The Ownership Crisis

https://ystrickler.medium.com/the-ownership-crisis-55a5f84c3e88

by ericjang • 4 years ago

23 18 4 years ago

ystrickler.medium.com

inglor_cz• 4 years ago

How is this new? There have been experiments with co-ops in various fields including housing since the 19th century.

Not all of them were unsuccessful, but their successes were mostly of local nature. A lot of the successes depended on favorable regulatory climate. Housing co-ops are significant players in some European countries and basically absent in neighboring ones, and differences in legal codes are the reason.

anm893• 4 years ago

So theres nothing between tech executive and pay check to paycheck...?

blamestross2• 4 years ago

Sure there is and it is mostly high skill labor like many of us or small scale landlords. It's not really a noteworthy chunk of the population. As a 15th percentile earner, I only make 4x median income which is paycheck to paycheck nowadays. Ziphy distributions are nasty that way.

sokoloff• 4 years ago

I think describing that as 85th percentile is more readily understandable.

anm893• 4 years ago

mostly high skill labor like many of us or small scale landlords.

That's just not true.

Doctors, lawyers, small business owners, tech workers. You can't just hand wave these people away.

zivkovicp3• 4 years ago

Taxes are the simple answer.

Nobody likes paying taxes, OK, neither do I... but as a reasonable individual I understand that the system itself is more of a factor in my overall success and standard of living than my own effort and ability.

I've lived (5+ years) in a few countries and have seen first hand that this is the case.

Corporations arguably are worthless without the support of the economic and social system they operate in; Amazon (as an example) would likely not exist had they started their business in a small market like Grenada which has less than 0.1% of global GDP.

Any company that operates in a large market and leverages an educated workforce, stable economy, rule of law, etc., should have to pay TAXES. Lots of taxes. LOTS.

my2c

refurb2• 4 years ago

Corporations arguably are worthless without the support of the economic and social system they operate in

That's true, but the same argument can be made about anything, so it's not a useful statement.

skywal_l• 4 years ago

It might seems a common sens tautology. I would advise you to read "Atlas Shrugged" from Ayn Rand. You would realize that this is far from being an universally understood and accepted statement.

zivkovicp3• 4 years ago

That's true, but the same argument can be made about anything, so it's not a useful statement.

That is precisely what makes it useful. We often overlook the obvious, and discount it. The system is what provides the foundation of success, therefore it should be maintained, hence taxation.

I am not suggesting that the government is going to do a good job of allocating funds to maintain and grow the health of the system... I am merely suggesting that all participants are OBLIGED to "give back" to the system that makes their prosperity possible; and the more you get, the more you should give.

People also, not just corporations.

jl2718• 4 years ago

This is so tiresome.

Situation: People that don’t pay taxes are getting rich, while people that do pay taxes are getting poor.

Solution: Raise taxes by X%.

simne• 4 years ago

I don't think this is ownership crisis. I think this is crisis of human nature.

The problem has name - passionarity. The best source I know, Lev Gumilyov work (unfortunately in Russian, but google translation looks good enough, begin read on caption "Passionarity levels") https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Пассионарная_теория_этногенеза

Gumilyov does not write numbers, but current statistics say, in population there are 1.5%-5% passionaries, who usually demonstrate entrepreneur behavior (and in democracy countries, registered as self employed or run small business).

All others people have very low level of passionarity, and just avoid to show initiative, mostly because this lead to responsibility.

That's all. Without initiative, nothing will work. Except of fraud or theft schemes, where stakes so high, that even absolutely passive people could show initiative to get so high gaining.

And what differ modern world from times look better, those times where one of two things, either power where extremely concentrated, so most resources where in hands of those 1.5%-5%, or exists some extremely powerful resource, like oil 100 years ago, which where good enough so passive people show initiative.

Now resources distributed very wide, and barriers to enter business like oil are too high, so very few passive people try to enter there.

Some countries show even worse things, because they for some esoteric reasons define passionarity people as enemies of normal people, and they make economy by robbing passionarity people and share loot with passive. And all these schemes end in one - they just try to rob other countries, mostly neighbors, and when on some moment fail - break apart, what exactly happen with USSR and now happen with Russia.

mark_l_watson• 4 years ago

I know people who are voluntarily becoming non-owners, which I think is a bad mistake.

One friend has always had a lavish life style, and when recently hit by cash shortage, they sold their house to a bank as a reverse mortgage. They did this 18 months ago so current high inflation is harmful to them.

Someone else I know just sold their only rental property because of high prices. Such a mistake because that rental property was a small hedge against inflation.

The World Economic Forum (the Davos billionaire club) have been test running advertisements saying that you will own nothing in the future and be very happy. To me this seems like an attack on freedom of some degree of financial independence.

kderbyma• 4 years ago

wholly liked the article until it became a pitch....another platform isn't going to fix this issue. it's a deeper routed issue that stems from the inherent designs of the system and the roles people play within it.

it's not fixable from within the system

The Ownership Crisis

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