are making more than 35,000, or, 134 Million Americans are in the global 1%.

Let's talk about wealth

Wealth is defined as net worth of all your assets minus the debt.

To reach the status of 1% of world's wealthiest, you’d have to possess $770,000 in net worth, which includes everything from the equity in your home to the value of your investments. That’s equal to roughly:

720,000 Euros
49.8 million Indian rupees or
5.3 million Chinese yuan

Americans rank extremely high in terms of household wages – sixth worldwide, according to a 2013 Gallup survey – but not as high when it comes to median wealth. In fact, the 2017 Credit Suisse Wealth Report ranks the U.S. just 26th by this measure.

There are a number of reasons for this disparity. One is that U.S. consumers tend to rely on credit more than their counterparts in, say, Europe. Credit card debt diminishes net wealth. The typical U.S. household carries a whopping $134,643 in debt, according to the most recent Census Bureau data.

Even so, many middle-class Americans who have spent years paying down their mortgages and saving for retirement belong to the upper echelon of the world's wealthy.

The Disparity

The bar to enter the top 1% wouldn't be this low were it not for the extreme poverty that so much of the globe endures. For example, an adult in India has a median wealth of $608 in total wealth, according to a report by Credit Suisse. The average wealth of adults in Africa is even lower at just $411.

Compare that to the wealth of $49,460 for the average adult living in North America and $11,319 for Europeans. Now, the median wealth represents what most people have, the average will be much higher especially in countries where assets are so skewed toward the ultra-rich, like the United States. The average wealth of the U.S. wealthy is $344,692 per adult – this shows how much the few on top have, not just in the U.S., but globally.

To put it this way. A single American makes as much money as 36 Indians.

When you think of the top 1% it's easy to imagine a small cabal of business suit CEOs, in their yachts, mansions, and decadence. After all 1% is so small to everyone, and it is the smallest whole digit on a 1-100% range. Easy as hell to dismiss the fact that in terms of global population, the top 1% are your parents.

What does all this mean?

It means that the above mentioned stats, which are constantly used by the media and those who push a vehemently re distributive rhetoric, blatantly use this to manipulate you into thinking that you, and the rest of the world is under the thumb of an elite corporate rich. You're not. And things are radically improving for most of the world.

That's the most long-winded falacy of relative privation I have ever seen on the internet. I don't know if I should congratulate or curse you.

bq And things are radically improving for most of the world.

But this is the kind of thing that gets my goat. It can be said about any period in human history, because save for invasion or natural disaster, the trend for human societies is one of steady improvement. And if you pan as far back as "the world", it's all the more statistically likely to be true. It's a non-statement, the sort of thing spouted by modern economists, a variation on the one message all apologists for the status quo inevitable fall back on: "things could be worse".

You could, at first, maybe explain how anything I said is a fallacy.

>But this is the kind of thing that gets my goat

I bet. Because it points out that the so called system in the "status quo" [read expansion of global capitalism, free markets, and free-er societies] has also given humanity, unprecedented improvement.

>the trend for human societies is one of steady improvement.

Yes. What you're missing is magnitude.
The magnitude by which the world's standards of living are improving faster than in any time in human history by magnitudes.

""things could be worse"."

Yes. They can. And considering that there are people who foolish believe in economic ideology that has time and time again led to 20th century starvation and deprivation remains de jure by a bunch of silver-spooned young westerners, it can happen again.

Here's some inconvenient charts.

Think Progress charts.

If this is what the "status quo" is giving humanity I welcome it any day.

I'm not looking forward to the second age of the Robber Barons.