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| ▲ | triceratops 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Shares are proxies for ownership/control. But they don't have to be. There could be a law that shares paid as tax have no voting power. The government gets capital gains and dividends but no votes. The sovereign wealth fund could be required to be structured as a black box, with visibility into it severely constrained. Selling is governed by a strict mechanical algorithm, or at random, to prevent indirect pressure by the government ("Do what we say or we'll dump all your shares"). | | |
| ▲ | lazide 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Hahah, why? | | |
| ▲ | triceratops a day ago | parent [-] | | To tax automation. That's where this thread started. Someone said you can't tax automation and I showed how you could tax it. I'll expand on a theme I've written about many times before. We want businesses to become more efficient and productive. We want them to produce more with less labor. This is highly desirable. But we tax that ever-shrinking pile of labor more and more to make government finances pencil out. That makes no GD sense. | | |
| ▲ | lazide a day ago | parent [-] | | None of what you’re proposing actually does that | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It actually does. You've been too busy insulting me to read anything I wrote. | |
| ▲ | scotty79 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | What we are doing now for sure doesn't do that. | | |
| ▲ | lazide 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Cool, so we should change everything and hand more power to the government which is already enabling all this with no plausible reason why it would even make it better? | | |
| ▲ | scotty79 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes. The power to not borrow money from the rich is something that government direly needs. As $39 trillion dollars of debt, that we all need to pay interest on, clearly shows. | | |
| ▲ | lazide 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | the gov’t literally can just print money, no need to borrow it at all from any individuals. |
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| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | China is currently the most prosperous country in the world. Maybe we should copy whatever they're doing. | |
| ▲ | scotty79 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Shares are proxies for ownership/control. Connection between shares and ownership is tenuous at best and rarely exercised. > What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses. 10% is not control. China is not democratic. Given that, Chinese companies seem to be doing quite well under those conditions. Better than Western ones. > Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country? Do you really want all economic power to be controlled in undemocratic manner rather than democratic? Because that is literally what we have now and society and governments are getting impoverished and companies are getting outcompeted too. | | |
| ▲ | lazide 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does. In most large corporations, 10% is often the largest single shareholder and/or bloc. In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh? So no congress, no laws, no vote of the people after they pick whoever is 'in charge'. Doesn't sound very democratic to me? | | |
| ▲ | scotty79 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does. Look at the stock market. Out of billion trades maybe one is related to actual ownership of actual company. “Shares are mostly casino tokens tied to the success of a company - or rather, the perception thereof. > In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh? It could be shares without any control rights. Still reduces the amount of resources outside of democratic control. Not by taking control yourself but by removing it from unelected individuals. | | |
| ▲ | lazide 2 days ago | parent [-] | | And yet Zuck (as majority actual shareholder) has everyone by the balls at Meta. That everyone retail seems okay buying shitty share classes doesn’t change what I’m saying, just that most retail investors are chumps. So you want the gov’t to be an even bigger chump? | | |
| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Great example. The charter for Meta basically guarantees Zuck has a majority of votes no matter who owns the shares. That is how shares are disconnected from ownership and control. | |
| ▲ | scotty79 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Chump who got a 10% of trillions of dollars for free? Any day. You are a chump only if you paid for it. And government never should. The idea of government borrowing money is insane. In theory it was supposed to punish government for overspending, but it doesn't because the punishment is just included in future overspending. Government gets poorer and since they represent us, we get poorer. And more and more money lands in the hands of petty tyrants. And Zuck owns meta. He has 57% of voice so he can single handedly make any decisions forever. Not very democratic. He has 13% of shares, which as I mentioned are basically casino tokens he was allowed to create out of thin air (at barely any cost) and sell to capital holders to get their actual money into meta. | | |
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