You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
-1 points

Do you think that transition would happen without severe turmoil? That’s the period I’m referring to. I think there’s a huge difference in incentives to create new businesses as well as to keep running them efficiently between private investment and government…I’m not sure what method you propose to regulate industry.

It doesn’t matter if people get paid if shelves are empty. The economy isn’t a magical portal that delivers toilet paper to those in need: it’s an insanely complicated set of (highly compromised at the moment, thanks to rich fucks and the officials/politicians they buy) human behaviors that act as market signals.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Why do you think there would be severe turmoil? In existing cases where the government has taken control of a business in the US, it’s typically reduced turmoil, which is why they’ve done it.

The difference in incentive is that private investment is looking for profits, and public ownership is usually more concerned with stability or public welfare.

What do you picture a change in ownership looking like? Do you think that somehow means massive layoffs and changes in management? Why would shelves go empty? What calamity befell the economy when we nationalized passenger rail, airport security, or mortgage financing? Or when we temporarily nationalized GM?

If changing ownership decimates the economy, then why hasn’t it been decimated already by routing changed in ownership that businesses have?

All this is aside from the original point, which is that profitability is not the same thing as solvency.
Siphoning some percentage of the companies revenue to investors isn’t what makes the business work.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

Are you talking about tiny changes or an entire economy? I don’t think it’s at all similar. What do you plan on doing with the owners you’ve taken property from?

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Fuck if I know? I wasn’t even advocating for anything, I was just explaining that “no profit” doesn’t mean a business ceases to exist. An example of this is state owned enterprises, which don’t turn a profit but still add to the economy and provide value to society. They pay their employees, and things are fine.

In a nationalization scheme, you can either compensate the investors a fair value, or seize their assets. Emminent domain is typically more fair, although recently examples tend towards either buying a controlling share at bankruptcy prices, or seizing the business outright and leaving shareholders in the lurch.

My take would be that if we’re taking the business for the public good, we should pay a fair value for it, and if it’s to stabilize something important that it’s fine for investors to take the fall, since without stabilization they also would have lost their money.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Microblog Memes

!microblogmemes@lemmy.world

Create post

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, Twitter X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

Community stats

  • 12K

    Monthly active users

  • 1.6K

    Posts

  • 75K

    Comments