Excluding terms and conditions that were mutually agreed at the start of employment what are some examples of how a boss steals the majority of a workers effort?
Discussion
“Excluding terms and conditions that were mutually agreed on” let’s start here first. In the Art Of War it teaches that you will get the most out of your army if you put them in a situation where it is life or death. I like how you tried to make it so simple as “mutual agreement” leaving out historical factors, regional factors, socio economic factors, and other situational factors. It would be best to replace “mutual” with “coerced” because…life cost money.
Moving on, there is plenty of data showing that productivity has been on a parabolic increase WHILE wages in real terms of purchasing power have decreased. So much so, the wealth gap has also drastically increased.
Let’s also take technology and how it works s by nature deflationary, yet again the wealth gap increases and the middle class shrinks into poverty.
If those two do not suffice, which certainly they ought to. You also have more children starving globally than in years of past WHILE the top 1% have more than 50% of the global wealth.
So, I ask you, how does the money NOT reach the lower class when CLEARLY the money is there for the taking?
Just trying to simplify given the difficulties of long conversations via text.
I agree that productivity has gone up fast as have costs of goods and services while wages less so resulting in a real cost of living crisis.
As you point out there is a shit ton of money it’s just not distributed fairly or evenly which are not the same thing. So no real argument on the symptoms or ill effects.
I think we disagree on the cause. From this specific meme you posted I take it that you think people with capital and own businesses are to blame.
Im more inclined to think that the central banks monopoly on issuing fiat currency is the greatest source of the inequality.
Given you have BTC in your moniker I’m assuming you like its monetary policy. I think in a world with bitcoin and without central banks the wealth inequality would be less. But i think there will always be some that are smarter, harder working and better at organizing and predisposed to taking risk and they will start businesses. Others will just be happy being workers. And each will be relatively better off on a bitcoin standard. Both are doing work snd being compensated for it. Hopefully what we will have less of is people getting money for nothing.
So banks print a lot of money and loan it out. How then does it wind up in the hands of few after that? How does Bitcoin solve this problem, just stopping the flow of money?
I don’t mind people having different amounts of money as long as the rules of the game are the same for everyone, but they’re not.
The FED has a license to print an infinite amount of money by just making a keyboard entry. They are also legally protected from trading insolvent and going bankrupt.
Commercial banks are also allowed to create money from nothing and are functionally protected by the FED acting as a lender of last resort. Large public companies have access to large loans at low rates, and as you go down the stack to small public companies then large private companies to small businesses and individuals the loan size gets smaller snd interest rates get higher. The bigger you are the bigger you stay and the more the government protects you. See airlines getting bailed out during covid while my local hardware store sad forced to close. Proof of stake.
But if you take away the FED a good chunk of this unfairness goes away. You run a shit fractionally reserved bank and there is a run, bad luck you go bankrupt. Run a bad business go bankrupt.
If you are a worker and save in bitcoin for 8 years you can probably afford to leave if you want to or at least bargain better for a raise. If you and your coworkers don’t like the conditions take your bitcoin and form a coop and make better products cheaper and share your profits. When a business goes bankrupt because there isn’t the fiat lender of last resort you and your fellow workers with bitcoin can buy it for pennies on the dollar and run it better.
While i don’t like the fact that large companies can borrow billions for 0% they are acting rationally in the system as it exists today.
If you just got rid of the central bank and allowed stupid ideas to fail that would be a great start. I think on a bitcoin standard people would naturally end up with different amounts and thats cool. At least the rules of bitcoin are the same for everyone.
I agree that Bitcoin will change the game but you never answered the question. After the banks inject capital into the system, how does the majority end up in the hands of a few? Use home loans and go from there.
I’ll use a personal example. Im a worker and live below my means. I realize i am being debased at ~7% by monetary inflation. Of the commonly available investment vehicles, stocks bonds gold real-estate, I choose real-estate. Because i can save 20% of the value of a home i take advantage of the government subsidized mortgage rates and go 5x levered long. I rent it out to earn 4 ways. 1. Rental income. 2. Equity via loan principal reduction. 3. Tax reduction. 4. Appreciation caused by me and all my friends monetizing real estate because we know the fiat currency is shit. Rinse repeat via refinancing.
The bigger my portfolio the more i can borrow.
That its pretty rational given the current circumstances. And some people should probably rent so landlords provide a valuable service to them. For example let’s say you take a temporary assignment for six months the costs of buying and subsequently selling makes no sense.
But if i have the option for bitcoin it makes sense to save in that. So i sell my houses which puts downward pressure on prices so folks that were priced out can now afford. Take away the lender of last resort and banks will reduce the risk they take writing loans so there will be less buyers. If a bank goes bankrupt another will buy its assets for favorable terms and save me the taxpayer from bailing them out. Without the government subsidizing interest rates people couldn’t afford such high prices so prices would fall.
The thrust of this is that the government interference and granting of monopoly/cartel protection to bankers distorts the housing market.
On a bitcoin standard there will still be people that need or want to rent, there will still be people that want to run a real estate business and thats fine. What we would probably have much less of is people owning real estate because they think it’s the best way to protect their purchasing power from monetary inflation because sooner or later they will realize bitcoin is better. Even if you don’t end the central bank life is still better for everyone with bitcoin around, even for those that don’t buy it.
I appreciate the time you took to write that and thank you for sharing. You still did not answer the question.
How does the money we both agree is created to buy houses, build factories, build infrastructure end up in just the top 1%? It is actually a very simple answer.
I feel like I’ve done the heavy lifting today just go ahead and enlighten me.
Whoever controls the money that flows in, controls the money that flows out. If there is a massive increase in productivity and a massive widening in the wealth gap…it means those “owners” are stealing from the “producers”.
No argument that those closest to the money printer extract the most value. The money comes from the fed and commercial banks so get rid of the fed and allow banks to fail while adopting bitcoin is my solution. Whats yours?
Respectfully, I don’t think you understand how money creation works. When a bank makes a loan for a house, that bank created money. That created money goes to the contractors to build the house. If those business owners don’t use “proof of work” for compensation, then more than likely the owners will exploit cheap labor to make themselves richer. This model scales up and down.
Yes, bitcoin will help change incentives, savings, and the monetary system. No, bitcoin cannot change ideology with just protocol alone.
You can understand this completely because you are indirectly defending a system that revolves around “proof of stake”. Respectfully.
How does a business owner use proof of work for compensation?
I haven’t defended the proof of stake fiat money system at all.
You still have not provided a solution and frankly your description of the root cause of the problem is incoherent. Despite several interaction i cant understand you.
I’ll use a real life example. I own a construction business, it is profit sharing and we compete within our local market. Everyone gets paid according to the job and the work they completed…including myself. I don’t sit in an office or truck all day collecting large sums of money. If I dont work, I don’t get paid.
Proof of stake does not apply to just money or fiat money. Proof of stake is having more authority/control by simply holding an asset.
I have provided a solution, one of which we agree on, fix the money. The second is, educate people on proof of work, break the current Stockholm syndrome most people have with capitalism.
I apologize you do not understand me. I am trying to be as clear and simple as possible.
When the alternative is starvation and homelessness there’s not much of a choice is there?
If you are only qualified for one job yes it’s better to choose that job than starving. If you have a choice of multiple jobs choose the best one. If you don’t like being a worker avoid starvation in the short term by fiat mining and saving in bitcoin for the longterm.