Comment by cygnus@lemmy.ca on A conservative billionaire had some things to say

Building the company isn’t what made him a billionaire. Yahoo grossly overpaying for it is what made him a billionaire.

And who profited, disproportionately, from the company’s acquisition by Yahoo? The employees who worked to build it into what it was?

Did they get their fair share of that ‘grossly overpaying’ by Yahoo?

They didn’t? <Shocked Pikachu>

Did they get their fair share of that ‘grossly overpaying’ by Yahoo?

If they owned shares, yes. If they didn’t, then why should they? The owners of the company sold the company at a massively overinflated valuation, so the shares were “worth” a lot of money. This really isn’t a complicated situation.

If they didn’t, then why should they?

Because they did all the work!

Work and ownership are not the same. If I hire a plumber to fix something in my house, does he become a part owner of it?

If you hire a plumber, you do it as a customer and not an employer. Quite a difference!

A customer pays the full value of the purchase, the plumber is the one in charge and charges as much as possible. That’s how they make profit. That’s why you still own your toilet, the plumber already got the full value they were owed.

An employer never pays the full value, though! The employer, as the one in charge, pays as little as possible. They pockst the difference as profit. That means the employees are always cheated out of the full value of their labor, they are never paid what they are actually worth.

A customer pays the full value of the purchase, the plumber is the one in charge and charges as much as possible.

Except here we’re talking about ownership/shares, not payment for labour. Many in this thread are outraged that not every employee of Broadcast owned shares, and the implication is that as soon as you work for someone, you should receive a share. My plumber example still stands. Should he get a “share” of my house, even though I already paid him for his labour, as Cuban paid his employees?

An employer never pays the full value, though! The employer, as the one in charge, pays as little as possible.

Again,we’re talking about shares, not labour. For all you know Cuban was drawing zero salary from the company. The two are completely different. You’re all so doctrinaire that you can’t mentally distinguish labour versus ownership of a thing.

Thanks for not disappointing me.

Because the only ethical kind of company is a worker-owned co-op. It should not have been possible for employees to not own shares, but it was, and that’s bad.

I personally try to avoid absolutes. I would have probably said, “a more ethical kind of company…”, but totally agree. Also really wish more people understood and supported co-ops.

So you believe that workers should pay to work at a company that is operating at a loss, right?

I sort of agree with you that you can only become a billionaire by stealing someone else’s money, but in this case I think your argument is kind of bad.

If Yahoo overpaid, it’s not the employees of his own company that Cuban took the money from, but rather indirectly from Yahoo’s employees (former and current up to that point).

I also have to say, as far as ethics goes, there is enough indirection there that unless you were a dyed in the wool communist you would have problems finding fault with it. The shell game sufficiently blurred where the capital originally came from and it looks more like winning the lottery than exploiting your employees to the people receiving the big paychecks.

Similar things can be said about venture capital recipients. They get money, and obviously it’s money that the people who gave it to them did not do sufficient work for them to have gotten it themselves, but the source of that money is so convoluted that it might as well be gambling profits.

I’m not actually saying it’s ethical, and I referred to it being a shell game. I wasn’t talking about shell companies. Awesome meme though great job! 👍

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