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timberwolf0122 t1_j9d1h0n wrote

This is part of the inherent problem of running a business to make shareholders happy.

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IrrelevantPuppy t1_j9d3ug1 wrote

It’s literally holding us back as a species. The ruling class of humanity doesn’t do any ruling or decision making anymore. They sit on their mountains of money and demand exponential growth and profits relentlessly and the world bends backwards to make them perceive they are effective slave drivers.

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GhostofDownvotes t1_j9dxnmw wrote

> It’s literally holding us back as a species.

This must be a really hot take after five rounds of beer pong and three joints. I felt my fedora tip just from the photons emitted by the screen. What happened to this site LMFAO.

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Silver-Armadillo-479 t1_j9fgvzm wrote

It started so long ago that most people have left due to toxicity and those remaining are toxic and too young to understand history or so far up academia's ass still that they have no actual experience to draw from. Either way, Reddit is fucking terrible. It's not what it used to be that's for damn sure

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GhostofDownvotes t1_j9fk6pj wrote

Tbh, Reddit probably stayed mostly the same and it’s you who grew up.

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Silver-Armadillo-479 t1_j9fkixg wrote

Could be. Started here as a freshman in college, and now it's been almost 15 years since then lol

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GhostofDownvotes t1_j9fkpn0 wrote

Yeah, I mean, you probably had a few really stupid ideas back then. I know I did.

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DanielPhermous t1_j9d8xwn wrote

> It’s literally holding us back as a species.

What would you suggest instead? Businesses usually need some investment to get started. Where should that money come from and how?

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IrrelevantPuppy t1_j9dbj4g wrote

That’s fair, it’s literally too late. We’ve become addicted to capitalism, you cant imagine anything being done without it, and that’s how most people work. Any other proposition will sound ridiculous to you, because all we have ever known is capitalism. There’s other options, we just can’t imagine how they could be realistic, because this is the world we know. It’s not possible to fix this without a cataclysm. We need aliens, an Ai overlord, or some kind of benevolent dictator superhuman to snap us out of this.

We will never be able to get past the “oh I see how it’s beneficial to all humanity, but how does it profit me in the short term?” barrier without something inconceivable happening to all of humanity. We’re gonna stagnate like this for the foreseeable future, if not forever. If the rich have any sway, they do, and it’s all of it, it will never change.

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VelveteenAmbush t1_j9dep2g wrote

> Any other proposition will sound ridiculous to you, because all we have ever known is capitalism.

We've seen some other propositions. The problem is that they all end in immiseration and authoritarianism, and the logic of why they do makes sense, so the proponents of further experiments have their work cut out justifying why their path won't lead to the same place, and they should think about how to run small-scale experiments to prove their ideas before putting whole societies at risk.

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9-11GaveMe5G t1_j9dijmb wrote

> >We've seen some other propositions. The problem is that they all end in immiseration and authoritarianism,

Hey I don't know if you noticed, but the last president, who is on the record as a huge fan of authoritarians like Putin and Kim jong Un, literally tried a fascist takeover of our country, which would have installed him as the authoritarian leader. So if "authoritarianism" scares you, simping for capitalism ain't the way to prevent it

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Adorable-Effective-2 t1_j9e098h wrote

Pretending the dangers of authoritarianism we’ve seen recently somehow equals the historical INSTANT fall into dictatorships we’ve seen out of any planned economic states ie “communist” ones

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VelveteenAmbush t1_j9dk32x wrote

An alternative take is that even with a nutty would-be authoritarian president who literally tried to overturn an election, the system was resilient enough to toss him out of power right on time, with no indications that he came anywhere close to succeeding.

But yes, I agree that Kim Jong-Un is a good example of what you get with alternatives to capitalism.

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EnchantedMoth3 t1_j9drga4 wrote

Stakeholder > stockholder. We need market reform. 85% of the markets are owned by 10% of people. When workers perform well, and their company makes profit, the company uses those profits to buy back stocks. Effectively, the value of labor is funneled to the top in our current system. To fix this, we need fiscal policy that focuses on workers, rather than capital. I’ve no issue with people investing in companies, and getting rewarded for the success their capital helps create, but it should more of a risk than it is today. In this iteration of our system, all of the risk has been outsourced to the workers. Wall-Street doesn’t lose, the American tax-payers are always their to bail them out, whether we want to, or are even told about it, or not. So, the people providing the labor, creating the value, and taking all the risk…those people should be able to own homes, afford health care, afford to raise a family, to dream, and work hard to achieve that dream. But that’s not the current reality in our shareholder first markets. Eventually, this devolves into oligarchy, or some form of autocracy, most likely to play out via fascism…especially if you allow outside money into politics, because the working class loses power, they lose economic equality, which all other equality follows, and governments fail, due to caring for only a single group.

You talk about other systems that end in autocracy, and/or misery but capitalism does too. All economic systems trend towards the consolidation of power and wealth. It is the end-stage of all economics. A lot of older civilizations would reset their economies every x years, due to this.

That is the result of the introduction of humans into theory. It’s the result of the types of people who seek money and power. Greed is just another addiction, no different than heroin, and different people are more susceptible to it. It is the the role of your chosen governmental system to hold this trend back. Ultimately however, it falls on the workers, the citizens, to hold those in power responsible. Capitalism has killed just as many people as communism, don’t kid yourself otherwise. Capitalism is to blame for immense global suffering, and I’ll remind you, America has backed nearly every authoritarian dictator globally…hell, we sat most of them on the throne to further capitalism, and enrich a few. War is a racket of the rich. We export a lot of the consequences of our system, from pain and suffering, to pollution. Out of sight, out of mind.

That being said, I do think a form of capitalism is probably the best choice for a society, with some aspects of socialism sprinkled in. The answer ultimately lies in regulations, and making economic equality the top priority. You cannot allow a certain group to amass wealth untold, or else you increase the number of those in society who can be bought, because they have no chance of ever earning the amount they’re offered.

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VelveteenAmbush t1_j9fw9d7 wrote

> You talk about other systems that end in autocracy, and/or misery but capitalism does too.

No it doesn't, that's crazy. The United States is the longest continuous democracy in the entire world.

> The answer ultimately lies in regulations, and making economic equality the top priority.

No, the richest and most powerful countries with the highest median quality of life are the ones that prioritize growth, not equality. Prioritizing equality gets you the Soviet Union. Prioritizing growth gets you the United States.

> Greed is just another addiction, no different than heroin

The difference is that greed, when channeled through capitalism, creates value for everyone. Jeff Bezos wasn't an altruist when he founded Amazon, but the result is that everyone in the United States can have just about anything they want delivered to their door in a couple of days for free. Steve Jobs was a greedy, rapacious capitalist, but he gave us the iPhone. Etc.

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Rickety_Crickel t1_j9evy8l wrote

There’s plenty of money sitting in corporate vaults overseas. We take that money and set up funds that people in the US can borrow at low to no upfront cost to start businesses. Also we enforce tax law already on the books so this situation doesn’t happen again. And enforce monopoly laws so Kroger doesn’t buy up every locally owned grocery store off of taxpayer dollars.

It’s not rocket science to fix what’s broken, it just requires us to admit that our system sucks ass and we deserve better than a handful of rich assholes hoarding wealth at our expense. We should use that money to help people innovate, not just give away money to rich investors that don’t care if your neighborhood or town or even country fails because they’ll make money off of you either way.

This would be the status quo if not for our politicians being owned by corporations through legalized bribery. So it’s less about what we could have than what we should / would have if not for donkey brained levels of corruption that rival any other country throughout history.

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DanielPhermous t1_j9eyvz5 wrote

> It’s not rocket science to fix what’s broken

Maybe but as your first line is to advocate for wholesale theft and breach the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution, I feel it's just possible that your solution is perhaps ill-considered and overly simplistic.

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Rickety_Crickel t1_j9gaiao wrote

The alternative is to let the rich continue to accumulate more wealth that does nothing while the rest of humanity starves. Corporations shouldn’t have the right or ability to hoard wealth overseas to avoid paying their fair share.

If it doesn’t bother you that you personally paid more in taxes than many millionaires and billionaires I don’t think anything is a convincing argument because the status quo and it’s inevitable future is acceptable. It’s not acceptable to me.

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DanielPhermous t1_j9h6vks wrote

> The alternative is…

Sure. It’s either the current system or your absurd plan. There are no other possible options whatsoever.

> If it doesn’t bother you that…

I never said it didn’t. I just think your solution is childish and unworkable.

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Longjumping_Worry184 t1_j9dfjhf wrote

It's a problem with paying your workers in RSUs. If you run the business to optimize stock price and the line always goes up then your workers always make more year over year without increasing their cash base. Of course the market doesn't always go up, so you have this situation where workers perform great, but stock went down so they effectively make less than last year because a significant portion of their total comp comes from stock vests.

Even worse for newer workers who are just now vesting shares they got 2 years ago when the stock was worth twice as much. They've put up with a lot of shit to make it to vesting and the stock and that payday is half as much as was calculated two years back

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Prestigious_Push_947 t1_j9dze2t wrote

Sure, but as a worker you'll also get an RSU refresh this year at a lower price. When the stock goes up, you'll make a ton more, and I'm sure there won't be articles about the huge raises everyone is getting. This is just part of the game with RSU based comp.

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InvestigatorOk9354 t1_j9dzwrw wrote

That's the gamble, you make less money this year and hope for a refresh, then in two years if you're still there you could get a big payout (assuming you don't get PIP'd and there aren't more layoffs in the meantime).

I've heard there are basically no raises/refreshes this year though because of the layoffs, hiring freeze, and other cost cutting... so it may just be an extra rough year to justify staying at Amazon

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Prestigious_Push_947 t1_j9e0s2k wrote

Yeah, no refreshes would be rough. Honestly, you couldn't have paid me to work for Amazon in the first place because they're so renowned for how poorly they treat people. I do know that a lot of people in my field went there because they've been paying significantly above market for the last couple of years; spectacular comp is the only reason to work for an outfit like that. If RSUs are cratering and you're not issuing refreshes, you're going to lose tons of people. Then again, I'm sure that's what management wants.

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Tainen t1_j9g97yg wrote

the RSU refresh does not hit for a couple years. so this year, no, you don't get additional compensation, you are stuck with 40-50% less compensation.

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Prestigious_Push_947 t1_j9im0sc wrote

This really depends on the company. Most don't require a couple years before refreshes start vesting. Also, comp doesn't go up til after the stock goes up, so it's never guaranteed when your comp will get better again. Like I said, this is the game of RSU based comp. If you treat RSU's like regular income, you're an idiot.

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Tainen t1_j9iwgv7 wrote

yeah, I’m talking about Amazon, given the title of the post. I turned down an offer at Goog and came from Msft for 13 years. Unfortunately Amazon has the worst stock grant program of the 3. There is essentially no addressing down year stock performance, you hold on tight and hope it does better in future years, or you quit and go get paid somewhere else.

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Bright-Ad-4737 t1_j9ea828 wrote

Ideally you want to make everyone happy, employees, costumers, vendors, but of course that includes the shareholders, after all, they own the business.

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timberwolf0122 t1_j9et0cf wrote

But the workers make the money and do the vast majority of the work. During to good times owners get to reap the rewards and take responsibility for the success, during the bad time they should also absorb that too as much as is possible, and take responsibility

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somegridplayer t1_j9f2uc8 wrote

Shareholders make a dollar I make a dime, this is why I shit on company time.

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AlleKeskitason t1_j9kbh95 wrote

Or you could just buy company shares and get paid for taking a shit.

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Silver-Armadillo-479 t1_j9fbhle wrote

You fundamentally don't understand capitalism, or if you do are just woefully misguided. Holy shit. The workers wouldn't have a job without shareholders. There would be no "work" to do and no money to earn. I'm not some corporate shill, but I also didn't stake millions to start a business. If you take risk then you get reward.

If you don't like being an employee then start a business, take the risk with your own capital, and run it however you like. Otherwise, kindly learn some history and economics

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timberwolf0122 t1_j9folig wrote

Because every company has shareholders/s

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Silver-Armadillo-479 t1_j9fouaw wrote

Yes every company does. Even private companies. Money/capital has to come from somewhere to start. A single owner is a shareholder...

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timberwolf0122 t1_j9foxqj wrote

That’s not quite the same as a publically traded company when one thinks of shares now is it

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Silver-Armadillo-479 t1_j9fqngo wrote

It's the same concept, regardless of your claimed minute differences.

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timberwolf0122 t1_j9gkcnd wrote

Well, no. A privately held business doesn’t have to make a bunch of randos with an E*trade account happy.

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Silver-Armadillo-479 t1_j9gl6e3 wrote

The privately owned business usually still has investors. Almost nobody has enough capital on their own to create a large business without raising capital.

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Bright-Ad-4737 t1_j9frjrl wrote

It's not a balancing act. Employees get compensated via their salaries and bonuses. Shareholders get compensated via their ownership of the business, the value of their shares and dividends.

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timberwolf0122 t1_j9gm4a5 wrote

So why should the people doing the work take a pay cut?

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Bright-Ad-4737 t1_j9gqgnu wrote

No idea. I have no clue how Jassy thinks, or how they're going to get out of their situation. Amazon seems like it's kind of an overgrown basket case right now. Maybe they should just start spinning off all the segments/businesses.

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1wiseguy t1_j9dlf4t wrote

Do you understand that the shareholders own the company?

If you own a coffee shop, are you going to run it in a way that makes you happy, or some other way?

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timberwolf0122 t1_j9esjvh wrote

I’d run it so it’s profitable, but if there was a dip i don’t think id ask my staff to take a pay cut to keep my salary at 100%

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