Ask Lemmy

Upvote for blue-sky thinking.

How about no financial products, period. No loans, no mortgage, only rent-to-own or rent. Obfuscating financial products into more complex combined financial products is half of the economy crashes. Obfuscate the numbers, steal, grab, pillage while no one can understand what the frickel you are doing and BAM: profit on the backs of normies who are tOo dumb to understand what a margin call is or why CDO's are here to violate you. All financial products are a scam waiting in ambush, waiting for another bank-bro to think of a way they can leach from society without giving anything back.

The solution proposed in "After Capitalism" is (with democratically worker managed companies):

A flat-rate tax on the capital assets of all productive enterprises is collected by the central government, all of which is plowed back into the economy, assisting those firms needing funds for purposes of productive investment. These funds are dispersed throughout society, first to regions and communities on a per capita basis, then to public banks in accordance with past performance, then to those firms with profitable project proposals. Profitable projects that promise increased employment and/or further other democratically decided goals are favored over those that do not. At each level—national, regional, and local—legislatures decide what portion of the investment fund coming to them is to be set aside for public capital expenditures, then send down the remainder, no strings attached, to the next lower level. Associated with most banks are entrepreneurial divisions, which promote firm expansion and new firm creation. Large enterprises that operate regionally or nationally might need access to additional capital, in which case it would be appropriate for the network of local investment banks to be supplemented by regional and national investment banks.

That's for taking care of the investment part that stocks/shares fulfill for a large part right now.

And for getting there:

Legislation giving workers the right to buy their company if they so choose. If workers so desire, a referendum is held to determine if the majority of workers want to democratize the company. If the referendum succeeds, a labor trust is formed, its directors selected democratically by the work-force, which, using funds derived from payroll deductions, purchase shares of the company on the stock market. In due time, the labor trust will come to own the majority of shares, at which time it takes full control via a leveraged buyout, that is, by borrowing the money to buy up the remaining shares.

Along with legislation that if a company is bailed out by the government, it gets nationalized and turned into a worker self managed company. If companies get sold, they can only be sold to the state (according to the value of current assets, not stock market cap or similar). And if a firm is not sold, it's turned over to the workers if the founders death. If there's multiple founders, each can sell their share to the state or workers separately.

For stocks specifically, there's the Meidner plan, where every company with more than 50 employees is required to issue new shares each year equivalent to 20% of its profits, these shares will be held in a trust owned by the government, and in an estimated 35 years, most firms would become nationalized (of course along side all newly founded firms having to be worker owned).

Not saying I fully agree with all of Schweickharts proposals, but at least the book is a relatively concrete proposal for an alternative that can be discussed, and how to possibly get there, so I thought it merits sharing.

Our beef supply would vanish overnight

The "make every company a cooperative" concept has been proposed before. For certain companies it could make sense, but it gets a little tricky when it's anything that needs significant funds to get off the ground.

Corporations were invented for a reason: it creates a mechanism whereby investors can put money in up front in exchange for a share of possible profits once the venture gets going. For example, that makes it possible to build a billion dollar nuclear reactor with 100 staff people who couldn't each pay 10 million dollars.

The mechanism that creates billionaires is only sort of related. Elon Musk, for example, built up his wealth through tangential involvement with a series of really successful companies.

I read through almost the whole thing wondering how it would connect to “socks”. Is he a shill for “big footwear”?

You need a way to invest in companies, especially for any to grow, and you need to motivate people. A central economy might budget tax revenue, typically on a multi-year plan, but it tends not to be responsive to real world messiness nor motivating. Capitalism means anyone can invest in a company, getting partial ownership and partial benefit from gains and responding quickly to the whims of the market. People are motivated by profit. Are you proposing a third way?

I've got a better idea: Make stockholders criminally liable and eligible for prison/execution for the crimes committed by the companies they invest in.

Oh, PharmaCorp knowingly put a medication in to production that causes baby's brains to catch fire? Every single investor in PharmaCorp is gonna serve three consecutive life sentences in Rapesburg-Asspain penitentiary.

Wipe out a few generations of the upper class by getting a couple mass first degree murder convictions to stick and the problem will sort itself out.

Idk, man. I paid my rent last year with some stocks i cashed out.

I'd recommend just researching companies to invest in for like 10 years, and then research information on ETFs to help your money grow with the market. I'm basically poor and the stocks i invested in helped when i needed it, and i am definitely going to invest again.

But I wouldn't say get rid of the stock market. Just do some research, and only invest what you're willing to not keep in a savings account for a rainy day.

Why do all solutions need to be destructive? The stocks and companies exist to make one thing - maximize the stakeholder value. So, to get rich, one just needs to - hold stocks, and the company works to make you money. Nothing more, nothing less. But why are so little people actually owning stocks? Because you don't get tought in school about financial literacy.

Money is actually on the table for everyone to grab, just that majority of the people lack basic knowledge - where is the table and how to get to it.

Just teach people in school how to manage stocks, and everyone can ~~be rich~~ have a lot of money.