this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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[โ€“] kevincox@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (7 children)

I would be a bit careful with this.

  1. It is incredibly hard to define each worker's contribution to any particular profit.
  2. It means that the worker's compensation depends on the overall success of the product which may have little to do with their work (for example bad management tanking a project or it getting cancelled before release).
  3. Accounting can move profits around in a lot of cases. Look at how every movie makes no money.

In many ways having it be a transaction (work x hours get paid x dollars) is nice. I means that the employee knows exactly what they are getting upfront.

[โ€“] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 2 days ago (3 children)

You could also have salaries ๐Ÿคท

The problem to solve is a handful of people who aren't really doing much work get most of the profits. There may be other solutions.

[โ€“] kevincox@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't know if I really buy "not doing much of the work". Middle management maybe but to own and run a company is serious work. Especially starting a company is huge risk. So if you take the risk you get a lot of the reward.

IMHO ways to help even this out are:

  1. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Keep that progressive tax curve going (and not regressing). I think these people do deserve to be rewarded, but up to a point. Honestly I think the tax rate should approach 100% as you approach the very highest percentile of income.
  2. Universal basic income. Make it so that people don't need to work. They get to choose to work when the compensation is worth it to them. This makes explotation much harder and makes it much easier for people to negotiate fair compensation (whether that is salary, profit sharing, a mix or something else).

I would also like to see some way to change the natural goal of a company from "make as much money as possible" to "bring as much value to people as possible", but I think these two things would be a good start.

[โ€“] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 points 2 days ago

If you own the company (or a lot of shares), you gain wealth by doing literally nothing if the company's value increases. On top of probably just keeping the profits. Plus the "use my stock as collateral, give me a low interest personal loan, that's not taxed as income lol" wealth back.

I'm not talking so much about the petit bourgeoisie that's working hard every day making donuts to sell. I'm talking about big C Capital that buys something and just takes the profits.

The CEO at my old job can't code. He can't do UI design. He doesn't do sales or customer service. He sometimes talks to other rich assholes to fundraise, but mostly he makes questionable decisions and hurts morale. But if the company goes big, he'll get filthy rich and the people who actually built the thing will not.

That said, higher taxes on the wealthy (plus closing loopholes like the loan thing) would help. So would universal basic income.

It's funny because conservatives cry about "welfare queens" that just take money for nothing, but it's the rich who can do that. If you have a few million, you can just coast on investments. Little to no risk. Once again, projection.

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