Newfie wrote:Evil,
I’m more radical. I liken our vision of the economy to a perpetual motion machine. Nice idea except it defies the basic laws of physics. You can Tim is something up to cool food, for a while but eventually it must stop.
Same thing for a “perpetual growth” economy. It will stop. Best to plan for the slow down. Folks that deny the inevitability of the slow down are not connected to reality.
asg70 wrote:Since people discount the future, even if they know the process is unsustainable they will profit from it while they can and pass the buck to the next generation. So the only question that counts is how much longer the system can go on. Very few people will make sacrifices in the now to better future generations.
In Manhattan, the homeless shelters are full, and the luxury skyscrapers are vacant.
Such is the tale of two cities within America’s largest metro. Even as 80,000 people sleep in New York City’s shelters or on its streets, Manhattan residents have watched skinny condominium skyscrapers rise across the island. These colossal stalagmites initially transformed not only the city’s skyline but also the real-estate market for new homes. From 2011 to 2019, the average price of a newly listed condo in New York soared from $1.15 million to $3.77 million.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:asg70 wrote:Since people discount the future, even if they know the process is unsustainable they will profit from it while they can and pass the buck to the next generation. So the only question that counts is how much longer the system can go on. Very few people will make sacrifices in the now to better future generations.
Yup. For an indirect proof, as I'm fond of mentioning, you can't get a HUGE proportion of people to even wisely prepare for their OWN future (re saving, consumption restraint, etc), much less future generations.
The problem is so bad that in the first world, a mandatory "social retirement program" is universal. Even in the "wild west" US.
EnergyUnlimited wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote:asg70 wrote:Since people discount the future, even if they know the process is unsustainable they will profit from it while they can and pass the buck to the next generation. So the only question that counts is how much longer the system can go on. Very few people will make sacrifices in the now to better future generations.
Yup. For an indirect proof, as I'm fond of mentioning, you can't get a HUGE proportion of people to even wisely prepare for their OWN future (re saving, consumption restraint, etc), much less future generations.
The problem is so bad that in the first world, a mandatory "social retirement program" is universal. Even in the "wild west" US.
Why not to make such people a first wave of customers of dieoff?
Any protected degeneration will only breed more degeneration.
LONDON (Reuters) - A majority of people around the world believe capitalism in its current form is doing more harm than good, a survey found ahead of this week’s Davos meeting of business and political leaders.
EnergyUnlimited wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote:asg70 wrote:Since people discount the future, even if they know the process is unsustainable they will profit from it while they can and pass the buck to the next generation. So the only question that counts is how much longer the system can go on. Very few people will make sacrifices in the now to better future generations.
Yup. For an indirect proof, as I'm fond of mentioning, you can't get a HUGE proportion of people to even wisely prepare for their OWN future (re saving, consumption restraint, etc), much less future generations.
The problem is so bad that in the first world, a mandatory "social retirement program" is universal. Even in the "wild west" US.
Why not to make such people a first wave of customers of dieoff?
Any protected degeneration will only breed more degeneration.
To be truly egregious it takes being publicly held. It's the same principle, only instead of battling less to go around there is a deliberate redistribution that accomplishes the same thing. That's when the excess which may have been available to reward those involved in the scheme, through economies of scale and division of labor, goes to the owners, and management. Under the guise of transferring value to shareholders, management has come out on top while workers haven't.
rockdoc123 wrote:To be truly egregious it takes being publicly held. It's the same principle, only instead of battling less to go around there is a deliberate redistribution that accomplishes the same thing. That's when the excess which may have been available to reward those involved in the scheme, through economies of scale and division of labor, goes to the owners, and management. Under the guise of transferring value to shareholders, management has come out on top while workers haven't.
Please give an example as this is pretty absurd to my mind. There are basically two kinds of public companies, those which are focussed on share growth and those that are focussed on dividend growth. In the latter category (think XOM) the shareholder reward is pretty simple...it is a contract you enter into when you buy the shares. You receive X% yield and your compensation or share of the success is based on how many shares you hold. In the former case success in a strong market would be measured ultimately by share price growth. If you own more shares you get a greater share of the success in either company construct.
Company owners cannot somehow filter off profits and put them in their pockets. There are so many checks and balances in the system that sort of thing is immediately apparent in the annual independent audit and would result in the SEC (or other securities exchange regulator) issuing sanctions and the Board of Directors firing the individuals responsible. As to paying themselves salaries, annually all public companies issue statements about compensation and how that was arrived at. Almost all public companies now have governance in place that has a compensation committee that outlines a number of measures against which performance of the corporation is tracked (cashflow, operations completion, share price, safety etc). Those measures are compared against companies of similar size and the compensation is then justified. Even someone who is a founder in a small public company cannot filter money off into their own accounts. That person may have a seat on the Board but the other seats are generally independent so the ability to do something criminal is pretty much precluded. Ultimately all of these owners, executives, etc report to the Board who in turn report to the shareholders. The shareholders annually vote to approve the appointment of Directors and it is in that fashion that they have significant control.
Suggesting all public companies are run by owners and executive who are able to somehow feather their own nests at the expense of shareholders is nothing more than a socialist rant that has little basis in fact. Whining about how much executive are compensated is a discussion that can't happen without looking at the actual measurements by which they are compensated. I suggest you avail yourself of the documents filed by these public companies each year to the SEC, TSX etc.
How about Boeing? That CEO just got canned, after the fact. You wanted an example. That's just a very public one. Since the 737 Max crisis hit the company, I've seen several employees interviewed who tried to tell somebody about something wrong with the plane.
Or, again, I recently read a story about how a major car company in the US had allowed SUV's to roll off of the assembly line with too many defects.
These examples are nothing, compared to all of those companies which rely upon things in society to keep their underpaid employees working for them. Yes, things which they, or those like minded to them, have lobbied for over the decades. The sort of things exemplified in single issue politics.
evilgenius wrote:[
How about Boeing? That CEO just got canned, after the fact. You wanted an example. That's just a very public one. Since the 737 Max crisis hit the company, I've seen several employees interviewed who tried to tell somebody about something wrong with the plane.
...
Or, again, I recently read a story about how a major car company in the US had allowed SUV's to roll off of the assembly line with too many defects. I can't remember which one, or I would say their name. They were warned as well.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 18 guests