If you think the problem you're describing is new (50 years old) then you're ignoring a lot of history. — Benkei

I’m not sure you’re understanding what I consider a problem. I’m not saying shareholders don’t want to make money. Shareholder primacy theory is indeed fairly new, and began being adopted and implemented in the 1970s and 80s. Part of this is the assumption about a typical shareholder that you mentioned, which echoes Friedman.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the shareholder value myth is its fundamentally mistaken idea about who shareholders “really are.” It assumes that all shareholders are the same and all they care about is whats happening to the company’s stock price — actually all they care about is what’s happening to the stock tomorrow, not even 5 or 10 years from now.

Shareholders are people. They have many different interests. They’re not all the same. One of the biggest differences is short term and long term investing. Most people who invest in the stock market are investing for retirement, or perhaps college tuition or some other long term project. — Lynn Stout

https://youtu.be/k1jdJFrG6NY

Take a cue or don't but I'm done. It's fucking annoying talking to someone who only thinks he knows a lot about economics. — Benkei

I don’t think that. I mentioned before there’s good scholarship on all of this. Maybe we’ve read different things. Honestly I think it’s just misunderstanding— which is my fault, as I tried to be clear and failed. Not sure the abrupt frustration is warranted, but so be it.

He always said the workers thought it was great and management did whatever they could to throw monkey wrenches in the machinery. He always saw it not as a way to help the workers, but rather as a way to improve the productivity of the whole enterprise. — T Clark

I’m sure he’s right. There’s a lot of good scholarship on the era between roughly 1945-1975, when unions were stronger and distribution more equitable. Turns out this was good for companies as well.

Really? What do you think his surplus value extraction was all about? Not about profit? — Benkei

What does that have to do with shareholder motivation? They’re in it to make money, yes. The motivation is not to make money at the expense of everything else — that doesn’t make sense from an investment point of view. Any asset manager will tell you this.

It’s a strange question because wages are decided and agreed upon before the worker makes a single product. — NOS4A2

Not sure why it's strange. The question in this case is how that number is decided, and by whom.

These wages are determined by the market — NOS4A2

See above.

CEO makes 20 times an average worker in 1968.
CEO makes 350 times an average worker in 2022.

"The market" is an abstraction which explains nothing. The question is about real people. Prices and wages are decided upon by people.

Even so, the profit should not go towards this or that worker, but towards the business at large, because the business is providing income to everyone involved. — NOS4A2

The "business at large" is meaningless. The profits go somewhere. They're reinvested in workers, equipment, R&D, etc., or they're given to shareholders in dividends. These choices are made by real people.

I gave criteria for determining the answers to the OP questions. You seem to think my answers aren't responsive to your questions. I don't see why. — T Clark

You did, I just think they were too abstract and wonder if we could get into more detail about how that would potentially look in real life.

I think workers deserve a decent life for themselves and their families. We can have a discussion as to what is required for a decent life. — T Clark

I share that thought. I think it includes wages and other material conditions, but also decision making participation. That's basically my whole argument.

I don't think Marx was so prescient he wrote about problems that didn't exist until 100 years later. — Benkei

I don't recall Marx claiming that shareholders care solely about profit at the expense of everything else?

Maybe we're speaking past each other. To be clear: in my view, a shareholder cares more than simply profit above all else. In the long term, he's looking to make a profit, yes. But in the short term, he should care about the company itself, the community, the environment, potential corruption, mismanagement, the treatment of the workers. He should care about the company's longevity and quality control. Not just what the stock is doing today or tomorrow. And many shareholders do exactly this -- because they're long-term investors.

It's true that shareholders exist who want nothing but a profit in the short term, regardless of how they get it. Hedge funds are often good examples of this. Fire the workers, cut corners, bleed the company dry, then take the profit and leave. But to take this and generalize to all is a leap that isn't justified. It's like basing our view of human motivation on the behavior of a psychopath -- who make up less than 1% of the population.

I don't understand your objection to "the market". An analogy - I say the electorate selected Biden as president. You say the electorate had nothing to do with it, it was real people. Of course it was real people, and the collection of people who did the voting within the system, I am referring to as the electorate. Both are correct. — PhilosophyRunner

That's a fair point. My objection is a matter of emphasis. If we attribute Biden getting elected to the "electorate," that's true but it's far more abstract than it needs to be, especially if the question is something like "what reasons do people give for choosing Biden?"

There's also the question about whether you're definition of markets is accurate. I'm not sure it is. A market can also referred to a place -- or space -- where transactions occur. Where things are traded, sold, bought, etc. If I go down to the market to buy things, for example, I'm not referring to people but a general space where economic activity occurs.

So briefly, I think it's often used to avoid more concrete discussions. Not by you, necessarily, but by those in power.

A company decided to pay all of their staff the same amount - £36,000. This included software developers and clerical workers.

What happened? They struggled to hire software developers because other companies were willing to pay a lot more for this job (i.e they were paying below market value for the job - but I will only use the word in brackets for you). Equally they were inundated and overwhelmed with applications for clerical jobs because other companies were paying a lot less (i.e they were paying above market value for the job). — PhilosophyRunner

A good example. What my focus here would be is on who decided to give everyone an equal wage and why. Seems silly to me, but I'd be interested in the thought process behind it.

So there's no mystery: what I'm advocating for, ultimately, is not having these decisions exclusively be in the hands a tiny group. I'm not in favor of plutocracy in government, and I assume no one else here is either. I'm not in favor of it in business either.

Causes of global warming: many people using many resources.

(1) Deforestation.

Farming (palm oil, soy)
Livestock (cows, pigs, chickens)
Development (housing, roads, mining, businesses)

(2) Energy.

Oil
Natural gas
Coal

Burned to produce energy for:
Electricity
Transportation
Heat
Industry (steel, plastics, concrete)
Agriculture

-----

Little synopsis I found recently. Sums is up quickly.

I don't care how much profit companies make. how much executives are paid, or how it is determined as long as workers are paid a decent living wage. — T Clark

That's not quite the topic. Regardless, to pursue it: workers aren't being paid a decent wage, in reality. And the reason they're not is partly determined by these OP questions -- namely, how profits are distributed and who makes the decisions. The decisions certainly aren't being made by workers.

But let's assume they are being paid a decent wage. They get enough to eat and live and have healthcare. Is that it? They deserve only that? What if they're the ones doing the lion's share of the work? Don't they deserve more than simply a "decent living wage"?

I would suggest they deserve some say in the decision making, regardless of material conditions.

"The Market" is simply saying the aggregate of the above instead of listing them all out one by one, nothing more nothing less. — PhilosophyRunner

And has nothing to do with how those individual decisions are made. So the "market", back in the 50s and 60s, determined that the average CEO deserved 20 times what the average worker made. Now, lo and behold, the market determines that that number is 350 times.

It's an abstraction used to cover real decisions based on flimsy reasoning. It doesn't matter that most companies don't pay a living wage, and hence that the median income in the US is $32,000 or so. What matters is why so many companies are screwing their workers -- when in the past they haven't.

"The market" is a convenient fall guy.

Says 200 years of reinforced economic theory (market economics) married now successfully to neoliberalism aka "culture". — Benkei

I agree, except for the 200 years part. More like 50 years. I attribute that assumption (regarding shareholders) mostly to Milton Friedman, incidentally. But it's clearly wrong, factually and morally.

Yes this is how it works.

Not how I would like it to work though, but how it works. — PhilosophyRunner

Kind of. Minus talk about markets, anyway -- which is usually used as an abstract cover for real people making real decisions, usually for unjustified reasons.

Again, the question was "what should," not "what is." — T Clark

So the market *should* decide?

Sounds like you were claiming that markets do decide -- which, incidentally, is what most companies will claim.

I don't think markets should determine, nor do I think they in fact determine, how profits are distributed.

I'm perfectly happy to let the amount of profit be determined by the market as long as workers are paid a decent living wage. — T Clark

There's the invoking of "markets" again. But do markets really decide what the CEO or the average worker makes or what prices are?

No.

Shareholders generally only want profit to the exclusion of all else. — Benkei

Says who?

That's defined in the statutes of the company and usually lies with the executive board members. But they are voted in by the shareholders, so any shareholder with sufficient voting rights will effectively decide on the board members, so board members are incentivised to make shareholders happy. — Benkei

You're exactly right, of course. This is the reality we live in. I'm asking about both how things should be run and how they actually run, so this is an important piece.

The board of directors makes most of the decisions, along with the CEO.

So who are the shareholders? Seems like if each shareholder gets a vote, it's a somewhat democratic system.

Each employee should be payed their market value. — PhilosophyRunner

What their market value is. — PhilosophyRunner

The people who put the capital in decide. — PhilosophyRunner

So the people who put int he capital decide the market value, both theirs and their employees?

Nice position to be in, yes? "My market value is 350 times more than my average employee's value."

Your question was what should it be, not what is it. — T Clark

Sure. So how much should that be? There are real life examples, so we can speculate in specifics as well. You offered a rather abstract formula.

In any case, who decides? Everyone? Just the guy (or persons) who put up the money? "Me" is a joke answer, I assume.

The guy who puts up the money gets:

[The money he put up] + [Risk of loss] + [Reasonable incentive to invest]

The other 99 get a salary or wage and benefits that allow living a decent life. — T Clark

How much of the profits does he get?

That’s the question. There is an answer in real life, which is decided by real people. The answer to this also directly affects the “decent life” part.

But if someone does or contributes more than the rest I think it is justified to give to such participant more proportion of the pie than the rest. — javi2541997

Sure. No question. The question is: who decides? What’s the process in deciding? And, importantly, what’s the number? How much should that person (or group) receive of the profits?

I think it should not be more than 49,99 %. — javi2541997

Or the individual with huge percentage could be abusive to others, etc... — javi2541997

Interesting.

In real life, does it play out like this? Who decides? I'm talking of course about business, particularly big business.

The participants in a voting system. 3/4 of the votes could be useful to reach the distribution of proportions among the members. — javi2541997

Hmm. A voting system within a company, you mean?

(3) Who decides (1) and (2)?
— Mikie

Those that have the power to do so. — ChatteringMonkey

Sure...and in our socioeconomic reality, who is that?

(3) Who decides (1) and (2)?
— Mikie

That depends on the economic and political system under which this enterprise is carried out. — Vera Mont

That's true. Let's narrow it down and say the a typical Fortune 500 multinational corporation.

But that's a question of fact. There's also a question of what's just, which I'm also interested in.

Who has made the investment? All 100 equally? The equipment, the capital, is owned equally by the 100?

Whose idea was the enterprise? Do all 100 have equal share on the property rights, if there were any? — ssu

Let's say only a handful of people own the property. I'm not assuming everyone is equal, I'm asking how distribution of profits is decided -- and by whom.

No.

100 people and the accumulated wisdom of 10,000 years of human civilisation and the accumulated capital of 7 billion years of evolving life all contribute to producing something. — unenlightened

100 people all contribute to producing something.

Try again.

:up:

Couple scenarios.

1) Person takes an entire set of silverware, with many valuable pieces, from a home after dinner. Owner finds out, asks for them back repeatedly, and eventually gets a warrant to get them back because the guest refuses.

2) Person takes a fork from dinner, realizes they did so before owner even knows, and returns it.

Quiz: Are these scenarios equivalent?

I’m betting that Trump cultists will fail the quiz.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/earth-hottest-years.html

Hottest years on record, the last 8 were.

And I think these low participation rates are the reason just why employers in the US can be so aggressive against unions. Have a large majority of the workforce unionized and it's politically totally different. — ssu

Yes indeed. Of course, there are higher rates in the 70s and yet they were still destroyed. So it’s also about how strong they are. Unbreakable solidarity is hard to come by.

:chin:

Spoke too soon. Bolsonaro cultists are now storming Brasilia.

The moronic Trump supporters‘ insurrection sure set a great precedent for the rest of the world.

They most certainly can, and I just went through how. Giving less than 90% of corporate profits to rich people, taxing corporations and wealthy Americans at a rate that was common in the 50s and 60s, and not spending 800 billion dollars annually on defense contractors — isn’t a crisis. The characterization that these actions would lead to a “crisis” is nonsense.
— Mikie

My emphasis is on what the actual political system can deliver. Not what it could theoretically deliver. — ssu

It’s not theoretical— it’s happened before. Not in another country, but in the United States.

It’s amazing to me that corporations NOT giving 90% of profits to shareholders is considered beyond the realm of what’s possible.

Nothing will change until there's a crisis. — ssu

True— which is why the workers need to cause a crisis. Through strikes in key industries. Only then will concessions be made.

Or they can rise up violently. Which may be necessary, I suppose.

Can you explain to me how any legislation is ever going to get passed seeing as anything the HFC don't want to veto will never get through the Democratic senate? — Baden

There’s nothing to explain. Legislation simply won’t be passed the next two years— beyond the most necessary bills, and even then not without some brinksmanship.

The basic problem is that the US simply cannot change course without a financial crisis. — ssu

They most certainly can, and I just went through how. Giving less than 90% of corporate profits to rich people, taxing corporations and wealthy Americans at a rate that was common in the 50s and 60s, and not spending 800 billion dollars annually on defense contractors — isn’t a crisis. The characterization that these actions would lead to a “crisis” is nonsense.

Well, this system has gone a long time without a crisis — ssu

There’s been plenty of crises with our current system. 2020, 2009, 2000, etc.

The crisis is that we have a level of wealth inequality not seen since the pyramids. Correct that and the rest follows— including all the hand-wringing about the national debt.

Unfortunately, in the short run, in trying to prevent a wage-price spiral from starting, the Fed is slowing the economy in a way that is likely to lock in employers’ advantage over employees.

Yes indeed. What else is new?

Spot the unquestioned premise:

Inflation hawks such as Powell appear to believe that if wages did go up a lot this year — say 7 percent — employers would pay for them with another round of big price increases, which would trigger another round of demands for higher wages and so on ad infinitum.

Why do they pay for them this way? Why not ABSORB the cost? How? Answer: From the billions of profits that they make. Take some of that money and give it back to workers, while keeping prices the same? Am I missing something here?

Who loses? Well, shareholders. Because that’s who you’d be taking from.

This is the same argument made concerning wealth redistribution, and a related one since the wealthiest 1-10% also own the majority of shares, and these are the people it is proposed that we take from (by taxing more).

Is it wrong? No. Because no where is it written, in law, in finance, in accounting, in ethics, in politics, or in philosophy, that shareholders are entitled to 90% of the profits.

To maintain this 90% number by either (1) keeping prices the same and refusing to raise wages or (2) raising wages but also raising prices (inflation, thus keeping real wages the same) is morally indefensible — but quite apart from that is clearly leading to enormous societal pain.

Leaders and rich folk better get with the problem. A society in pain will eventually revolt, their angry eventually will come for you too. We’re seeing it happen before our eyes already.

In terms of what we working class folk can do about it is join in the revolt. One way is organizing through unions. Without collective action, individual workers are simply expendable if they cause too much fuss, and can be picked off one by one if they start asking the wrong questions or making the wrong demands. Most have no recourse alone, since most don’t have the legal and financial resources to fight back— and even if they did, would be involved in an undesirable protracted fight.

I see a number of outcomes:

1) Corporate boardrooms (and the people they represented: namely, the wealthiest Americans) wake up and start treating workers better, both monetarily and in conditions.

2) Government starts taking a bigger chunk of their profits and redistributes it a la 1930s and 40s (and 50s).

3) Workers force the hand of employers through strikes (and so unions) or force the hand of government through votes.

4) Things remain essentially the same. Employees are hit the hardest, inflation is reduced, profits are kept roughly the same in terms of net earnings allocation (percentage of profits) being given to shareholders, and everything just carries on.

I don’t see (4) going on forever, though. I think that’s the least likely. Eventually something will break— and again, probably has already.

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/workers-employers-inflation-raises.html

I look at it a little different. I think that’s what they CLAIM. But I think a more accurate picture is that people like Gaetz and Boebert want to make a show of things, this way they can claim to be disruptors. I imagine they’ll work something out eventually— how long they manage to keep this up, who knows. Eventually the pressure will be too great. You even have Trump and Greene coming out against them.

If only they had real visions and values.

since I'm not patient enough to spoon feed you anymore that I already have. — 180 Proof

You’re either not patient enough or can’t do it. I suspect the latter, actually. But in neither case did you ever spoon feed me anything. What you did was list a bunch of names that any undergraduate could and said “read.”

That’s not spoon feeding, it’s posturing.

stop whining dogmatically — 180 Proof

Not once have I “whined.” And you’re looking far more dogmatic than I am, given you’re the one that’s refusing to defend your thesis one iota.

A simple “I don’t feel like it” would be fine. Given that you do so often, I would wonder why you bother with a philosophy forum in the first place— but at least it’d be honest.

Sure, there's some truth to that, but like I said, the difference was that they weren't invoking gods or spirits as causes for natural phenomena for the most part. — busycuttingcrap

But who was, exactly? Were people attributing the effects of gravity to invisible angels pulling strings prior to Newton? Did Newton stop being a Christian at any point? Doesn’t seem so…

That Apollo pulls the sun on his chariot or Eros causes desire through arrows isn’t really what was abandoned. Mostly because it never really existed in the sense we think— but even if it did, these “supernatural” phenomena continued on well after Thales.

I think what changed was the understanding of phusis.

Maybe find a place between listing a bunch of names and rolling your eyes like a schoolgirl.

If that’s too vague, I’ll make it more specific: of the names you listed, what statement (from any of them, even the non-Greeks) really stands out to you as supporting your narrative?

Certainly, they weren't scientists or atheists in the ordinary, contemporary sense of these words, but they were important in the eventual development of these things (and so hence the characterization as "proto-science"). — busycuttingcrap

They were important in the development of nearly everything in the West. Including Christianity. Should we call them proto-Christians? (Many have made that claim too.)

I think the problem here is the meaning of religion and science, in part.

this development of breaking away from understanding the world primarily in religious terms — busycuttingcrap

I think the understanding of the world changed. I don’t think the characterization of going from “religious terms” (here apparently equated with superstitions on par with Santa Claus) to naturalistic ones (and hence proto-science) is accurate. I think that’s a story that’s been perpetuated without evidence, and gone mostly unquestioned.

Most of them were at any rate. But they generally didn't invoke gods or spirits as (intellectually/rationally impenetrable) causes or explanations in their capacity as natural philosophers, — busycuttingcrap

The gods were as natural to the Greeks as what we currently call natural, in my view. But who exactly fo you have in mind? Democritus? Thales? Parmenides?

or deliberately misread — 180 Proof

I didn’t misread it. I know exactly what was said— and I know it’s exactly wrong.

:up:

the exploration of alternatives to religious modes of understanding — busycuttingcrap

What would “religious modes of understanding” be?

Again, the claim that these early thinkers were just proto/primitive scientists (in todays sense) is just projection. Every one of the early Greeks were religious— all believed in the gods and spoke of such, all were educated in Homer.

It’s really just part of the mischaracterization of “religion,” in my view. Also a product of the long reaction to Christianity — of which the Greeks knew exactly nothing.

I’ve read every one of those men. Hence “I see little evidence for it.”

The narrative that these men were essentially primitive scientists is unconvincing.

In hindsight, at least in the Western tradition, philosophy concerns – began with – critiques of religion (i.e. magical thinking) — 180 Proof

Why do you say this? I see little evidence for it.

Science offers objective truth; religion offers comforting fictions. — Art48

I wonder how much you've really thought through these statements. You don't elaborate much about it, so you end up with cliche: science good/true/real, religion bad/false/fictional.

This is right out of recent critiques of Christianity from the likes of Richard Dawkins and company. There's something to these claims, but in a very specific sense, concerning Biblical literalists and creationists. It presupposes a philosophy of science and religion which I don't agree with anyway, and the narrow analysis that "New Atheists" do make is done on the basis of this philosophical background. But it strikes me now as scientism. (Which I'm still mostly a part of, by the way.)

Science is just another kind of religion, from one point of view. An important and powerful one -- but also very destructive. I think we should start thinking from this point of view, instead of a mutually exclusive one. Both science and religion make philosophical assumptions because both ultimately arise from human questions and human concerns.

The universe is an objective reality and science has converged to a worldview that mirrors that reality. Ask a physicist, chemist, or biologist in Italy, Iran, and India a question and you get the same answer. — Art48

No you don't. You get many interpretations in science as well, some of which converge. This correspondence view of truth, where we can "mirror" reality of the outside, objective world, should really be abandoned. Fine to talk about in everyday life, but is itself an interpretation of the world and of truth.

But if God is an objective reality, then why haven’t religions converged? If we assume there is one universal reality, we would expect different people of different times in different countries to have insights which converge. Shouldn’t religions “done right” converge? But they don’t. Might the reason be their faulty “way of knowing,” their childlike epistemological method? — Art48

(1) Religions "done right" certainly do converge in many ways and through many cultures. Even when they're not done right, in fact.

(2) If we're going to focus solely on where religions differ (which they do, in many ways and through many cultures), then we should also say that science (the supposedly "non-faulty" epistemological method) also differs; examples abound. If you cannot think of any, then you're not reasoning fully.

Think about it for a minute: why these generalizations? They're not justified, in my view. Just in terms of looking around, not even due to any deep disagreement about epistemology.

2022 may have been a turning point for action on climate change. It was hard fought, and much less than needed to be done, but it was something.

That’s the biggest story from 2022.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/from-climate-exhortation-to-climate-execution

This Year Was the Beginning of a Green Transition

You’d think the world was ending because a small minority of people want to live their lives a certain way.

Stop being sucked into these overblown media creations, and do something important.

What a strange thing to be singularly focused on.