Profit is wage theft? How does that make any sense, or help anyone?
Extortionate profits is exploitation.
But profit per se is a person - or the company owners - receiving back some part of the value they created (helped create), on top of the expense put in.
Employees receive profit for their labour as salary; owners receive profit for their investment as ‘company profit’. The problem is exploit their control and position to shift more of the profit to themselves, exploiting the labour of those doing most of the work.
But calling profit wage theft means investors and entrepreneurs should get exactly zero for their investment and work getting things started: and that seems to me a nonsense take that helps nobody - unless you rename profit as ’ investor salary’.
Companies making record profits, which don’t go proportionally to all the members/labourers therein, is a wrong. And I agree with other commenters that it needs a different name.
Wage theft is a different issue that (as I understand it) is massively under-addressed but legally recognised in America/UK/etc, of robbing employees of their wages as per the agreement/contract. This crime needs attacking, and expanding the name to include things that are not legally criminal, makes it harder to tackle this one - or you need a new name for this specifically.*
To address this other kind of wage theft, where employees are robbed, legally, of their appropriate/fair share of the resulting value**, you need a separate framework of legality of fair profit sharing, and illegality of the converse.***
* Incidentally, this is a concern I have about ‘rape’ as non-consent. (And maybe sometimes a parallel concern about some uses of ‘terrorism’.) Should the couple who go into a room for sexy times, get naked, then one decides maybe not tonight, but the other emotionally presses them into it - should that be treated as severely as the man who accosts a woman in the alley at night and forcefully copulates with her? Perhaps? Should the man who forcefully copulates be treated as lax as the one who didn’t take no for an answer after they were both naked in the bedroom? …No. I hope people who actually deal with these things have ways to handle them properly, but it’s seemed to me like the definition gets expanded to make a point, “these things are also bad and you should hate them just as much!” But in the process loses the force of the worse, more specific crime.
(Sorry, long, unrelated tangent.)
** Okay, so I’m calling it ‘robbed’ now. I guess that means I’ve kind of cone round to agreeing more than I intended to.
*** And that’s your point, isn’t it! Well, I thought I disagreed with you, then it seems I’ve talked myself into something at least similar. I’ll let my long and boring comment stand anyway. It’s not 100% useless ;-)
I know you’re distinguishing between wage theft vs robbery, but especially since we are in a solarpunk community, and that has some ties to anarchism, is there really much point in distinguishing? Profit is just an owner taking for themselves what is due to the workers who produce the value, essentially stealing it. You could argue that, well the owner created the company with their investment and therefore incurred risk, but at the end of the day the only risk they incurred would result in them having to become a worker, themselves.
I’m against any authoritarian structure, China included. At the end of the day, the state is just the threat of legalized violence, an industry monopolized by the police. Communist, Capitalist, doesn’t matter. It is unjust and stifles human freedom.
That has little to do with the ethics of profit, which are dubious at best.
Edit: actually it has everything to do with profit, as most profit seeking ventures are authoritarian and exploitative in nature
I kinda agree with your early-on point. Wage theft has a legal definition, and profiteerig doesn’t fit that. Sometimes you need to flow with the joke, I guess.
For a real solution, I wouldn’t just tell investors or whatever that they can’t make a profit and call it a day, but rather change the entire structure of ownership so that there is nobody left who could make a profit. The people filling the (useful) roles that were formerly filled by investors, CEOs, etc. would then get just another wage/salary. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before. 🤔
You should check out Ursula K Leguin’s sci-fi novel The Dispossessed. It explores a society that has no concept of ownership at all, and the good and bad that comes with that. It’s really really good.
But the whole idea that profit/private property is inherently theft is a major tenant of Marxist theory as far as I understand it, so you saying
I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before.
Is funny because people have been trying to think of solutions for the past ~150 years haha
Profit is the excess resources generated when combining capital and labor. Capitalism predominately sends the profit to the holders of capital, and socialism sends the profit predominately to labor.
Profit is not wage theft. Sending that profit to investors rather than workers is.
Edit: as a matter of accounting, profit may be calculated after the workers get their checks. That’s simply an accounting thing and doesn’t really matter to a broader understanding of where the money goes.
That’s not correct, not even a little. How would a company stay afloat without reinvesting profits into themselves. At the very least, they have to keep their equipment working.
Or growth? Does every company need to stagnate soon as they are developed and never grow or change?
If a company spends money on itself, that money isn’t profit. Profit is the money left over which the business has no better use for (usually decided as being excess by people who will share in the profit when it is distributed)
And this line of thought is one of many ways how companies avoid taxes despite raking in ungodly amounts of money. Instantly throwing “all” that potential profit into expansion.
‘We didn’t make any profit for the past 5 years. Yes, we have grown the company 5000% since we started but we’ve made no profit, so wages will stagnate. In fact, we might have cut some positions if the stakeholders don’t see some profits soon.’
I was under the impression that investing in your employees counts as investing in your business.
If people do their jobs so well that a company is raking in profits they deserve a raise.
That’s how the job I work at functions. It’s smallish company, but we get more raises for being competent than our larger, more established competitors give… so I’ll be staying at my current place of employment since they treat us like people.
I can’t tell if they have. I can tell you that your previous comment was about as well-crafted as a child’s when they first encounter some of the world’s evils.
“Yes, we probably shouldn’t be ravaging the world. No, all the cereal we eat isn’t probably the largest contributor to that nor is it the primary beneficiary of the competitve, economic system that has been chosen to continue.”
I can’t tell how far you’ve thought about it but that comment you sent was laughable. I can almost see it in a one-panel boomer comic being said by a protestor while the lead character says some shit like “Guess he didn’t hear breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Profit is wage theft.”
FTFY
Profit is wage theft? How does that make any sense, or help anyone?
Extortionate profits is exploitation.
But profit per se is a person - or the company owners - receiving back some part of the value they created (helped create), on top of the expense put in.
Employees receive profit for their labour as salary; owners receive profit for their investment as ‘company profit’. The problem is exploit their control and position to shift more of the profit to themselves, exploiting the labour of those doing most of the work.
But calling profit wage theft means investors and entrepreneurs should get exactly zero for their investment and work getting things started: and that seems to me a nonsense take that helps nobody - unless you rename profit as ’ investor salary’.
Companies making record profits, which don’t go proportionally to all the members/labourers therein, is a wrong. And I agree with other commenters that it needs a different name.
Wage theft is a different issue that (as I understand it) is massively under-addressed but legally recognised in America/UK/etc, of robbing employees of their wages as per the agreement/contract. This crime needs attacking, and expanding the name to include things that are not legally criminal, makes it harder to tackle this one - or you need a new name for this specifically.*
To address this other kind of wage theft, where employees are robbed, legally, of their appropriate/fair share of the resulting value**, you need a separate framework of legality of fair profit sharing, and illegality of the converse.***
* Incidentally, this is a concern I have about ‘rape’ as non-consent. (And maybe sometimes a parallel concern about some uses of ‘terrorism’.) Should the couple who go into a room for sexy times, get naked, then one decides maybe not tonight, but the other emotionally presses them into it - should that be treated as severely as the man who accosts a woman in the alley at night and forcefully copulates with her? Perhaps? Should the man who forcefully copulates be treated as lax as the one who didn’t take no for an answer after they were both naked in the bedroom? …No. I hope people who actually deal with these things have ways to handle them properly, but it’s seemed to me like the definition gets expanded to make a point, “these things are also bad and you should hate them just as much!” But in the process loses the force of the worse, more specific crime.
(Sorry, long, unrelated tangent.)
** Okay, so I’m calling it ‘robbed’ now. I guess that means I’ve kind of cone round to agreeing more than I intended to.
*** And that’s your point, isn’t it! Well, I thought I disagreed with you, then it seems I’ve talked myself into something at least similar. I’ll let my long and boring comment stand anyway. It’s not 100% useless ;-)
I know you’re distinguishing between wage theft vs robbery, but especially since we are in a solarpunk community, and that has some ties to anarchism, is there really much point in distinguishing? Profit is just an owner taking for themselves what is due to the workers who produce the value, essentially stealing it. You could argue that, well the owner created the company with their investment and therefore incurred risk, but at the end of the day the only risk they incurred would result in them having to become a worker, themselves.
Removed by mod
I’m against any authoritarian structure, China included. At the end of the day, the state is just the threat of legalized violence, an industry monopolized by the police. Communist, Capitalist, doesn’t matter. It is unjust and stifles human freedom.
That has little to do with the ethics of profit, which are dubious at best.
Edit: actually it has everything to do with profit, as most profit seeking ventures are authoritarian and exploitative in nature
That read was an interesting journey indeed. ^^
I kinda agree with your early-on point. Wage theft has a legal definition, and profiteerig doesn’t fit that. Sometimes you need to flow with the joke, I guess.
For a real solution, I wouldn’t just tell investors or whatever that they can’t make a profit and call it a day, but rather change the entire structure of ownership so that there is nobody left who could make a profit. The people filling the (useful) roles that were formerly filled by investors, CEOs, etc. would then get just another wage/salary. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before. 🤔
You should check out Ursula K Leguin’s sci-fi novel The Dispossessed. It explores a society that has no concept of ownership at all, and the good and bad that comes with that. It’s really really good.
But the whole idea that profit/private property is inherently theft is a major tenant of Marxist theory as far as I understand it, so you saying
Is funny because people have been trying to think of solutions for the past ~150 years haha
Edit: behold my inability to sense irony lmaoo
Yeah, I’m aware of Marxism. Bit of a commie myself. That question was intended to be ironic. xD
omg lmaoooo my bad disregard that last part then
But definitely still recommend The Dispossessed if you like sci-fi or anarchist thought experiments – it’s so good
I’ll add it to my ever-expanding TODO list, thanks.
Profit is the excess resources generated when combining capital and labor. Capitalism predominately sends the profit to the holders of capital, and socialism sends the profit predominately to labor.
Profit is not wage theft. Sending that profit to investors rather than workers is.
Edit: as a matter of accounting, profit may be calculated after the workers get their checks. That’s simply an accounting thing and doesn’t really matter to a broader understanding of where the money goes.
If I make a low-ball offer on a product, and the seller just wants it gone so he accepts, is that theft?
I was pleasantly surprised at the quote I got to have my basement drywall finished and gladly hired the guy and paid him. Was that theft?
Theft has a certain meaning to it. Don’t make the English language more stupid than it already is.
Correct.
This would be very deep to a 12 year old.
That’s not correct, not even a little. How would a company stay afloat without reinvesting profits into themselves. At the very least, they have to keep their equipment working.
Or growth? Does every company need to stagnate soon as they are developed and never grow or change?
If a company spends money on itself, that money isn’t profit. Profit is the money left over which the business has no better use for (usually decided as being excess by people who will share in the profit when it is distributed)
And this line of thought is one of many ways how companies avoid taxes despite raking in ungodly amounts of money. Instantly throwing “all” that potential profit into expansion.
‘We didn’t make any profit for the past 5 years. Yes, we have grown the company 5000% since we started but we’ve made no profit, so wages will stagnate. In fact, we might have cut some positions if the stakeholders don’t see some profits soon.’
Or worse: “invest” it in stock buy-backs and thus allow shareholders to realize the profits indirectly anyways.
But that doesn’t invalidate the original observation that investments into the company and maintenance costs are not paid from profits.
I think you need to educate yourself what “profit” actually means 😜
Maintenance of equipment costs and most investments are subtracted from a company’s revenues before calculating profits.
I was under the impression that investing in your employees counts as investing in your business.
If people do their jobs so well that a company is raking in profits they deserve a raise.
That’s how the job I work at functions. It’s smallish company, but we get more raises for being competent than our larger, more established competitors give… so I’ll be staying at my current place of employment since they treat us like people.
Maybe its time we re-evaluate the position of companies in our culture. It’s obvious that capitalism has failed and is taking the world down with it.
Is it really that important that we have 50 different varieties of breakfast cereal that is all just different formulations of the same 3 ingredients?
Is it really beneficial for us as a species to have every single material need catered for instantly regardless of the long term impact?
Yeah super deep thoughts.
Sounds like you haven’t spent a second considering any systems other than all the bullshit you coalesced in.
I can’t tell if they have. I can tell you that your previous comment was about as well-crafted as a child’s when they first encounter some of the world’s evils.
“Yes, we probably shouldn’t be ravaging the world. No, all the cereal we eat isn’t probably the largest contributor to that nor is it the primary beneficiary of the competitve, economic system that has been chosen to continue.”
I can’t tell how far you’ve thought about it but that comment you sent was laughable. I can almost see it in a one-panel boomer comic being said by a protestor while the lead character says some shit like “Guess he didn’t hear breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
What a poorly tuned trollbot…