Comment on Steve Ballmer is set to make $1 billion a year for doing nothing | CNN Business

jaschen@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Actually that pretty much sounds like you didn’t really do anything to get it and just profited off the Apple employees’ hard work.

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  • throwwyacc@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Ah yes the classic “providing capital doesn’t count” How do you imagine businesses should get initial funding if not via investors? And how much should a person/corporation be allowed to profit from that initial funding?

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    • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If they didn’t hold the capital hostage from the doers of the world, laborers, as is the point of capitalism, it would be a lot easier.

      Instead the do nothing capitalists keep the vast majority of the value generated, and provide just enough for the people that made it to subsist. It’s a shame so many they would never let within 100 feet of their clubs, towers, or compounds defend their con.

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      • throwwyacc@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Sorry what’s your alternative? I’m guessing communism?

        In that system how do you efficiently allocate capital? Do you use a command economy?

        I’m not deifying anything, it just seems that capitalism is the most efficient economic system we can come up with. And combined with regulation seems to produce pretty good results, see most of the better parts of Europe for example

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    • explodicle@local106.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not GP, but I’d love to see them replaced entirely with crowdfunding. So the public would pay based on our expected benefit from new structures, instead of paying people who own structures. Much of the initial investment is just paying off someone else’s mature investment.

      Rather than just capping profits with a number, we should be addressing the problems that cause it to exist at all. We’re already voting on people who vote on bailouts; might as well just cut out the middlemen who “provide” capital.

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      • throwwyacc@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        How would you crowd fund a company that isn’t promising a specific set of products? Normally the way we do crowd funding is to offer essentially a pre sale of a product. Sure sometimes people just put forward cash because they really want the product to exist but it isn’t the norm But for a company that will be a service provider what incentive exists to fork over potentially millions of dollars? In a crowd funding scheme you expect no profit share so why would you invest in them?

        Compared to in this case buying a percentage of a company early on to provide them with capital on the basis that you may make money in the future

        Also those bailouts while somewhat distasteful were played back to the government with interest

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    • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The only things that warrant investors profiting off their investment at all are the risk of not getting the money back and the opportunity cost of not having the money for other things while it is tied up in the investment so I would say a reasonable profit would be somewhere in the order of magnitude of those and not in the current “infinitely for all time” order of magnitude.

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      • throwwyacc@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        How are you possibly measuring opportunity cost? This is the opportunity. All you can do is use it to buy goods and services or invest via lending in some form

        Say you could quantify that and cap profits. What should happen with corporate profits then? After you’ve “paid” the original investors? Does the owner of the company now reabsorb their shares? And if we instead allocate profits to the workers, do we also allocate losses? Do workers just straight up not get paid if the company loses money one year?

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    • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What amount of capital has Ballmer provided? Please give us a number in dollars. You can round it off.

      Also, what amount of capital would not be provided if Ballmer didn’t increase his wealth by $1 billion off of it? Again, you can round it off.

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      • throwwyacc@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Actually quite interesting in the case of Ballmer as he was an employee compensated via stock rather than straight up cash

        You’d consider that an investment as he was investing his time to be a business manager while being compensated probably less in cash that would be normal for the position

        So as early Microsoft didn’t have the cash on hand, or didn’t want to give up that cash they could use elsewhere they gave equity as compensation

        How do you suggest we should remove this situation? Should we not allow compensation in the form of equity? Or should ownership of equity not exist generally?

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      • Djtecha@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Ballmer also got Microsoft their first major contract back in the day. He did contribute massively to what MS is today. To that dollar value? No, no one contributes THAT MUCH. But it’s not like he wasn’t extremely impactful.

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