Comment on Imagine if Amazon and all jobs out there were cooperatively owned?

ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Musk paid $44 billion in cash for Twitter. Billionaires only have wealth on paper until they want to buy a company, then magically they have the cash.

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  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s my understanding that Musk borrowed heavily from investors for that cash.

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    • David_Eight@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Buy, Borrow, Die strategy.

      1. Buy something that potentially increases in value (real estate, companies, stock etc)

      2. Borrow money against the appreciated value of step 1, this borrowing in not taxable.

      3. Die and leave assets to whoever and never pay tax on the assets.

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  • oppy1984@lemdro.id ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s called leveraged borrowing, it’s how the billionaire class pays for things. The banks typically give them super low rates and generous terms on these types of loans.

    So what Elon did was took a loan against his assets, Tesla stock, at a low APR with very loose repayment terms, then paired that with money pledged by a few other minority investors and that’s how he was able to quickly come up with 44 billion to buy Twitter.

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  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yeah and a lot of that came from other investors

    Other investors that will be coming to look for their investment money

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  • DogWater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    youtube.com/shorts/J3UVMlDUFkc

    youtu.be/J3UVMlDUFkc

    youtu.be/LpgNHaCuu44

    You need this guy on YouTube. He’s excellent at shedding light on this stuff. He has stuff for lobbying, aipac, billionaires, rfk, private equity, and more

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  • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Musk paid very little for twitter. He paid $0 in real money. He traded (iirc) like $13b of Tesla stock. The rest was filled by Saudi investors and western banks, who were greatly encouraged to own and control one of the primary modalities of communication in the 21st century. Either way very little actual cash transferred hands

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  • Peculiaris@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    IIRC they basically use some of their shares like a credit card, since the value of their shares keeps appreciating the interest is much easily paid off

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• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  he’s not liquid

  Who gives a fuck? Wealth is wealth and his equity is his security for the low to zero interest loans from where all his spending money comes.

  None of the “richest Americans” have near the amount of wealth they appear to have

  Again, yes they do. Illiquid wealth is still wealth and is the basis of rich people getting to spend as much as they want with little to no risk compared to people who DON’T have a dragon’s hoard in stock for the above infinite money exploit to work.

  This is what people mean when they say workers should own the means of production tho

  Nah, when people say that workers should own the means of production, they’re talking about ACTUAL ownership, not bonuses from the owner.

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  • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    No, they’re saying they should own the means of production. Which in the modern context means equity in the company. All 876,000 employees could be given a 105,000 bonus in terms of stock and then they’d own Amazon equity, done

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    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      So THAT’S where you want the goal posts now?

      Image

      Equity isn’t the means of production. The means of production are what produce the products and services, not what produces the capital. What you’re talking is the means of profiting.

      If you were talking about a financial company where wealth for the sake of wealth IS the only product, you’d be right, but Amazon isn’t that.

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      • Emma_Gold_Man@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Except that shareholders vote on the board of directors, who make decisions like hiring and firimg the CEO, executive compensation, and overruling executive decisions. It’s two levels of indirection, but in the end the shareholders DO control the means of production.

        There are exceptions to this when thete are multiple classes of shares - one voting and one nonvoting for example. This doesn’t apply in Amazon’s case that I can see.

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      • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        There are no goal posts here. The workers can’t own the machinery in modern times because American companies rarely manufacture anything so they they own stock. Instead of jeff bezos and a small handful of executives (plus uninvolved “shareholders”) owning the bulk of the amazon the workers own the company. I don’t get why this is hard for you to understand and why you are making strange semantics arguments to defend the right of billionaires owning an obscene amount of wealth.

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• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  That’s not really how that works. Sure, it isn’t liquid, but you can still borrow against it, and you don’t pay tax in this like you would if you sell. That’s how the wealthy can still buy things without having to pay any reasonable amount of tax.

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  • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And if amazon gave their employees stock options (like they did at one point) the employees could also borrow against it. But amazon stopped doing that once they reached a point where their employees were impacting their bottom line. They now rob their employees of that option to entrench wealth amongst the elite

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