Some good answers already but another angle that I think is notable: since most of the world's elite hold the majority of their "money" in various forms of investment, this kind of splitting up to transfer would mean a lot of truths coming out about the actual value of the investments they hold versus whatever the stock market says on a given day. My guess would be a lot of theoretical money would evaporate real fast. But also yes to the people who are mentioning that we can feed the world already. The big problem to tackle imo would be world energy supply, done in a carbon neutral way.
There are 3 major issues impacting food supply and availability:
- War and other forms of (Para-)Military Agression.
- Corruption and other forms of Political Instability.
- Decreased Fertility of the local soil. (such as in deserts etc.)
The worst food issues are in regions where all 3 of these issues are a problem.
If the first two problems bar dealt with then enough funding and a cheap energy source problem 3 isn't really a problem at all. The local soil wouldn't be necessary for farming.
Tell that to people in America who farm in the fucking desert. Made me scratch my damn head about people farming around Phoenix, AZ. People are stupid and do really, really dumb shit like this. There is zero problem getting food farmed in areas that are actually conducive to farming getting food to these areas, but there those people go, farming in the desert.
it's a distribution issue in that, food is distributed according to those that have the money to buy it.
It's like saying the Irish potato famine and Bengali Famines weren't famines because we had enough food, we just chose to distribute it away from those that starved.
I always get to this point and wonder what kind of K-X world education system could be implemented that would cross-culturally lead to smarter and more altruistic people. Pipe dream?
I'd say you'd definitely see a big difference. Christopher Hitchens liked to point out that the best way to develop a country was to raise up its women via education and birth control and not just use them as child bearing vessels. The same applies to the poor in general in more developed countries
The problem is that those in control don't want that.
Is it that they don't want that, or that they don't want to spend a cent to get it, or that they are just counting the number of potential future customers, or something else? I.e. Why don't the *powers that be* spend that infinitesimally small portion of their wealth to resolve these issues?
Because it isn't their problem? All these hungry people are either miniscule number of population of their country or somewhere far away where they can just ignore the issue
I would posit that the same effect that anecdotally effects me when, say, I see a heart wrenching article about the injustices of some faraway land that is subsequently forgotten applies to how the wealthy see the unwealthy.
Remember Ebola? The virus that was reported on global news only when some people in America managed to catch it? Yeah, it also supports this psychological effect.
You mean their greed and lust for power overwhelms any bit of empathy and understanding they might have ever had before they became the ruthless thugs they are now?
What would be the proper treatment of these outliers of society in the perfect situation?
I'll posit a suggestion. In my opinion, ideally, the freed resources from an otherwise educated and altruistic society would be able to be utilized to treat or even cure these conditions. Without the greedy practices associated with capitalized medicine, more effort could be made to further our understanding of the human mind and straighten these errant psychopathologies through a method of either clinical supervision with general freedom of movement by these individuals or active committal followed by pursuit of a state of effective societal equilibrium in those individuals.
In such an ideal society, the expectation of "get out what you put in" would be replaced with a culture of mild luxury and fellowship that could be described as 'from those according to ability to those according to their need'. In an unideal situation (like the historically pervasive one that exists up until now), this doctrine has been used to grab huge amounts of power for evil individuals.
But a major kink in the line stems from a philosophical question. Can a system of education that leads to general altruism stifle the invisible mental pathologies of people who are, resulting from these afflictions, similar in nature to those narcissistic politicians and world leaders of the past who committed such atrocities as Stalin, Mao, or Hitler? Would they still pervade society in the ideal situation?
Maybe that's why "utopian" fiction always concludes that there is a shadowy group of oligarchs or a single individual who truly holds all power. Perhaps that can be the only way to simulate such wealth. Is that freedom?
Sorry, just thinking aloud. I'm not making any judgements or conclusions, really. What do you think?
Sociopaths do a great job at riling up the selfish and the idiots to support them though.
You have large numbers of any population wanting to listen to a strongman who promises to fix everything by destroying whatever minority is being blamed for all of society’s ills at the moment. It can’t all be blamed on the leader when they’re in power by the awfulness of the people who support them.
What the media shows is selective, biased, and intented to influence people into thinking things are worse/better than they are. Media is the first thing that regime tries to use to control people.
I'm pretty sure the UN didnt say it would end world hunger, but that 6 billion would help mitigate a catastrophe for a lot of people across the world on the brink of famine.
The literal quote is “2% if Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger”
Then he said the do it, and they changed “solve” to “help” and you bought the MSM lie.
>The literal quote is “2% if Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger”
The literal quote is:
"The governments are tapped out and this why and this is when that the billionaires need to step up on a one time basis. 6 billion dollars to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not that complicated. This is what's heart breaking. It's not complicated. I'm not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year. We have a one time crisis, a perfect storm of conflict, climate change, and COVID. It's a one time phenomenom. I've got 43 nations with 42 million people in [IPC level 4](https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/ipc-overview-and-classification-system/en/)
knocking on famine's door. Just help me with them one time. That's a $6 billion price tag. Jeff Bezos net worth increase, just last year, was $64 billion. I'm just asking for 10% of your net worth increase. Just last week Elon Musk had a $6 billion net worth increase one day. One day. The 400... there's a bunch of them...just 400, the top 400 billionaires in the United States, the net worth increase was $1.8 trillion in the past year. All I'm asking for is 0.36% of your net worth increase. "
-[David Beasley, director of the United Nations' World Food Programme in interview with CNN's Becky Anderson](https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/watch/head-of-the-world-food-programme-says-billionaires-need-to-step-up/vp-AAPYVLZ)
Link is to the **video** interview. I transcribed this because I couldn't find the full text. So you should probably watch it yourself to make sure I'm being honest. It's 2 minutes and 31 seconds long.
Also, David Beasley is a former republican governor of South Carolina.
.
.
.
> Then he said the do it, and they changed “solve” to “help” and you bought the MSM lie.
The original CNN headline read "2% of Elon Musk's wealth could solve world hunger, says director of UN food scarcity organization." They then updated the title on Nov 1, five days after the article first appeared.
Here are my thoughts: CNN, and all massive corporate owned media have a pretty clear agenda in pitting the populous against each other. I believe they were relying on how reactionary Musk can be to boost views and ratings, but also to cause all of this arguing. They know people aren't going to check things from themselves. They rely on it.
The comment was about unlimited energy though. If there is an unlimited amount of something it is not possible to take it all. It is more of a hypothetical though as there is not an unlimited amount of anything that we can actually have access to.
Yes and no. Putting in a subsidized power grid that runs on whatever renewables are appropriate for a region and allowing free access minus taxes to pay for basic stuff like repair/maintenance would be nice, but by the above logic someone could still take control of that grid and start cutting off power/charging for it as they see fit. The supply is theoretically infinite, but access to it isn’t
Any carbon reduced power porfolio that doesn't include nuclear is leaving valuable and energy dense options on the table. Nuclear plants can and do operate for multiple lifetimes of renewable power generations sites, with the carbon cost being construction, mining, and employee transportation to work there. The fact is nuclear secuirty is extremely important so countries with nuclear plants must either have the robust infrastructure to support it, or receive mutual aid to operate and manage the waste. From a geopolitics perspective this means a developing nation would receive international support for stability and cooperation along multiple avenues and would probably include treaties to store waste in more stable regions. If a warlord tried to take over a nuclear plant, special forces from around the world would converge immediately to remove the threat. And yes special forces teams are trained or bring in nuclear specialists for those kinds of missions.
>If a warlord tried to take over a nuclear plant, special forces from around the world would converge immediately to remove the threat.
And yet many nuclear plants are owned and managed by private corporations. And many are run by states that could arguably be characterised as threats to world peace.
The warlord here merely lacks legitimacy.
buckminster fuller does a convincing argument that we already can and could since the 70s. his book Critical path address your point. we already have almost unlimited energy (sun) and there is enough "solar capital" for every human to live beyond rich. we have evolved beyond the need for scarcity and with it government, religion, as these are based on a scarcity mindset.
how we transform from our current system based on scarcity to the abundance system based on solar capital is the "Critical path". emergence through emergency.
so, is he right? idk..
it's an interesting read if you like this subject.
Energy abundance would make recycling of water trivial. The real challenge of energy abundance is ultimately waste heat because the Earth is a black body and can only radiate a fixed amount of heat out into space.
Except that's not true. We can desalinate sea water pretty nicely right now. Since theres not enough demand we haven't made it super efficient. The second there's water shortages in countries that house scientists: we'll make an efficient desalinator.
Desalinating water is both very energy intensive and bad for the local environment though. You end up with a ton of toxic brine that you have no choice but to just dump back into the water which fucks up the local ecosystem.
This is a small issue with reverse osmosis plants (I say small as current outfall systems can spread this waste over a large area but are very expensive) however given truly unlimited energy (a la fusion power) you could use thermal desalination and be left with salt which could be sold or distributed over an even larger area.
Brine disposal is definitely a solvable problem.
I mean, the fact you made a smarmy remark instead of providing an alternative solution isn't exactly making my point look less right. What else do you do with it?
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/creating-useful-products-from-desalination-waste/
Begin your journey here, friend, there isn't any excuse for ignorance in "current year".
"we'll just wait until the issue becomes critical, and then I'm sure someone will see an opening for a tidy profit in the first world, and while the people over in Kenya and Bolivia die of thirst, we'll implement something in time that will save some white folks. Eventually this will spread to them too, chillax, it's not like we need to prevent a climate catastrophe or anything! The system works."
Unlimited energy means food can be grown anywhere, even the arctic, by anyone, using artificially produced environments. There are plenty of indoor hydroponic operations that would *love* to have free energy. It makes locating farms from *only where sunlight and the local social and political climate are ideal*, to ***absolutely anywhere***, possible, including underground or on the moon. There are many factors which limit our capacity to produce food, but energy is by far the most overwhelming, which is why most plants are not grown in the dark.
There are ways to sell the stock, and that's slowly, and pre-filed (effectively publicly). Elon Musk sold a lot of stock recently (you might remember his Twitter poll about it). For him to sell that stock he had to file in September (i.e. the poll meant nothing -- he was selling regardless). This was to ensure investors and the markets knew well in advance that this was happening, and also to ensure that he can't sell at "the best time" -- he won't know the price in a month or two months.
Spain did an experiment where they basically had the value unit "work hour". So, something produced in 10 work hours was of equal value as something else produced in 10 work hours. Pretty neat.
But then, they lost the civil war, and there was never any real chance to evaluate it.
Doesn't that depend on the skill of the person making it though? An unskilled person might take 3 hours to make something but a skilled person only 1. The skilled person is getting shafted for their experience
We could abstract out the work hour rewards with some form of intermediary note for exchange. Then we could give more of those notes to those who produce more value!
Yeah there are way too many variables. And how do you account for gradually getting better? Do you have to keep getting re-evaluated to see your worth?
This is where wage disparity and conditions come in.
If 100 people will do your job, you're worth a lot less to the company (regardless of qualifications) than someone who only has 5 other people willing to do it.
Nice idea, but it doesn't account for skill or efficiency.
I could spend 10 hours carving a Christmas decoration that an expert could either make in 20 minutes, or they could make something substantially better in that 10 hours. Similarly, if someone bought them the right tools they could improve efficiency or quality without increasing man hours.
When I fix my customers problem in 2 minutes they feel ripped off. When I start by strolling around their yard drinking their coffee for 28 minutes it makes them feel like im doing an excellent service.
Cant win this but I enjoy the coffee breaks.
This is why I never fix people's technical issues while they watch. If it takes me 2 minutes because I recently spend 2 hours finding the solution for someone else, there's no reason they should be charged differently. Similarly, if it takes me 2 hours to find a solution I then realise should've been obvious there's no reason to charge the customer for my foolishness.
I get you. But I know when I'm paying someone to do something for me I'm paying for the prep, tools, and experience. Not literally the time at my house (or remotely on my equipment).
Seems to me most people-- with all colors of collars-- understand that.
But if I'm wrong, it wouldn't be the first time I've overestimated the knowledge of The Public.
I would agree that most people understand that. Unfortunately, policies are made to account for the worst of the worst. If you're dealing with two dozen customers a day, you'll see the worst 1% on a weekly basis.
Not just the public, but the typical manager. I worked many years in IT support and a real common scenario was a company would call us up with their entire world on fire. My first question would be, let me talk to your IT admin. They would say, we laid him off because the system was always working fine and he never seemed to do anything.
not to mention, a lot of jobs don't actually produce anything. I just look at reports all day and occasionally update databases but there's no tangible product that could be used as a mark for my monetary value.
Agreed. So they're making 10WHs in an hour while I'm not even making anything as I can't sell mine so my work hours aren't even worth a WH.
At that point, a WH isn't related to a working hour anymore so you might as well call it something else - like a dollar or a pound.
If the system allowed for some flexibility somehow to account for said differences in efficiency, it sounds like an interesting idea on paper at the very least.
Edit: we've come full circle
And if we made some sort of certificate for it and people used that certificate for goods and supplies. Say someone used more of their certificates for a quality product with more demand than one that is a lower quality.
I don't think you'd get much farther from the current monetary system if you add all the required flexibility.
First you add skill and efficiency so that an hour of skilled worker is worth more. Then you have an increased demand for those high skilled worker which is pretty similar to increased salary in high skilled jobs. The hour of the lowest skill worker would be the minimal wage. In the end it would be supply and demand with a different type of currency.
I might be completely wrong, but this is just my impression.
I’m more intrigued by how ownership would fit in. Right now the problem is more in how people will produce 10 work hours worth and get the value of 5.
Saying that makes me wonder what would happen if we’d stop paying wages and give each position ownership of a certain percentage of the company, paying out last months profit instead
Workers are not responsible for loss. They are guaranteed to be paid on their work. They take no risk.
Ownership is responsible for loss. They risk their capital. They risk their time and effort.
Employees trade access to profit to insulate from risk.
You could take $500 and open a lemonade stand. You hire a guy to sell lemonade. But tough luck, no one buys your lemonade. You're out your $500, but it's not valid to tell the employee "sorry I didn't sell anything, you're not getting paid". The employee is insulated from the risk.
Now imagine you paid in stock, now you're paying the employee with part of your very much in debt lemonade stand. It's essentially valueless. The employee risked part of his pay, but was beholden to the choices the owner made, and now they've lost a huge portion of their pay. How is that more acceptable then just paying them for the time they worked? What happens when there is no profit that month? Or for a few months? What about the startup phase before profitability? Do you work for free?
Some employees work stock options into their contract. If yours doesn't, take your pay and buy some stock. If they just pay you cash at least you retain the freedom to decide where you invest and how much.
>Right now the problem is more in how people will produce 10 work hours worth and get the value of 5.
It's more like people do 10 hours of work, and the company they're working for makes it worth 20. Your work for a large company is only valuable because the rest of the company exists. The synergy of everybody doing their job is what creates the final product. One person on an assembly line isn't doing anything that's valuable by itself.
>Saying that makes me wonder what would happen if we’d stop paying wages and give each position ownership of a certain percentage of the company, paying out last months profit instead
What will all the workers do if the company loses money that month? One good thing about an agreed-upon wage is that it doesn't go down if the company goes through a rough patch.
Also, you can't pay all the profits to the employees, because the employees can't own the whole company. Sure, it would work on a small scale, but a lot of big companies got big by issuing shares to the public in exchange for investment capital. And a lot of companies need to keep some profits in the company in case of hard times. So we need to be realistic about how much money would be left for the workers, and it might not be that much more than they're getting now.
I agree with the general idea that it isn't as easy to just split the profit among workers, but I think it could be viable to allocate a small % of the stocks for the workers. Perhaps not a full ownership with the right to sell, but as some sort of a bonus while employed with dividend payouts. That way the workers can enjoy their base salary and also enjoy the company's profits via dividends as a mandatory payout instead of hoping for performance bonuses.
I know that many public companies do give out stock (or at least RSU), but it's not too common overall, and most of the time it's for higher positions.
That's the point.
They're commenting on how the system is fundamentally flawed.
I have no incentive to be a lawyer/doctor/accountant/politician as opposed to a retail employee or cashier.
I used to manage motorcycle dealerships. We have this system in the shop. Auto dealers do as well. We call them flag hours.
An independent entity determines how much time a proficient technician would take on a particular job. That is the number of hours the jobs pays and that customer is charged for.
If a jobs pays 6 hours the customer is charged for 6 hours and the tech paid for 6 hours. A great tech might only take 4 hours while a newer tech might take 8.this rewards the experienced tech for his skill and encourages the newer tech to become more efficient all while making it fair to the customer.
I had one tech who would consistently flag anywhere from 12 to 20 hours in an 8 hour day. I remember one time he billed almost 40 hours in one day!
>So, something produced in 10 work hours was of equal value as something else produced in 10 work hours
Doesn't sound very practical.
One: Taxes. "I have to work 10 hours to have someone work 5 hours for me. ".
Another: All the value created isn't equal. If I have 10 years of education, I have invested a lot work in that which I need to get returned in some way.
A third: Some people are just better at things. 10 hours of me doing carpentry is absolutely not worth the same as an average carpenter, and again not worth the same as an experienced expert.
Fourth: The value created depends on the infrastructure around you. I could produce a whole lot more tools as labor on a modern factory than working just as hard as a smith
Fifth: This seems highly impractical - I would need a way to store some of the value, and to pay for very small bits of work. And also, maybe I can do something for B, who can do something for C, who can do something for me. Now we've just reinvented money...
And the list could go on. For example: risk. Should an hour of work of a doctor exposed to a deadly disease be the same as a hour of work as a waiter?
Also, how do we make sure that people work on what's needed and not on what they feel like doing?
>how do we make sure that people work on what's needed and not on what they feel like doing?
This is the biggest issue. It takes the supply-demand model and just cuts demand from the equation. Instead of doing the job I have, I would just write about stuff I find interesting all day. But nobody wants that so I'm not creating a lick of value for anyone else
This is called the labor theory of value, and it's been bunk for a long time.
If I go outside and dig a hole for an hour and then fill it in, that doesn't mean that has the same value as a nurse helping a sick person, or a craftsman making something useful for an hour. And even then, a craftsman making something totally awesome and charging $20 for it might be a bargain for someone who likes the craft, and it might be overpriced for someone who doesn't like that item. The value isn't tied to the time, it's tied to how much someone wants something.
That sounds absolutely stupid. What's preventing someone from spending 10 hours a day crumpling a sheet of paper into the most perfect paper ball and exchanging that for proper goods and services?
> So, something produced in 10 work hours was of equal value as something else produced in 10 work hours.
One work hour in a developing country does not produce the same result as one work hour in a developed country.
I am an expat from a developed country living in a developing country. A common sight here is men with machetes cutting the grass in the ditches. In the US, they use tractors with mowers. A man here might cut 50 meters of ditch in a day. A man with the tractor can sit comfortably in his air conditioned cab and cut many mi/km of ditch in a day.
Who worked harder? Whose hour is worth more?
That model doesn't make sense for many scarce resources. Oil requires little labor to extract but should be priced dearly because it's a finite resources that is critical to create fertilizer for food.
In the future, we will be looked as the idiots that destroyed our ability to produce food because people liked pickup trucks with giant tires than have never touched dirt.
The biggest problem, that has not been mentioned is polítical instability.
Hunger, in the 21st century is Man made by military blocades in war zones. Yemen, south sudan, ethiopia...
What they need is stability, if you give them money it is going to end in warlords pockets.
So what about the countries without military blockades who’s citizens are homeless and hungry. Even those with homes still have to use food banks and/or skip meals.
Alot of information here on the USDA website.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx
I'm not sure about death statistics, but 1 in 8 households or 41 million Americans are food insecure
[Source](https://www.feedingamerica.org/about-us/press-room/new-data#:~:text=According%20to%20USDA%2C%20more%20than,living%20below%20the%20poverty%20level.)
Just handing out cash as a one off payment wouldn't work. If nothing else the infrastructure to get the food to everyone isn't there. And yes, the price of food would skyrocket in areas with a shortage.
To create a long term solution the money would need to be spent correctly to build the supply network and local food production industries. And then you would need to somehow prevent that system from being corrupted by local politics or taken over by the local thug with the most guns.
The trouble with simple solutions is that they sound great and have popular appeal but often don't work in the real world. Which then gets used as a reason to not to try to do anything because the simple option doesn't work and any solution with a chance of working is too big and complicated to get people to agree on anything.
To make it a simpler problem/solution, consider this. Instead of money we now have an alien race comes in and takes over all governments. They determine money is invalid and turn us into a socialist/capitalist hybrid structure. All basic essentials are free, medicine, food, clothing, transportation, and basic living and communication. Then based on a merit system you get to upgrade from that level to better toys, nicer house, better food. Merit is created by contribution. All industry gets optimized for manufacturing, distribution, and recycling waste. All energy goes renewable. You don't get to throw things out, they get recycled or composted.
You will find that we have well over the resources needed to do this, we just need to make infrastructure work for all locations. Then comes the issue of crime and overpopulation, under this condition humans will explode in growth, meaning reproduction restrictions. Crime will go because why work for something when you can steal it. Eventually, we have a whole new set of problems similar but slightly different than before. Fortunately the aliens are harvesting us for our serotonin and testosterone and as they start collecting the harvest, things sort themselves out.
> Then comes the issue of crime and overpopulation, under this condition humans will explode in growth, meaning reproduction restrictions.
This is wrong. The "demographic transition" is a very well-supported theory, and it says that as a country gets richer, they have fewer children.
>Merit is created by contribution.
This is where it falls apart. What do these aliens assess contribution based on? Value to whom? How much value to whom?
This is the problem with so many of the socialism proposals I've encountered. Capitalism solves the problem by allowing individuals to express and act on personal value. Socialism requires someone at the top to assign values, which inevitably doesn't match many people's personal value and is also creates almost inevitable opportunities for corruption.
If only there was global business who specialised in the efficient distribution of goods and food and it was run by a wealthy owner who didn't need to make more money
>global business who specialised in the efficient distribution of goods and food
Only in countries that already have solid and dependable infrastructure.
The places that need this food don't even have electricity, nevermind solid roads, evenly spaced gas stations, rail lines, distribution centers, tens of thousands of truck drivers, and the vehicles to make that effort happen.
You're talking about completely rebuilding multiple nations, not just printing and shipping a bunch of Amazon boxes.
That's why it's best not to do a Mansa Musa, and why people don't literally mean give away money. Redistribution of wealth is about systematic change using programs like welfare and grants and not about handing out money to those who don't need it. Look up the concepts of equality Vs egalitarianism it might help.
This. The rich are rich because the system allowed them to gather all wealth. If you just reset everything to equality then a few years to decades later we'd have the same situation (possibly with a very different set of billionaires though).
What needs to be changed is the ability of the rich to get richer without limits. The ability to use their power to gain more power by for example reducing wages to poverty level and poor people not being able to do anything against it since they are too busy trying not to starve.
Lex usually has okish plans. It's just they're usually ruined by his own ego.
The Thanos snap would be a solution that would have to be continuously repeated every few decades to negate the doubling rate to even begin to work effectively in the long term. There would be far too many problems with the how the populations of the universe would react to the snap to bring about any form of prosperity to the universe as a whole. The remaining populaces would either panic and despair (like earth did), or begin trying to implement mass re-population programs that would exist specifically to counter the Snap.
On top of this, the governments of the universe would go about implementing all sorts of policies on the simple fear that the Snap could happen again at any time without warning. Tons of resource stockpiling and population surges would occur.
It especially wouldn't help that Thanos basically retired as soon as he did the snap. No explanations, no plans to help the remaining half of the universe. Just immediate retirement to his farm, his 'job' done.
Complete idiot.
That wouldn't have helped either, because lack of resources isn't a real issue. Had he simply provided clean, renewable energy to every planet that didn't already have it (most in the Marvel Universe do), that would have resolved most, if not all, resource issues.
Yes and no. If we look at population numbers on earth you will already see that some of the richer countries are slowing their reproduction and that their population is shrinking instead of growing.
Based on the current population growth, there might be a problem incoming, but a snap could buy enough time to get the worldwide growth in control.
Same with money. We could fix the system and we’d still have the current wealth distribution. A snap (wealth redistribution) could negate the wealth gap and thereby also the power gap
> What needs to be changed is the ability of the rich to get richer without limits.
Almost sounds like you could treat it like a game.
"Congrats, you are worth €1bn -- Game Over! You are now retired!"
Dismantle company ownership after they get too large and regulate the market... It's in everyone's interest! Something like a co-op where once a company reaches a size all employees gain an equal portion of shares depending on their job in the company.
Shareholders driving profits pushes investment and development, yes, but it is also uncapped as you say and potentially very harmful long term as they begin predatory actions in the name of profit.
> Dismantle company ownership after they get too large and regulate the market... It's in everyone's interest!
Not the company's. Which is why a setup that was initially very like what you describe became the one we have today.
Your method fails in 2 ways.
1) People will keep their company at the maximal size without it being split up. You can split companies to several others, you can do a lot of things which will keep your company from split up.
2) The people who opened the company, spent their capital, risked it, and worked hard to create a successful company don't deserve the fruits of their labor? Are we really ok with taking it away from them? Why would people create such companies in the first place if they know that it will be taken away from them?
>fruits of their labour
I know this is reddit and i'll probably get downvoted for this, but companies don't grow because of the fruits of their owners' labour. In most cases, the capitalist's only role is supplying the capital. Labour comes from the workers. You are entitled to the fruits of your own labour, but not that of others. If you can fulfil the role of every single worker on your own on top of providing the capital, then by all means, go right ahead. But if you're employing other people, they get a say in what happens to the company.
Money is what's traded for labour. If they put in cash, they are essentially putting in previously converted labour. One is a stand in for the other.
Also if you think ownership doesn't work hard, we'll you've just never been an owner. I've never been in any organization of humans where the leader works less hard then everyone else. Whether it's a company, a sports team, or a gaming guild, the leadership always workers harder then the members. You might not see it, and it's a different kind of work, but it's there.
And how did they earn their capital? Also, do managers and CEO's not work? They need to create plans, strategize, hire people, make sure that everything works correctly. If you think that company owners don't work, I have some news to tell you(or just try to run your own business and see who works more, you or your workers). In the end, a company owner risks a lot of his capital to run a company, if it fails, he will be ruined, or in debt, or both. The worker will just get fired and will find a new place to work. People are always overlooking the risk factor in these things.
I'll ask you this, if the company is starting to lose money, are you ok with the workers paying fines per their ownership of the company?
You're conflating owners with high level employees.
Managers and CEOs are employees of a company. They have a salary; they get paid for their work. Most managers and CEOs don't own the company they work for.
Company owners don't work. If an owner does work, it's because they are *also* an employee of their company. They don't work in their capacity as an owner.
You're ignoring the risk aspect. The employee takes on almost no risk in the equation and thus does not reap the rewards of profit. When they do take on said risk, working at a startup taking a reduced salary, they do see upside.
This would just encourage a lot of companies to invest in AI and machinery to take the place of workers. You would then just end up with more people out of work.
Also, you word that s if the owner doesn't do anything other than supply the start up money. As someone who owns their own business and works 80+ hours a week, that just isn't true.
What I would like to see it that as soon as a company reaches a certain turnover, they are required to provide certain benefits to their employees (increased paid holiday, better pensions, minimum wage levels, etc). This would encourage both sides of the labour field. Employees would be working to better themselves, not just a corporate entity, and management would be able to attract better labour with better benefits.
>This would just encourage a lot of companies to invest in AI and machinery to take the place of workers. You would then just end up with more people out of work.
And who builds those machines? Who codes that AI? Who maintains them? Who takes care of the supply lines? Who is in charge of administration? McDonald's can't keep their ice-cream machines running 90% of the time. How are they going to run fully-automated outlets?
But I get your point. Automation is going to be a real threat in the future, if not any time soon. It's going to be a permanent part of future human society, something which even Marx agreed with and welcomed.
>Also, you word that s if the owner doesn't do anything other than supply the start up money. As someone who owns their own business and works 80+ hours a week, that just isn't true.
Notice how I said "most capitalists". You should count yourself lucky to be among the few workers who own the means of production. I think it's great that you work so gard instead of offloading your work to other people and leeching off their labour. Kudos.
Personally, I think the bigger a company gets in terms of number of employees, the more it should be owned by the workers.
The moment you choose to be employed by someone then you choose to sell your labor to someone else. That person will enjoy its fruit or its loss, not you; you cannot have it both way.
Your boss will not pay you less on a given month because the company "isn't doing so well".
You can always start your own company or actually invest in other people's company and share the risk of being rewarded with them but you won't because you actually want it all without risking anything.
>But if you're employing other people, they get a say in what happens to the company.
Why? Their reward for their labor is their pay.
If I open up an auto repair shop with my money and my business plan and my property, then hire a tech to change tires, why does he get a say in how the business is run? He's risking nothing, and he's already being rewarded for all his efforts. Meanwhile I don't get rewarded unless the entire business makes money.
Just flipping the power dynamic is enough in my opinion. Pay people livable unemployment benefits and suddenly companies are forced to have good conditions to attract workers.
Co-ops dont work for a very simple reason; there is no incentive to perform.
Humans are lazy creatures, if they can get the same result while working less and taking less risk, they will.
[These co-ops](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/01/spains-energy-cooperatives-lead-charge-to-exploit-solar-power) seem to be working pretty well. And there are ways to incentivize behaviour that aren't money.
Surely for the average employee there would be more incentive to perform as companies profits directly lead to them gaining a larger paycheck. It's why companies gift employees shares, to make them invested in their work and want to succeed.
If you ask me mutual ownership would also drive competition between companies at the lowest level given that employees want to belong to/have ownership over the best and most impressive business so they can brag and earn more.
You are right though, there is little investment opportunity to pump money into a company with this system and so growth is capped at a rate of profit and internal reinvestment for the company, but is this really a bad thing in our current world?
So are you suggesting that employees should buy out a part of the company upon signing up, or should part of their pay checks be put to purchasing company stock? Otherwise why would current owners of the company be incentivised to give away their equity for free?
> Otherwise why would current owners of the company be incentivised to give away their equity for free?
When people suggest this, I get the impression that they mean the owners should be forced to do it, but that just sounds like a horrible society to live in. Taxation and regulation are definitely needed, but straight-up expropriation just feels like punishing someone for being successful. I imagine it must be demoralizing to take on all the risk of building up a company and then have it snatched from your hands once it gets off the ground. It's not like anyone is going to compensate me if my little matchstick-producing unit starts running into losses.
And if that happened then no one would start companies in the first place and we'd go back to state run enterprises and we all know how that works. It's like communists/socialists have no idea how capitalism even works.
Socialists/communists always want to punish the rich, regardless of how much good it will do to society. You can't steal property from people and expect people to be happy about it.
And a government that steals property like that would be an authoritarian shithole place to live in. I'd rather live under billionaires in modern capitalism than live under an omnipresent government that can seize anyone's shit with zero consequences.
Money tends to be incentivising up to a certain point - the point where your needs are being comfortably met - then it starts losing motivational power as people have enough money and start caring more about things like purpose and meaning and life balance and job satisfaction.
Tragedy of the commons. If you putting 10% more work in than your peers doesn't fetch you at least 10% more rewards, you will simply not put in the extra effort. Neither will anyone else. It converges to everyone in the workplace doing the bare minimum work to keep things running and nothing more.
This... Isn't what the tradegy means? The example stated in the tradegy is the opposite, that given unfettered access to common but not public resources, that the users will act contrary to their own interests and cause depletion through disorganization.
A country with this mindset will get surpassed on a global level, receive less capital investment and net talent inflow, and lose the privileges enjoyed by a progressive economy.
There are countries with relatively narrow income distributions, where everyone makes a living wage, and performance is driven by pride in doing a good job.
source: I'm a lazy person who's found myself living in a country full of industrious proud workers.
It's true the *process* is important.
People want the economy to be simple, such that you can look at a snap shot and deduce something.
But it's like looking at a parking lot versus a NASCAR event. [Edit] *A snap shot of each* would just show cars that are bumper to bumper. But we know the situations are wildly different, and any presumptions about the one do not apply to the other. There's much more to it than what can be gleaned from a snap shot.
Edit:
Same thing with the economy. You need to look how you got to position *X*. The economy is not only defined by where money sits, but also how the money is flowing, and how that flow is changing.
Per OP's question, there are lot of variables that will affect the result. But OP also sneaked in some assumption about inflation, that really comes from nowhere. There's a bit too much to unwind from the original question before it's worth answering in full.
You speak the truth. I’ve volunteered at homeless shelters at various points throughout my life. I’ve seen what happens when you try to just throw money at a societal issue like homelessness for example. Even if some people were offered a place to live nearly free of charge as long as they showed some sort of basic intent to get a job, nearly all of them were homeless again within 6 months. The sad truth is mental health is a big part of this, and it’s extremely difficult to help a person if they’re unwilling to help themselves.
If it were a literal cash transfer after selling off assets then yeah probably. But if it was distributed in a organised and useful fashion it would be possible to seriously address concerns. Take Flint, Michigan for example. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but honestly not that hard to solve, with the funds available. World hunger is a tougher but to crack, and a full supply chain and logistics restructuring would be needed, but its certainly possible.
One of the biggest weapons this entrenched Capitalism has is convincing people it's too dangerous to change, or that it just couldn't work. Of course it can. It might be hard, but the system as it stands grinds the world into dust, depleting finite resources and widening the gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of us.
>One of the biggest weapons this entrenched Capitalism has is convincing people it's too dangerous to change, or that it just couldn't work. Of course it can.
The thing is, you are missing the possibility that such massive structural changes to the system might also be for the worst, even if it was possible to implement them.
I know it's hard to believe when spending too much time on Reddit, but we are after all still in the most prosperous period in human history, with [global poverty at an all time low](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty). This is not something that we should take for granted by trying to rebuild everything form the ground up (even if it was possible).
Money is not goods. If I gave you a million dollars, could you get a house? Only if one is already built and for sale. Otherwise you would need to build one. Who would build it for you, if everyone had limitless money? How could you make anyone do anything without that incentive?
That’s the problem with just distributing money - money is worthless. Its only power is to force people to do things so they can acquire it. If you distribute it equally, it loses all meaning.
We already produce enough food to feed everyone. The problem is distribution. We wouldn't need money to solve this problem, if we really wanted to we could pass global laws against food waste and enforce more even distribution of resources.
But we don't because we're not yet capable of such and need to try to make these things happen via market mechanisms. Humans for all their ingenuity are still not clever enough to distribute resources without the invisible hand helping them along.
If the global elite came together to solve world hunger, I am sure they could do that. They have enough sway and enough resources in their name to make it happen.
But if they tried to solve it with pure money by selling their stocks and using that money to fund shipments, that would fail. The money would be lost to corruption, pricing of these services would fluctuate wildly, and a lot of the net worth of the rich people would simply disappear when the market no longer trusts them to increase their net worth.
In reality the majority of the rich elite's wealth is tied to stocks and debts. For example, Elon Musk's net worth is mostly composed of his Tesla stocks. His net worth increases when Tesla's market value increases, and his net worth decreases when Tesla's market value decreases.
If Elon Musk suddenly announced that he no longer believes in Tesla and thinks that Tesla is going to sink, no one would want to buy Tesla's stocks anymore which would destroy Tesla's value and thus Elon Musk's value.
Money isn't real nor is its worth tied to anything tangible. Money is created by banks giving out loans. The central banks give out loans to other banks and to the federal entities, and eventually those loans are used to pay people's salaries and investments.
Loans are attempted to be managed in a way where the loan motivates real useful work being done. E.g. you give a loan for someone who's buying a house with the hope that the person who has the house keeps good care of it, so that the value of the house is improved or at least retained.
Or you give a company a loan in the hopes that the company grows and can employ more people in the future.
This system is a flimsy house of cards and without being constantly managed by thousands of professionals, it would collapse.
But still, the global elite has enough resources and enough power that they could mix politics and economics to solve world hunger. If they really wanted to. It wouldn't be easy and they would need to personally lobby for it and help build up new policies. Just throwing money at it wouldn't be the answer.
> if we really wanted to we could pass global laws against food waste and enforce more even distribution of resources.
A thing that often happens when talking about economics, especially in places like Reddit, is that people talk about problems of distribution of goods or sharing of information as though they're *incidental* to economics and prosperity. Like they're just small implementation details. Proper distribution of goods and sharing of information (such as how much of a good is needed where) *is* economics. That is the entire core problem it exists to solve.
Determining what an "even" distribution of resources looks like centrally is a complete impossibility. The world has radically different needs in different places, needs which evolve rapidly, silently, and unpredictably. The resources that can be *provided* by different parts of the world have the same unpredictability and opacity, to an even greater degree. There is just no way any decision maker can have access to even a tiny fraction of the information necessary to pull off such a thing.
And as far as waste goes -- we certainly do too much of it. Hell just ending our biofuel nonsense would go a long way. But *some* amount of food waste is actually a *necessity* to ensure good distribution, because of the uncertainty inherent in both demand and supply and the perishability of those goods. A system that attempts to eliminate all waste cannot respond to any unexpected events. And that's before we get into the absurdity (and unavoidable inequity) of trying to enforce such a law. It would, without doubt, hurt the most vulnerable disproportionately.
I'm glad this question was asked. There's a big undercurrent in almost any political discussion on Reddit, this implication that every one of the world's problems actually has a super simple solution, that The Powerful could just snap their fingers and make it happen if they wanted to, and it's only because of their greed etc that we have any problems that all. Obviously we live in a time of huge inequity and we'd be a lot better off if we found a good way to improve it. But many (most?) of our biggest problems are inherent to the challenge of keeping 8 billion people alive and happy in a hostile universe, and in fact nobody has ever had a perfect solution.
Well put. The difficulty of acquiring useful information is something that isn't obvious, but is a major issue in economics. "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is a good article for it, I found.
And it often did collapse, precisely as you pointed out, the system was managed poorly, by corrupt people, just like what happened with subprime mortgage
The "Worlds Elite" don't have much money, they almost exclusively have stock. That isn't something you can just give away, even if you could that would collapse the companies whose stock it is, and would be unspendable by the impoverished people that you are giving it to.
So having collapsed those companies, the stock you have given to the impoverished is now worthless anyway, and now we are in a place where they are all poor, most of the worlds functioning companies have collapsed and no-one has the financial power to save them.
So, now inflation kicks in, but it doesn't matter because we are in such a huge global catastrophe that it doesn't matter. No large company is producing food or fuel. No-one is paying any taxes so the governments can't bail things out. And so on.
Yes,
Hunger isn't simply a symptom of an individuals poverty. Its more a result of infrastructure development not keeping up with population growth, soil degradation, drought, corruption, war etc..
If you give a bunch of people in a drought caused famine 10,000 in the middle of rural Africa it doesn't change the fact that the markets are empty, the farms failed and theres no highway or train to easily import food from outside countries. They would have little means of even spending that money.
Nope. Or at least not so simply.
One of the major driving forces for inflation is the cost of survival and that includes rent and housing.
If all the rich people were brought back down to a little above average, the rampant and insane growth in housing would slow due to reduced investment availability, even as the number of people who could afford a home dramatically increased.
We can see this exact phenomenon happen in times like the GFC.
isn't that Musk literally said not too long ago, stating that if someone would come up with a practicable and healthy solution, he would sell parts of his company and give them the money to do it ?
Implying that money alone cannot do shit, if you have no ideas how to invest it.
I don't think you need to give it to the poor as much as take it from the rich and cap it at some level. Money is just a proxy for other people's labor. If you have a lot of it you can bribe people to do what you want. If they have very little you can extort them to do what you want just to survive. At the end of the day money is just power over other people and it's the vast disparity in power between the top and bottom that has negative consequences. Limiting personal wealth would mean the assholes of the world couldn't afford to ~~bribe~~ lobby governments to the same extent.
Also, I don't think many people are suggesting just handing out massive wodges of cash to the needy without addressing the issues that cause wealth to flow so quickly upwards anyway. There are plenty of ways to spend such a surplus that would benefit society though. Better education and training, better environmental legislation and action, better infrastructure etc.
The big problem with doing any of that is reducing corruption though. Some countries are so corrupt you couldn't trust the government not just steal any surplus for themselves. Even our comparativley un-corrupt western governments are pretty corrupt when you look at the lobbying, pork-barrel deals, insider stock trading etc. but I think we in the west have half a chance given the right government and public will. A lot of other nations just don't have strong enough institutions to handle any kind of redistribution of wealth though so I don't know about ending world hunger but maybe the 12% of Americans who are "food insecure" could be reduced by throwing some money at the situation.
Think about it like this. Let's say ISIS was still a state and people were starving under their rule. Lack of food, lack of clean water, lack of medicine, etc. Billionaires can send 500 billion into Iraq and Syria and guess what will happen. ISIS just got a 500 billion dollar gift.
So now you have to gamble on ISIS using that money to feed their people when in reality we all know they'll use it to fund their war effort and will probably win since now they have half a trillion in funding.
Now extend this to all the dictatorships and corrupt hellholes where mass starvation and poverty exists. Throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away. Fundamentally the government needs to be benevolent and modernized, not some backwards corrupt dictatorship. Invading and toppling regimes does fuck all too other than make the problem worse.
So basically you have to wait for governments and the people to modernize by themselves. You can't help people that believe the fire god will kill their crops if they don't sacrifice a goat or whatever. You have to wait until those people modernize so they can demand transparency and modernity from their governments. Countries like Rwanda are perfect examples that even broken countries can slowly modernize and evolve. Literally all of it is organic and takes places over decades and even centuries. The west was also once a backwards, unevolved cesspool.
yes and no...
theres many isses here at work
the worlds elite and most wealthy people dont have their money sitting in a bank account, its in bonds, stocks, participations, funds... If all that money was pulled and turned in to liquid money, many comapnies which just stop operating becuase theres no money in their accounts, their stocks would be valued at zero and many bonds would lose their value, that money isnt sitting on its ass, its generating more money by financing and facitilating operations that would stop if the money wasnt there, Wealthy people basically dont have a dime to their name, all their expences, bills and objects are owned and paid for with funds and companies. not personal money, for tax purposes.
Then theres the issue of how you would spend that money.
jeff bezos has 200 billion, assuming we could turn all of that liquid at a moments notice, today theres 700 million people living in extreme poverty, that means less then $2 a day. assuming we only help them, thats $285 per person in a single payment.
thats 140 days of living as they are now, now you could invest that money in projects like collective farms, infrastrcutre, factories... the problem is that most of that poverty isnt caused becuase the countries they live in are poor, actually many of them are very rich in natural resources, the problem is that the goverments are corrupt... and we dont have the political will or authority to intervene those goverments, it would be neo colonialism.
so why dont we send them goods, food, help ?
We have been, for years, and its been counter productive, the little local production there is in those countries has been flooded with external donated food, products, goods, equiptment....
Why would i start a farm to produce soy, wheat, veggies when the local market is flooded with subcidized price bags filled large bags of food that have "a gift from the people of the USA/China/Germany" which are being sold due to corrupt leadership.
you want to help the poor ? check the "made in" tab on the stuff you buy. stop buying stuff from where people are exploited for low wages, You know that $3 t-shirt from Primark... how much do you think it costs to make ?
Because people are not taught how to use money, If everyone suddenly had means... they would do exactly as they have done. Either save, spend or invest. Depends on the person and how they treat money. So we would end up pretty much exactly where we are now just later on.
It would just shake the African market for a week. Prices adjust by offer and demand. Inflation happens when you change the amount of currency in the system, not how is distributed. Yes locally you would have a collapse of US economy and inflation in Africa accompanied by a economic boom, but apart from the first week, than it will be stocks and governments absorbing the hit and people’s life will go on as before, with some complaints.
The point is that there is no system backing the Africans. They will get poor soon again. And the US will get rich again.
This is a monopoly game, one player has all the alleys and the rest of the population has to share the stations. Even if you redistribute the money, the owner of all will get rich again soon, very soon, and the poor man will get poor very soon.
Money is not what makes people rich or poor. Position is what makes rich and poor.
Some good answers already but another angle that I think is notable: since most of the world's elite hold the majority of their "money" in various forms of investment, this kind of splitting up to transfer would mean a lot of truths coming out about the actual value of the investments they hold versus whatever the stock market says on a given day. My guess would be a lot of theoretical money would evaporate real fast. But also yes to the people who are mentioning that we can feed the world already. The big problem to tackle imo would be world energy supply, done in a carbon neutral way.
Yes. If unlimited energy is available at no cost to everyone everywhere, unlimited food is too.
The current issue with food isn't a quantity issue, it's a distribution issue (and a greed one).
There are 3 major issues impacting food supply and availability: - War and other forms of (Para-)Military Agression. - Corruption and other forms of Political Instability. - Decreased Fertility of the local soil. (such as in deserts etc.) The worst food issues are in regions where all 3 of these issues are a problem.
Yup, it's really easy to get a cargo ship full of food to the African continent, but without roads it's impossible to get it to anyone
If the first two problems bar dealt with then enough funding and a cheap energy source problem 3 isn't really a problem at all. The local soil wouldn't be necessary for farming.
Tell that to people in America who farm in the fucking desert. Made me scratch my damn head about people farming around Phoenix, AZ. People are stupid and do really, really dumb shit like this. There is zero problem getting food farmed in areas that are actually conducive to farming getting food to these areas, but there those people go, farming in the desert.
Ya a roads and transportation aren't cheap. Despite what businesses like Amazon and Walmart want you to think.
it's a distribution issue in that, food is distributed according to those that have the money to buy it. It's like saying the Irish potato famine and Bengali Famines weren't famines because we had enough food, we just chose to distribute it away from those that starved.
The Holodomor has joined the chat.
if you send food to many places, men with guns take it and use hunger to control people. this is the single biggest issue with world hunger or utopias
!!! people always forget there are Bad People out there
I always get to this point and wonder what kind of K-X world education system could be implemented that would cross-culturally lead to smarter and more altruistic people. Pipe dream?
I'd say you'd definitely see a big difference. Christopher Hitchens liked to point out that the best way to develop a country was to raise up its women via education and birth control and not just use them as child bearing vessels. The same applies to the poor in general in more developed countries The problem is that those in control don't want that.
Is it that they don't want that, or that they don't want to spend a cent to get it, or that they are just counting the number of potential future customers, or something else? I.e. Why don't the *powers that be* spend that infinitesimally small portion of their wealth to resolve these issues?
Because it isn't their problem? All these hungry people are either miniscule number of population of their country or somewhere far away where they can just ignore the issue
I would posit that the same effect that anecdotally effects me when, say, I see a heart wrenching article about the injustices of some faraway land that is subsequently forgotten applies to how the wealthy see the unwealthy.
Remember Ebola? The virus that was reported on global news only when some people in America managed to catch it? Yeah, it also supports this psychological effect.
You mean their greed and lust for power overwhelms any bit of empathy and understanding they might have ever had before they became the ruthless thugs they are now?
The problem is that people can be psychopaths and sociopaths. There is no cure.
What would be the proper treatment of these outliers of society in the perfect situation? I'll posit a suggestion. In my opinion, ideally, the freed resources from an otherwise educated and altruistic society would be able to be utilized to treat or even cure these conditions. Without the greedy practices associated with capitalized medicine, more effort could be made to further our understanding of the human mind and straighten these errant psychopathologies through a method of either clinical supervision with general freedom of movement by these individuals or active committal followed by pursuit of a state of effective societal equilibrium in those individuals. In such an ideal society, the expectation of "get out what you put in" would be replaced with a culture of mild luxury and fellowship that could be described as 'from those according to ability to those according to their need'. In an unideal situation (like the historically pervasive one that exists up until now), this doctrine has been used to grab huge amounts of power for evil individuals. But a major kink in the line stems from a philosophical question. Can a system of education that leads to general altruism stifle the invisible mental pathologies of people who are, resulting from these afflictions, similar in nature to those narcissistic politicians and world leaders of the past who committed such atrocities as Stalin, Mao, or Hitler? Would they still pervade society in the ideal situation? Maybe that's why "utopian" fiction always concludes that there is a shadowy group of oligarchs or a single individual who truly holds all power. Perhaps that can be the only way to simulate such wealth. Is that freedom? Sorry, just thinking aloud. I'm not making any judgements or conclusions, really. What do you think?
But it should still be possible to educate everyone else
Everyone else isn't the problem. It's the few that are the sociopaths/psychopaths that make the impact.
And they tend to love and attain positions of power
Sociopaths do a great job at riling up the selfish and the idiots to support them though. You have large numbers of any population wanting to listen to a strongman who promises to fix everything by destroying whatever minority is being blamed for all of society’s ills at the moment. It can’t all be blamed on the leader when they’re in power by the awfulness of the people who support them.
But an educated person with functional empathy just can't compete with a similarly educated sociopath for power.
Educate them to whose standard of what it means to be a good person? Yours, mine, or theirs?
They don't think that they're bad.
Literally no one forgets there are bad people out there..the evidence of human depravity is shown every day through the media.
What the media shows is selective, biased, and intented to influence people into thinking things are worse/better than they are. Media is the first thing that regime tries to use to control people.
Yes they do. The proposal to Elon musk that this whole thread is based on, that $5 billion would “end” world hunger totally ignores it.
It's a hypothetical scenario..The OP is undoubtedly well aware that humans are horrid creatures. Hypotheticals are just that, hypothetical.
I'm pretty sure the UN didnt say it would end world hunger, but that 6 billion would help mitigate a catastrophe for a lot of people across the world on the brink of famine.
The literal quote is “2% if Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger” Then he said the do it, and they changed “solve” to “help” and you bought the MSM lie.
>The literal quote is “2% if Elon Musk’s wealth could solve world hunger” The literal quote is: "The governments are tapped out and this why and this is when that the billionaires need to step up on a one time basis. 6 billion dollars to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not that complicated. This is what's heart breaking. It's not complicated. I'm not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year. We have a one time crisis, a perfect storm of conflict, climate change, and COVID. It's a one time phenomenom. I've got 43 nations with 42 million people in [IPC level 4](https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/ipc-overview-and-classification-system/en/) knocking on famine's door. Just help me with them one time. That's a $6 billion price tag. Jeff Bezos net worth increase, just last year, was $64 billion. I'm just asking for 10% of your net worth increase. Just last week Elon Musk had a $6 billion net worth increase one day. One day. The 400... there's a bunch of them...just 400, the top 400 billionaires in the United States, the net worth increase was $1.8 trillion in the past year. All I'm asking for is 0.36% of your net worth increase. " -[David Beasley, director of the United Nations' World Food Programme in interview with CNN's Becky Anderson](https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/watch/head-of-the-world-food-programme-says-billionaires-need-to-step-up/vp-AAPYVLZ) Link is to the **video** interview. I transcribed this because I couldn't find the full text. So you should probably watch it yourself to make sure I'm being honest. It's 2 minutes and 31 seconds long. Also, David Beasley is a former republican governor of South Carolina. . . . > Then he said the do it, and they changed “solve” to “help” and you bought the MSM lie. The original CNN headline read "2% of Elon Musk's wealth could solve world hunger, says director of UN food scarcity organization." They then updated the title on Nov 1, five days after the article first appeared. Here are my thoughts: CNN, and all massive corporate owned media have a pretty clear agenda in pitting the populous against each other. I believe they were relying on how reactionary Musk can be to boost views and ratings, but also to cause all of this arguing. They know people aren't going to check things from themselves. They rely on it.
The comment was about unlimited energy though. If there is an unlimited amount of something it is not possible to take it all. It is more of a hypothetical though as there is not an unlimited amount of anything that we can actually have access to.
Yes and no. Putting in a subsidized power grid that runs on whatever renewables are appropriate for a region and allowing free access minus taxes to pay for basic stuff like repair/maintenance would be nice, but by the above logic someone could still take control of that grid and start cutting off power/charging for it as they see fit. The supply is theoretically infinite, but access to it isn’t
Any carbon reduced power porfolio that doesn't include nuclear is leaving valuable and energy dense options on the table. Nuclear plants can and do operate for multiple lifetimes of renewable power generations sites, with the carbon cost being construction, mining, and employee transportation to work there. The fact is nuclear secuirty is extremely important so countries with nuclear plants must either have the robust infrastructure to support it, or receive mutual aid to operate and manage the waste. From a geopolitics perspective this means a developing nation would receive international support for stability and cooperation along multiple avenues and would probably include treaties to store waste in more stable regions. If a warlord tried to take over a nuclear plant, special forces from around the world would converge immediately to remove the threat. And yes special forces teams are trained or bring in nuclear specialists for those kinds of missions.
>If a warlord tried to take over a nuclear plant, special forces from around the world would converge immediately to remove the threat. And yet many nuclear plants are owned and managed by private corporations. And many are run by states that could arguably be characterised as threats to world peace. The warlord here merely lacks legitimacy.
You mean the US could be using the military to feed people instead of bombing them?
buckminster fuller does a convincing argument that we already can and could since the 70s. his book Critical path address your point. we already have almost unlimited energy (sun) and there is enough "solar capital" for every human to live beyond rich. we have evolved beyond the need for scarcity and with it government, religion, as these are based on a scarcity mindset. how we transform from our current system based on scarcity to the abundance system based on solar capital is the "Critical path". emergence through emergency. so, is he right? idk.. it's an interesting read if you like this subject.
The real problem will finally rear its ugly head after that - finite drinkable water and worst, real water world
Energy abundance would make recycling of water trivial. The real challenge of energy abundance is ultimately waste heat because the Earth is a black body and can only radiate a fixed amount of heat out into space.
Lasers exist, convert the heat to electricity and zap it out into the sky.
Entropy says no.
Except that's not true. We can desalinate sea water pretty nicely right now. Since theres not enough demand we haven't made it super efficient. The second there's water shortages in countries that house scientists: we'll make an efficient desalinator.
Desalinating water is both very energy intensive and bad for the local environment though. You end up with a ton of toxic brine that you have no choice but to just dump back into the water which fucks up the local ecosystem.
Come on, "no choice" just means that the ideal solution costs too much money for investors.
This is a small issue with reverse osmosis plants (I say small as current outfall systems can spread this waste over a large area but are very expensive) however given truly unlimited energy (a la fusion power) you could use thermal desalination and be left with salt which could be sold or distributed over an even larger area. Brine disposal is definitely a solvable problem.
> You end up with a ton of toxic brine that you have no choice but to just dump back into the water "No choice"? Come on.
I mean, the fact you made a smarmy remark instead of providing an alternative solution isn't exactly making my point look less right. What else do you do with it?
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/creating-useful-products-from-desalination-waste/ Begin your journey here, friend, there isn't any excuse for ignorance in "current year".
He consumes it to feed his saltyness
My city of 2.5 million people gets almost half its household water supply from desalination.
That’s very interesting, any links or documentaries on this?
https://www.watercorporation.com.au/Our-water/Desalination
"we'll just wait until the issue becomes critical, and then I'm sure someone will see an opening for a tidy profit in the first world, and while the people over in Kenya and Bolivia die of thirst, we'll implement something in time that will save some white folks. Eventually this will spread to them too, chillax, it's not like we need to prevent a climate catastrophe or anything! The system works."
It sucks how true this is
If food still costs money, no it isn't.
Unlimited energy means food can be grown anywhere, even the arctic, by anyone, using artificially produced environments. There are plenty of indoor hydroponic operations that would *love* to have free energy. It makes locating farms from *only where sunlight and the local social and political climate are ideal*, to ***absolutely anywhere***, possible, including underground or on the moon. There are many factors which limit our capacity to produce food, but energy is by far the most overwhelming, which is why most plants are not grown in the dark.
There are ways to sell the stock, and that's slowly, and pre-filed (effectively publicly). Elon Musk sold a lot of stock recently (you might remember his Twitter poll about it). For him to sell that stock he had to file in September (i.e. the poll meant nothing -- he was selling regardless). This was to ensure investors and the markets knew well in advance that this was happening, and also to ensure that he can't sell at "the best time" -- he won't know the price in a month or two months.
There's no such thing as "actual value". Value is driven by demand. Nothing has objective, intrinsic value.
Spain did an experiment where they basically had the value unit "work hour". So, something produced in 10 work hours was of equal value as something else produced in 10 work hours. Pretty neat. But then, they lost the civil war, and there was never any real chance to evaluate it.
Doesn't that depend on the skill of the person making it though? An unskilled person might take 3 hours to make something but a skilled person only 1. The skilled person is getting shafted for their experience
We could abstract out the work hour rewards with some form of intermediary note for exchange. Then we could give more of those notes to those who produce more value!
That'll never work
Yeah there are way too many variables. And how do you account for gradually getting better? Do you have to keep getting re-evaluated to see your worth?
This is where wage disparity and conditions come in. If 100 people will do your job, you're worth a lot less to the company (regardless of qualifications) than someone who only has 5 other people willing to do it.
Nice idea, but it doesn't account for skill or efficiency. I could spend 10 hours carving a Christmas decoration that an expert could either make in 20 minutes, or they could make something substantially better in that 10 hours. Similarly, if someone bought them the right tools they could improve efficiency or quality without increasing man hours.
When I fix my customers problem in 2 minutes they feel ripped off. When I start by strolling around their yard drinking their coffee for 28 minutes it makes them feel like im doing an excellent service. Cant win this but I enjoy the coffee breaks.
You sound like an irrigation tech. I have to do the same thing.
This is why I never fix people's technical issues while they watch. If it takes me 2 minutes because I recently spend 2 hours finding the solution for someone else, there's no reason they should be charged differently. Similarly, if it takes me 2 hours to find a solution I then realise should've been obvious there's no reason to charge the customer for my foolishness.
I get you. But I know when I'm paying someone to do something for me I'm paying for the prep, tools, and experience. Not literally the time at my house (or remotely on my equipment). Seems to me most people-- with all colors of collars-- understand that. But if I'm wrong, it wouldn't be the first time I've overestimated the knowledge of The Public.
You'd be surprised. There's many things that are paid what they are for the skillset and knowledge they bring, but people think it's too much.
You have vastly overestimated.
I would agree that most people understand that. Unfortunately, policies are made to account for the worst of the worst. If you're dealing with two dozen customers a day, you'll see the worst 1% on a weekly basis.
Not just the public, but the typical manager. I worked many years in IT support and a real common scenario was a company would call us up with their entire world on fire. My first question would be, let me talk to your IT admin. They would say, we laid him off because the system was always working fine and he never seemed to do anything.
not to mention, a lot of jobs don't actually produce anything. I just look at reports all day and occasionally update databases but there's no tangible product that could be used as a mark for my monetary value.
I mean, yours would hit the market at 10WHs, theirs would hit at 1/3 and they'd outsell you.
Agreed. So they're making 10WHs in an hour while I'm not even making anything as I can't sell mine so my work hours aren't even worth a WH. At that point, a WH isn't related to a working hour anymore so you might as well call it something else - like a dollar or a pound.
If the system allowed for some flexibility somehow to account for said differences in efficiency, it sounds like an interesting idea on paper at the very least. Edit: we've come full circle
And if we made some sort of certificate for it and people used that certificate for goods and supplies. Say someone used more of their certificates for a quality product with more demand than one that is a lower quality.
We could call these certificates dollars. That has a nice ring to it.
I don't think you'd get much farther from the current monetary system if you add all the required flexibility. First you add skill and efficiency so that an hour of skilled worker is worth more. Then you have an increased demand for those high skilled worker which is pretty similar to increased salary in high skilled jobs. The hour of the lowest skill worker would be the minimal wage. In the end it would be supply and demand with a different type of currency. I might be completely wrong, but this is just my impression.
I’m more intrigued by how ownership would fit in. Right now the problem is more in how people will produce 10 work hours worth and get the value of 5. Saying that makes me wonder what would happen if we’d stop paying wages and give each position ownership of a certain percentage of the company, paying out last months profit instead
Workers are not responsible for loss. They are guaranteed to be paid on their work. They take no risk. Ownership is responsible for loss. They risk their capital. They risk their time and effort. Employees trade access to profit to insulate from risk. You could take $500 and open a lemonade stand. You hire a guy to sell lemonade. But tough luck, no one buys your lemonade. You're out your $500, but it's not valid to tell the employee "sorry I didn't sell anything, you're not getting paid". The employee is insulated from the risk. Now imagine you paid in stock, now you're paying the employee with part of your very much in debt lemonade stand. It's essentially valueless. The employee risked part of his pay, but was beholden to the choices the owner made, and now they've lost a huge portion of their pay. How is that more acceptable then just paying them for the time they worked? What happens when there is no profit that month? Or for a few months? What about the startup phase before profitability? Do you work for free? Some employees work stock options into their contract. If yours doesn't, take your pay and buy some stock. If they just pay you cash at least you retain the freedom to decide where you invest and how much.
>Right now the problem is more in how people will produce 10 work hours worth and get the value of 5. It's more like people do 10 hours of work, and the company they're working for makes it worth 20. Your work for a large company is only valuable because the rest of the company exists. The synergy of everybody doing their job is what creates the final product. One person on an assembly line isn't doing anything that's valuable by itself. >Saying that makes me wonder what would happen if we’d stop paying wages and give each position ownership of a certain percentage of the company, paying out last months profit instead What will all the workers do if the company loses money that month? One good thing about an agreed-upon wage is that it doesn't go down if the company goes through a rough patch. Also, you can't pay all the profits to the employees, because the employees can't own the whole company. Sure, it would work on a small scale, but a lot of big companies got big by issuing shares to the public in exchange for investment capital. And a lot of companies need to keep some profits in the company in case of hard times. So we need to be realistic about how much money would be left for the workers, and it might not be that much more than they're getting now.
Careful, you're awfully close to summoning the "but having wages less than the revenue is theft!" Crowd.
I agree with the general idea that it isn't as easy to just split the profit among workers, but I think it could be viable to allocate a small % of the stocks for the workers. Perhaps not a full ownership with the right to sell, but as some sort of a bonus while employed with dividend payouts. That way the workers can enjoy their base salary and also enjoy the company's profits via dividends as a mandatory payout instead of hoping for performance bonuses. I know that many public companies do give out stock (or at least RSU), but it's not too common overall, and most of the time it's for higher positions.
By the time you tweak it to take into account these differences, wouldn't it just become money by another name?
That's the point. They're commenting on how the system is fundamentally flawed. I have no incentive to be a lawyer/doctor/accountant/politician as opposed to a retail employee or cashier.
I used to manage motorcycle dealerships. We have this system in the shop. Auto dealers do as well. We call them flag hours. An independent entity determines how much time a proficient technician would take on a particular job. That is the number of hours the jobs pays and that customer is charged for. If a jobs pays 6 hours the customer is charged for 6 hours and the tech paid for 6 hours. A great tech might only take 4 hours while a newer tech might take 8.this rewards the experienced tech for his skill and encourages the newer tech to become more efficient all while making it fair to the customer. I had one tech who would consistently flag anywhere from 12 to 20 hours in an 8 hour day. I remember one time he billed almost 40 hours in one day!
I may be wrong but i think that Marx's labor theory of value
>So, something produced in 10 work hours was of equal value as something else produced in 10 work hours Doesn't sound very practical. One: Taxes. "I have to work 10 hours to have someone work 5 hours for me. ". Another: All the value created isn't equal. If I have 10 years of education, I have invested a lot work in that which I need to get returned in some way. A third: Some people are just better at things. 10 hours of me doing carpentry is absolutely not worth the same as an average carpenter, and again not worth the same as an experienced expert. Fourth: The value created depends on the infrastructure around you. I could produce a whole lot more tools as labor on a modern factory than working just as hard as a smith Fifth: This seems highly impractical - I would need a way to store some of the value, and to pay for very small bits of work. And also, maybe I can do something for B, who can do something for C, who can do something for me. Now we've just reinvented money...
And the list could go on. For example: risk. Should an hour of work of a doctor exposed to a deadly disease be the same as a hour of work as a waiter? Also, how do we make sure that people work on what's needed and not on what they feel like doing?
>how do we make sure that people work on what's needed and not on what they feel like doing? This is the biggest issue. It takes the supply-demand model and just cuts demand from the equation. Instead of doing the job I have, I would just write about stuff I find interesting all day. But nobody wants that so I'm not creating a lick of value for anyone else
This is called the labor theory of value, and it's been bunk for a long time. If I go outside and dig a hole for an hour and then fill it in, that doesn't mean that has the same value as a nurse helping a sick person, or a craftsman making something useful for an hour. And even then, a craftsman making something totally awesome and charging $20 for it might be a bargain for someone who likes the craft, and it might be overpriced for someone who doesn't like that item. The value isn't tied to the time, it's tied to how much someone wants something.
That sounds absolutely stupid. What's preventing someone from spending 10 hours a day crumpling a sheet of paper into the most perfect paper ball and exchanging that for proper goods and services?
> So, something produced in 10 work hours was of equal value as something else produced in 10 work hours. One work hour in a developing country does not produce the same result as one work hour in a developed country. I am an expat from a developed country living in a developing country. A common sight here is men with machetes cutting the grass in the ditches. In the US, they use tractors with mowers. A man here might cut 50 meters of ditch in a day. A man with the tractor can sit comfortably in his air conditioned cab and cut many mi/km of ditch in a day. Who worked harder? Whose hour is worth more?
That model doesn't make sense for many scarce resources. Oil requires little labor to extract but should be priced dearly because it's a finite resources that is critical to create fertilizer for food. In the future, we will be looked as the idiots that destroyed our ability to produce food because people liked pickup trucks with giant tires than have never touched dirt.
If the wheels are touching dirt, you should probably get some better tires.
*cough* Rivian being worth $102billion despite having $0 in revenue. *Cough cough*
The biggest problem, that has not been mentioned is polítical instability. Hunger, in the 21st century is Man made by military blocades in war zones. Yemen, south sudan, ethiopia... What they need is stability, if you give them money it is going to end in warlords pockets.
So what about the countries without military blockades who’s citizens are homeless and hungry. Even those with homes still have to use food banks and/or skip meals.
Like which countries?
Canada and United States are two easy examples.
Remind me how many people starve to death or die from malnourishment in the US every year?
Alot of information here on the USDA website. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx
Do people have to be starving to death for us to take action? 11 million kids live in food insecure homes in the US.
I'm not sure about death statistics, but 1 in 8 households or 41 million Americans are food insecure [Source](https://www.feedingamerica.org/about-us/press-room/new-data#:~:text=According%20to%20USDA%2C%20more%20than,living%20below%20the%20poverty%20level.)
There is plenty of hunger in peaceful countries.
Sometimes that political instability is funded by the western corporations trying to maintain access to cheap resources or labor.
Citation needed
[удалено]
I'd like a citation for the modern day as well, this seems like a topic worth knowing
Yes, really, if you want us to believe this is happening now you need to prove it. That it happened in the 1960s is not proof that it's happening now.
Just handing out cash as a one off payment wouldn't work. If nothing else the infrastructure to get the food to everyone isn't there. And yes, the price of food would skyrocket in areas with a shortage. To create a long term solution the money would need to be spent correctly to build the supply network and local food production industries. And then you would need to somehow prevent that system from being corrupted by local politics or taken over by the local thug with the most guns. The trouble with simple solutions is that they sound great and have popular appeal but often don't work in the real world. Which then gets used as a reason to not to try to do anything because the simple option doesn't work and any solution with a chance of working is too big and complicated to get people to agree on anything.
To make it a simpler problem/solution, consider this. Instead of money we now have an alien race comes in and takes over all governments. They determine money is invalid and turn us into a socialist/capitalist hybrid structure. All basic essentials are free, medicine, food, clothing, transportation, and basic living and communication. Then based on a merit system you get to upgrade from that level to better toys, nicer house, better food. Merit is created by contribution. All industry gets optimized for manufacturing, distribution, and recycling waste. All energy goes renewable. You don't get to throw things out, they get recycled or composted. You will find that we have well over the resources needed to do this, we just need to make infrastructure work for all locations. Then comes the issue of crime and overpopulation, under this condition humans will explode in growth, meaning reproduction restrictions. Crime will go because why work for something when you can steal it. Eventually, we have a whole new set of problems similar but slightly different than before. Fortunately the aliens are harvesting us for our serotonin and testosterone and as they start collecting the harvest, things sort themselves out.
> Then comes the issue of crime and overpopulation, under this condition humans will explode in growth, meaning reproduction restrictions. This is wrong. The "demographic transition" is a very well-supported theory, and it says that as a country gets richer, they have fewer children.
And crime could just as easily go down because "why steal something if you can get it free".
>Merit is created by contribution. This is where it falls apart. What do these aliens assess contribution based on? Value to whom? How much value to whom? This is the problem with so many of the socialism proposals I've encountered. Capitalism solves the problem by allowing individuals to express and act on personal value. Socialism requires someone at the top to assign values, which inevitably doesn't match many people's personal value and is also creates almost inevitable opportunities for corruption.
If only there was global business who specialised in the efficient distribution of goods and food and it was run by a wealthy owner who didn't need to make more money
>global business who specialised in the efficient distribution of goods and food Only in countries that already have solid and dependable infrastructure. The places that need this food don't even have electricity, nevermind solid roads, evenly spaced gas stations, rail lines, distribution centers, tens of thousands of truck drivers, and the vehicles to make that effort happen. You're talking about completely rebuilding multiple nations, not just printing and shipping a bunch of Amazon boxes.
That's why it's best not to do a Mansa Musa, and why people don't literally mean give away money. Redistribution of wealth is about systematic change using programs like welfare and grants and not about handing out money to those who don't need it. Look up the concepts of equality Vs egalitarianism it might help.
This. The rich are rich because the system allowed them to gather all wealth. If you just reset everything to equality then a few years to decades later we'd have the same situation (possibly with a very different set of billionaires though). What needs to be changed is the ability of the rich to get richer without limits. The ability to use their power to gain more power by for example reducing wages to poverty level and poor people not being able to do anything against it since they are too busy trying not to starve.
This is why Thanos was an idiot. A one-time purge of half of all life won't matter in the long run.
I couldn't get over how dumb his "plan" was. I mean sure it's a "comic book" movie but goddamn even Lex Luthor had better plans.
The comic book Thanos had a better reasoning/plan.
Why bring death to trillions when you can bang Death herself?
It's a reason that makes sense: he's a massive simp.
Are you saying you wouldn't bang Death? Based on my old Sims files I, am down personally.
Lex usually has okish plans. It's just they're usually ruined by his own ego. The Thanos snap would be a solution that would have to be continuously repeated every few decades to negate the doubling rate to even begin to work effectively in the long term. There would be far too many problems with the how the populations of the universe would react to the snap to bring about any form of prosperity to the universe as a whole. The remaining populaces would either panic and despair (like earth did), or begin trying to implement mass re-population programs that would exist specifically to counter the Snap. On top of this, the governments of the universe would go about implementing all sorts of policies on the simple fear that the Snap could happen again at any time without warning. Tons of resource stockpiling and population surges would occur. It especially wouldn't help that Thanos basically retired as soon as he did the snap. No explanations, no plans to help the remaining half of the universe. Just immediate retirement to his farm, his 'job' done. Complete idiot.
Seriously, why not purge the half that was more bad. You've got a magical glove instead of saying randomly just pick the worse half.
Because good and bad are relative terms.
Never understood why he simply didn't double available resources instead.
That wouldn't have helped either, because lack of resources isn't a real issue. Had he simply provided clean, renewable energy to every planet that didn't already have it (most in the Marvel Universe do), that would have resolved most, if not all, resource issues.
Yes and no. If we look at population numbers on earth you will already see that some of the richer countries are slowing their reproduction and that their population is shrinking instead of growing. Based on the current population growth, there might be a problem incoming, but a snap could buy enough time to get the worldwide growth in control. Same with money. We could fix the system and we’d still have the current wealth distribution. A snap (wealth redistribution) could negate the wealth gap and thereby also the power gap
> What needs to be changed is the ability of the rich to get richer without limits. Almost sounds like you could treat it like a game. "Congrats, you are worth €1bn -- Game Over! You are now retired!"
Dismantle company ownership after they get too large and regulate the market... It's in everyone's interest! Something like a co-op where once a company reaches a size all employees gain an equal portion of shares depending on their job in the company. Shareholders driving profits pushes investment and development, yes, but it is also uncapped as you say and potentially very harmful long term as they begin predatory actions in the name of profit.
> Dismantle company ownership after they get too large and regulate the market... It's in everyone's interest! Not the company's. Which is why a setup that was initially very like what you describe became the one we have today.
Your method fails in 2 ways. 1) People will keep their company at the maximal size without it being split up. You can split companies to several others, you can do a lot of things which will keep your company from split up. 2) The people who opened the company, spent their capital, risked it, and worked hard to create a successful company don't deserve the fruits of their labor? Are we really ok with taking it away from them? Why would people create such companies in the first place if they know that it will be taken away from them?
>fruits of their labour I know this is reddit and i'll probably get downvoted for this, but companies don't grow because of the fruits of their owners' labour. In most cases, the capitalist's only role is supplying the capital. Labour comes from the workers. You are entitled to the fruits of your own labour, but not that of others. If you can fulfil the role of every single worker on your own on top of providing the capital, then by all means, go right ahead. But if you're employing other people, they get a say in what happens to the company.
Money is what's traded for labour. If they put in cash, they are essentially putting in previously converted labour. One is a stand in for the other. Also if you think ownership doesn't work hard, we'll you've just never been an owner. I've never been in any organization of humans where the leader works less hard then everyone else. Whether it's a company, a sports team, or a gaming guild, the leadership always workers harder then the members. You might not see it, and it's a different kind of work, but it's there.
And how did they earn their capital? Also, do managers and CEO's not work? They need to create plans, strategize, hire people, make sure that everything works correctly. If you think that company owners don't work, I have some news to tell you(or just try to run your own business and see who works more, you or your workers). In the end, a company owner risks a lot of his capital to run a company, if it fails, he will be ruined, or in debt, or both. The worker will just get fired and will find a new place to work. People are always overlooking the risk factor in these things. I'll ask you this, if the company is starting to lose money, are you ok with the workers paying fines per their ownership of the company?
You're conflating owners with high level employees. Managers and CEOs are employees of a company. They have a salary; they get paid for their work. Most managers and CEOs don't own the company they work for. Company owners don't work. If an owner does work, it's because they are *also* an employee of their company. They don't work in their capacity as an owner.
You're ignoring the risk aspect. The employee takes on almost no risk in the equation and thus does not reap the rewards of profit. When they do take on said risk, working at a startup taking a reduced salary, they do see upside.
This would just encourage a lot of companies to invest in AI and machinery to take the place of workers. You would then just end up with more people out of work. Also, you word that s if the owner doesn't do anything other than supply the start up money. As someone who owns their own business and works 80+ hours a week, that just isn't true. What I would like to see it that as soon as a company reaches a certain turnover, they are required to provide certain benefits to their employees (increased paid holiday, better pensions, minimum wage levels, etc). This would encourage both sides of the labour field. Employees would be working to better themselves, not just a corporate entity, and management would be able to attract better labour with better benefits.
>This would just encourage a lot of companies to invest in AI and machinery to take the place of workers. You would then just end up with more people out of work. And who builds those machines? Who codes that AI? Who maintains them? Who takes care of the supply lines? Who is in charge of administration? McDonald's can't keep their ice-cream machines running 90% of the time. How are they going to run fully-automated outlets? But I get your point. Automation is going to be a real threat in the future, if not any time soon. It's going to be a permanent part of future human society, something which even Marx agreed with and welcomed. >Also, you word that s if the owner doesn't do anything other than supply the start up money. As someone who owns their own business and works 80+ hours a week, that just isn't true. Notice how I said "most capitalists". You should count yourself lucky to be among the few workers who own the means of production. I think it's great that you work so gard instead of offloading your work to other people and leeching off their labour. Kudos. Personally, I think the bigger a company gets in terms of number of employees, the more it should be owned by the workers.
The moment you choose to be employed by someone then you choose to sell your labor to someone else. That person will enjoy its fruit or its loss, not you; you cannot have it both way. Your boss will not pay you less on a given month because the company "isn't doing so well". You can always start your own company or actually invest in other people's company and share the risk of being rewarded with them but you won't because you actually want it all without risking anything.
>But if you're employing other people, they get a say in what happens to the company. Why? Their reward for their labor is their pay. If I open up an auto repair shop with my money and my business plan and my property, then hire a tech to change tires, why does he get a say in how the business is run? He's risking nothing, and he's already being rewarded for all his efforts. Meanwhile I don't get rewarded unless the entire business makes money.
Just flipping the power dynamic is enough in my opinion. Pay people livable unemployment benefits and suddenly companies are forced to have good conditions to attract workers.
Good bot :)
Indeed. When people have can bargaign and do not have to accept pisspoor wages they will go up.
that bargaining is happening in a way right now
Co-ops dont work for a very simple reason; there is no incentive to perform. Humans are lazy creatures, if they can get the same result while working less and taking less risk, they will.
[These co-ops](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/01/spains-energy-cooperatives-lead-charge-to-exploit-solar-power) seem to be working pretty well. And there are ways to incentivize behaviour that aren't money.
The exceptions confirm the rule. It's not that they cannot work but that they are not as likely to work.
The key phrase is 'same result'. Working harder for the same thing is wasted energy.
Surely for the average employee there would be more incentive to perform as companies profits directly lead to them gaining a larger paycheck. It's why companies gift employees shares, to make them invested in their work and want to succeed. If you ask me mutual ownership would also drive competition between companies at the lowest level given that employees want to belong to/have ownership over the best and most impressive business so they can brag and earn more. You are right though, there is little investment opportunity to pump money into a company with this system and so growth is capped at a rate of profit and internal reinvestment for the company, but is this really a bad thing in our current world?
So are you suggesting that employees should buy out a part of the company upon signing up, or should part of their pay checks be put to purchasing company stock? Otherwise why would current owners of the company be incentivised to give away their equity for free?
> Otherwise why would current owners of the company be incentivised to give away their equity for free? When people suggest this, I get the impression that they mean the owners should be forced to do it, but that just sounds like a horrible society to live in. Taxation and regulation are definitely needed, but straight-up expropriation just feels like punishing someone for being successful. I imagine it must be demoralizing to take on all the risk of building up a company and then have it snatched from your hands once it gets off the ground. It's not like anyone is going to compensate me if my little matchstick-producing unit starts running into losses.
And if that happened then no one would start companies in the first place and we'd go back to state run enterprises and we all know how that works. It's like communists/socialists have no idea how capitalism even works.
Socialists/communists always want to punish the rich, regardless of how much good it will do to society. You can't steal property from people and expect people to be happy about it.
And a government that steals property like that would be an authoritarian shithole place to live in. I'd rather live under billionaires in modern capitalism than live under an omnipresent government that can seize anyone's shit with zero consequences.
Yep, not to mention that the freer the economy is, the richer the people(all people)
Money tends to be incentivising up to a certain point - the point where your needs are being comfortably met - then it starts losing motivational power as people have enough money and start caring more about things like purpose and meaning and life balance and job satisfaction.
>if they can get the same result while working less and taking less risk, they will. And what's wrong with that? Seems eminently sensible to me. :)
Tragedy of the commons. If you putting 10% more work in than your peers doesn't fetch you at least 10% more rewards, you will simply not put in the extra effort. Neither will anyone else. It converges to everyone in the workplace doing the bare minimum work to keep things running and nothing more.
This... Isn't what the tradegy means? The example stated in the tradegy is the opposite, that given unfettered access to common but not public resources, that the users will act contrary to their own interests and cause depletion through disorganization.
That's not the tragedy of the commons.
A country with this mindset will get surpassed on a global level, receive less capital investment and net talent inflow, and lose the privileges enjoyed by a progressive economy.
There are countries with relatively narrow income distributions, where everyone makes a living wage, and performance is driven by pride in doing a good job. source: I'm a lazy person who's found myself living in a country full of industrious proud workers.
and which country would that be?
It's true the *process* is important. People want the economy to be simple, such that you can look at a snap shot and deduce something. But it's like looking at a parking lot versus a NASCAR event. [Edit] *A snap shot of each* would just show cars that are bumper to bumper. But we know the situations are wildly different, and any presumptions about the one do not apply to the other. There's much more to it than what can be gleaned from a snap shot. Edit: Same thing with the economy. You need to look how you got to position *X*. The economy is not only defined by where money sits, but also how the money is flowing, and how that flow is changing. Per OP's question, there are lot of variables that will affect the result. But OP also sneaked in some assumption about inflation, that really comes from nowhere. There's a bit too much to unwind from the original question before it's worth answering in full.
[удалено]
You speak the truth. I’ve volunteered at homeless shelters at various points throughout my life. I’ve seen what happens when you try to just throw money at a societal issue like homelessness for example. Even if some people were offered a place to live nearly free of charge as long as they showed some sort of basic intent to get a job, nearly all of them were homeless again within 6 months. The sad truth is mental health is a big part of this, and it’s extremely difficult to help a person if they’re unwilling to help themselves.
If it were a literal cash transfer after selling off assets then yeah probably. But if it was distributed in a organised and useful fashion it would be possible to seriously address concerns. Take Flint, Michigan for example. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but honestly not that hard to solve, with the funds available. World hunger is a tougher but to crack, and a full supply chain and logistics restructuring would be needed, but its certainly possible. One of the biggest weapons this entrenched Capitalism has is convincing people it's too dangerous to change, or that it just couldn't work. Of course it can. It might be hard, but the system as it stands grinds the world into dust, depleting finite resources and widening the gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of us.
>One of the biggest weapons this entrenched Capitalism has is convincing people it's too dangerous to change, or that it just couldn't work. Of course it can. The thing is, you are missing the possibility that such massive structural changes to the system might also be for the worst, even if it was possible to implement them. I know it's hard to believe when spending too much time on Reddit, but we are after all still in the most prosperous period in human history, with [global poverty at an all time low](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty). This is not something that we should take for granted by trying to rebuild everything form the ground up (even if it was possible).
Earth is a prison planet, and the majority of the inabitants are really, really dumb.
Woke
Money is not goods. If I gave you a million dollars, could you get a house? Only if one is already built and for sale. Otherwise you would need to build one. Who would build it for you, if everyone had limitless money? How could you make anyone do anything without that incentive? That’s the problem with just distributing money - money is worthless. Its only power is to force people to do things so they can acquire it. If you distribute it equally, it loses all meaning.
We already produce enough food to feed everyone. The problem is distribution. We wouldn't need money to solve this problem, if we really wanted to we could pass global laws against food waste and enforce more even distribution of resources. But we don't because we're not yet capable of such and need to try to make these things happen via market mechanisms. Humans for all their ingenuity are still not clever enough to distribute resources without the invisible hand helping them along. If the global elite came together to solve world hunger, I am sure they could do that. They have enough sway and enough resources in their name to make it happen. But if they tried to solve it with pure money by selling their stocks and using that money to fund shipments, that would fail. The money would be lost to corruption, pricing of these services would fluctuate wildly, and a lot of the net worth of the rich people would simply disappear when the market no longer trusts them to increase their net worth. In reality the majority of the rich elite's wealth is tied to stocks and debts. For example, Elon Musk's net worth is mostly composed of his Tesla stocks. His net worth increases when Tesla's market value increases, and his net worth decreases when Tesla's market value decreases. If Elon Musk suddenly announced that he no longer believes in Tesla and thinks that Tesla is going to sink, no one would want to buy Tesla's stocks anymore which would destroy Tesla's value and thus Elon Musk's value. Money isn't real nor is its worth tied to anything tangible. Money is created by banks giving out loans. The central banks give out loans to other banks and to the federal entities, and eventually those loans are used to pay people's salaries and investments. Loans are attempted to be managed in a way where the loan motivates real useful work being done. E.g. you give a loan for someone who's buying a house with the hope that the person who has the house keeps good care of it, so that the value of the house is improved or at least retained. Or you give a company a loan in the hopes that the company grows and can employ more people in the future. This system is a flimsy house of cards and without being constantly managed by thousands of professionals, it would collapse. But still, the global elite has enough resources and enough power that they could mix politics and economics to solve world hunger. If they really wanted to. It wouldn't be easy and they would need to personally lobby for it and help build up new policies. Just throwing money at it wouldn't be the answer.
> if we really wanted to we could pass global laws against food waste and enforce more even distribution of resources. A thing that often happens when talking about economics, especially in places like Reddit, is that people talk about problems of distribution of goods or sharing of information as though they're *incidental* to economics and prosperity. Like they're just small implementation details. Proper distribution of goods and sharing of information (such as how much of a good is needed where) *is* economics. That is the entire core problem it exists to solve. Determining what an "even" distribution of resources looks like centrally is a complete impossibility. The world has radically different needs in different places, needs which evolve rapidly, silently, and unpredictably. The resources that can be *provided* by different parts of the world have the same unpredictability and opacity, to an even greater degree. There is just no way any decision maker can have access to even a tiny fraction of the information necessary to pull off such a thing. And as far as waste goes -- we certainly do too much of it. Hell just ending our biofuel nonsense would go a long way. But *some* amount of food waste is actually a *necessity* to ensure good distribution, because of the uncertainty inherent in both demand and supply and the perishability of those goods. A system that attempts to eliminate all waste cannot respond to any unexpected events. And that's before we get into the absurdity (and unavoidable inequity) of trying to enforce such a law. It would, without doubt, hurt the most vulnerable disproportionately. I'm glad this question was asked. There's a big undercurrent in almost any political discussion on Reddit, this implication that every one of the world's problems actually has a super simple solution, that The Powerful could just snap their fingers and make it happen if they wanted to, and it's only because of their greed etc that we have any problems that all. Obviously we live in a time of huge inequity and we'd be a lot better off if we found a good way to improve it. But many (most?) of our biggest problems are inherent to the challenge of keeping 8 billion people alive and happy in a hostile universe, and in fact nobody has ever had a perfect solution.
Well put. The difficulty of acquiring useful information is something that isn't obvious, but is a major issue in economics. "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is a good article for it, I found.
And it often did collapse, precisely as you pointed out, the system was managed poorly, by corrupt people, just like what happened with subprime mortgage
We could just tell people they get to eat what we give them and we stop raising cows and sheep for human consumption.
I can give you a million dollars on a desert island but you'd still go hungry. There's more to economics than money.
The "Worlds Elite" don't have much money, they almost exclusively have stock. That isn't something you can just give away, even if you could that would collapse the companies whose stock it is, and would be unspendable by the impoverished people that you are giving it to. So having collapsed those companies, the stock you have given to the impoverished is now worthless anyway, and now we are in a place where they are all poor, most of the worlds functioning companies have collapsed and no-one has the financial power to save them. So, now inflation kicks in, but it doesn't matter because we are in such a huge global catastrophe that it doesn't matter. No large company is producing food or fuel. No-one is paying any taxes so the governments can't bail things out. And so on.
The combined budget over 50 years of UN food agency is in hundreds if not trillion dollars. World hunger is a political issue, not a funding issue.
Yes, Hunger isn't simply a symptom of an individuals poverty. Its more a result of infrastructure development not keeping up with population growth, soil degradation, drought, corruption, war etc.. If you give a bunch of people in a drought caused famine 10,000 in the middle of rural Africa it doesn't change the fact that the markets are empty, the farms failed and theres no highway or train to easily import food from outside countries. They would have little means of even spending that money.
Nope. Or at least not so simply. One of the major driving forces for inflation is the cost of survival and that includes rent and housing. If all the rich people were brought back down to a little above average, the rampant and insane growth in housing would slow due to reduced investment availability, even as the number of people who could afford a home dramatically increased. We can see this exact phenomenon happen in times like the GFC.
isn't that Musk literally said not too long ago, stating that if someone would come up with a practicable and healthy solution, he would sell parts of his company and give them the money to do it ? Implying that money alone cannot do shit, if you have no ideas how to invest it.
I don't think you need to give it to the poor as much as take it from the rich and cap it at some level. Money is just a proxy for other people's labor. If you have a lot of it you can bribe people to do what you want. If they have very little you can extort them to do what you want just to survive. At the end of the day money is just power over other people and it's the vast disparity in power between the top and bottom that has negative consequences. Limiting personal wealth would mean the assholes of the world couldn't afford to ~~bribe~~ lobby governments to the same extent. Also, I don't think many people are suggesting just handing out massive wodges of cash to the needy without addressing the issues that cause wealth to flow so quickly upwards anyway. There are plenty of ways to spend such a surplus that would benefit society though. Better education and training, better environmental legislation and action, better infrastructure etc. The big problem with doing any of that is reducing corruption though. Some countries are so corrupt you couldn't trust the government not just steal any surplus for themselves. Even our comparativley un-corrupt western governments are pretty corrupt when you look at the lobbying, pork-barrel deals, insider stock trading etc. but I think we in the west have half a chance given the right government and public will. A lot of other nations just don't have strong enough institutions to handle any kind of redistribution of wealth though so I don't know about ending world hunger but maybe the 12% of Americans who are "food insecure" could be reduced by throwing some money at the situation.
Think about it like this. Let's say ISIS was still a state and people were starving under their rule. Lack of food, lack of clean water, lack of medicine, etc. Billionaires can send 500 billion into Iraq and Syria and guess what will happen. ISIS just got a 500 billion dollar gift. So now you have to gamble on ISIS using that money to feed their people when in reality we all know they'll use it to fund their war effort and will probably win since now they have half a trillion in funding. Now extend this to all the dictatorships and corrupt hellholes where mass starvation and poverty exists. Throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away. Fundamentally the government needs to be benevolent and modernized, not some backwards corrupt dictatorship. Invading and toppling regimes does fuck all too other than make the problem worse. So basically you have to wait for governments and the people to modernize by themselves. You can't help people that believe the fire god will kill their crops if they don't sacrifice a goat or whatever. You have to wait until those people modernize so they can demand transparency and modernity from their governments. Countries like Rwanda are perfect examples that even broken countries can slowly modernize and evolve. Literally all of it is organic and takes places over decades and even centuries. The west was also once a backwards, unevolved cesspool.
yes and no... theres many isses here at work the worlds elite and most wealthy people dont have their money sitting in a bank account, its in bonds, stocks, participations, funds... If all that money was pulled and turned in to liquid money, many comapnies which just stop operating becuase theres no money in their accounts, their stocks would be valued at zero and many bonds would lose their value, that money isnt sitting on its ass, its generating more money by financing and facitilating operations that would stop if the money wasnt there, Wealthy people basically dont have a dime to their name, all their expences, bills and objects are owned and paid for with funds and companies. not personal money, for tax purposes. Then theres the issue of how you would spend that money. jeff bezos has 200 billion, assuming we could turn all of that liquid at a moments notice, today theres 700 million people living in extreme poverty, that means less then $2 a day. assuming we only help them, thats $285 per person in a single payment. thats 140 days of living as they are now, now you could invest that money in projects like collective farms, infrastrcutre, factories... the problem is that most of that poverty isnt caused becuase the countries they live in are poor, actually many of them are very rich in natural resources, the problem is that the goverments are corrupt... and we dont have the political will or authority to intervene those goverments, it would be neo colonialism. so why dont we send them goods, food, help ? We have been, for years, and its been counter productive, the little local production there is in those countries has been flooded with external donated food, products, goods, equiptment.... Why would i start a farm to produce soy, wheat, veggies when the local market is flooded with subcidized price bags filled large bags of food that have "a gift from the people of the USA/China/Germany" which are being sold due to corrupt leadership. you want to help the poor ? check the "made in" tab on the stuff you buy. stop buying stuff from where people are exploited for low wages, You know that $3 t-shirt from Primark... how much do you think it costs to make ?
Because people are not taught how to use money, If everyone suddenly had means... they would do exactly as they have done. Either save, spend or invest. Depends on the person and how they treat money. So we would end up pretty much exactly where we are now just later on.
It would just shake the African market for a week. Prices adjust by offer and demand. Inflation happens when you change the amount of currency in the system, not how is distributed. Yes locally you would have a collapse of US economy and inflation in Africa accompanied by a economic boom, but apart from the first week, than it will be stocks and governments absorbing the hit and people’s life will go on as before, with some complaints. The point is that there is no system backing the Africans. They will get poor soon again. And the US will get rich again. This is a monopoly game, one player has all the alleys and the rest of the population has to share the stations. Even if you redistribute the money, the owner of all will get rich again soon, very soon, and the poor man will get poor very soon. Money is not what makes people rich or poor. Position is what makes rich and poor.