Fife wrote:How much is the basic income, and how is it funded? Is it connected to employment at all?Speaker to Animals wrote:A better way to run businesses would be coupled with a basic income. Workers get paid a percentage of the profit. If there is no profit, they don't get paid. If profits suck, then their pay sucks. They always have basic income, just like everybody. A career ought to be approached in the same way that business is approached. It's about making calculated risks.
If we also transitioned away from banks and towards venture capital to fund business ventures, then everybody would have an incentive to responsibly manage their capital (and labor is a capital asset when you think about it).
Currently, nobody is responsible for dick. A corporation can take out a loan for a shit business plan and not really follow through seriously. They can get bailed out by the government, or even just have their shitty business model subsidized by the government. If they go under, they can't pay the banks back. But are the banks responsible with their capital? Nope. They just go to the government for bailouts or try to take the money from the bondholders in the bankruptcy hearings.
Workers don't give a fuck either. The chicks at the front desk don't care if they ignored and pissed off the guy trying to get directions to his appointment. Oh, was that guy here about a million dollar contract? Oh well. Talk to the union rep. Who doesn't give a shit if the union drags the corporation into the ground either.
Ideally, everybody would have a stake in the business' success. Right now, workers are like vampires who want to provide as little as possible without getting fired (not all, but many). They have no real interest in whether the business succeeds. If they help run it into the ground, they just move on like a cloud of locusts.
Investors and lenders don't give a shit either. The government enforces their transaction with violence. When the business doesn't have anything with which to pay the debts, the government takes the money from somebody (probably the taxpayers).
We ought to have a system where top-to-bottom everybody involved has an interest in this business succeeding, and everybody involved has an interest in looking for the most profitable endeavor possible. Instead of just looking for a job somewhere, workers ought to look for the job at the business most likely to pay off best for them. If they have a high tolerance for risk, then they could look into start-ups. If not, they can look into solid, well-run businesses with positive cash flow, growing earnings, and a relatively efficient workforce. To get capital to run that business, the owners have to convince venture capitalists who don't get their money back if the venture fails either. The venture capitalist has every interest in investing his money smartly.
I could go on and on about this, but what we have right now is total shit. Socialism isn't a fix. That's a fucking nightmare that's even worse.
How is the term "profit" defined, and who referees the books for everyone from the Walmart down to the solo CPA with 2 employees?
Who determines how the "profit" is divided?
Does the CEO get a bigger percentage than a mail room clerk?
Well, that's the big problem. We do not yet possess a sufficiently advanced technological economy to support something like a basic income. Maybe in fifty years we could consider it, but right now we would need to transition in progressions, sort of like how we transitioned into capitalism.
Note how proto-capitalistic practices began to emerge in Europe preceding the industrial revolution. Capitalism was not feasibe until industrialization, and the technologies upon which it is contingent, emerged in our society, and yet we already began transitioning to it with mercantilism and even some of the trade practices developed in the cities during the high midle ages. These changes began before even the advent of the modern state in Europe, which also remains a pre-requisite for capitalism, despite that libertarian moonshine you drink.
Some process like that must begin anew lest we end up like the Muslims or Asians who failed to adapt to emerging modernity. Modernity simply does not last very long compared to previous phases of civilization, and here we are in an age whose analog might be 1300s Europe.
