• 3 Posts
  • 41 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Stream created and maintains a platform that gamers and developers want to use but more importantly, they’ve built up a reputation that people believe in and trust.

    Gamers and developers are so eager to use steam because in all the years they’ve been operating, they still support and expand upon family sharing, have a fantastic refund policy (for consumers), don’t employ aggressive exclusivity deals, don’t limit download speeds behind paywalls, and provide a great review and recommendation system.

    They’ve become successful due to this reputation, why should we punish them for that?





  • Hi! I think your misunderstanding comes from the fact that religion, is not a mechanism for creating new knowledge, it is a collection of shared beliefs between people.

    A better comparison would be faith VS science, or religion VS scientific understanding.

    While most religious beliefs are faith based at their core, it’s easy to speculate that certain religious and cultural stigma arose after repeated observation of the natural world (Alice ate shrimp, Alice falls ill -> eating shrimp is against the will of God). Not as efficient as controlled scientific testing, but it ultimately lands you on the true statement “Eating shrimp is unwise and likely to get you sick”.



  • The question becomes who determines the size of the stake. Without equal ownership in the business isn’t the relationship between me and the other workers more akin to an owner -> employee relationship as opposed to a co-ownership? If I’m the only one who can make execuitive decisions, determine the rates of profit sharing, choose who gets hired and who gets let go, it doesn’t seem that much different than how things might look in America today, for instance.

    Suppose the contract I draft up is for $5 an hour and 1% of the excess profits, split evenly among all non-owners, I see no difference than hire things look like in Starbucks.


  • Thanks for the response! Would the idea then be that over time, the other two workers would eventually have to be given equal ownership over the operation?

    As an asside, regarding the unanimous minus one vote policy as well, it seems like all you’d need to ensure that you never got removed was to ally yourself with one other person who would promise to never vote against you.


  • Thanks for the response! In my scenario I consider ownership to be the ability to make executive decisions surrounding the business. This could range from what products we choose to sell, what the sign on the front says, who we buy our ingredients from, how much we charge customers for, how much we spend on cleaning supplies, the color of the wallpaper, when we decide to look for new employees, ect…

    If I’m the sole worker at my operation, I have full authority over all these things!









  • Thanks for the comment! I agree that owning ten tractors that I don’t personally use VS leasing out my one personal vehicle in the off season feels different, but I’m not exactly clear on where the line is drawn and by what standards it is.

    Isn’t me being the sole person who can decide who can and can’t lease my equipment and at what rate / how much compensation I expect to receive for the privilege of doing so kind of make me a boss already, even if I don’t formally employ anyone in a business?

    I think we both understand that some form of compensation is fair, as use of the equipment will gradually degrade it’s quality, presents an inconvenience to me (no option to use it on the days it’s gone), and an increased risk of the tractor becoming inoperable (catching fire, catastrophic failure, falling off a cliff, ect…) all of which as the sole owner of the equipment I am expected to absorb the cost of.

    I’m also sure that whomever I’m leasing the equipment out to understands what fair compensation is and won’t likely take me up on an offer if I ask for too much. (Half of whatever is harvested with my machine! Mwahaha!)

    But I can also see a case where perhaps the equipment is so much more efficient that over time, choosing not to lease from me will result in me being four or five times more productive than you are, creating a big resource disparity between us and giving me extra bargaining power over you.


  • Thanks for your response! I’m imagining in my scenario, perhaps the tractor doesn’t exist until someone decides that one is desired and then a cooperative of fabricators builds one in exchange for what its workers consider to be fair compensation for their labour. As a farmer, perhaps I agree to exchange several years worth of grain for one of their tractors. As the individual who grew and harvested the grain personally, wouldn’t it make sense saying that I have a greater right to “own” the tractor over my peers who maybe chose to use their share of grain to purchase different things?

    Perhaps they didn’t feel like a tractor was as necessary a use of resources as say a silo or mill would be? Or maybe collectively we agreed to purchase those things and it was with only the resources out of the whole I have been permitted to expend for personal use that I purchased the tractor with - others spending it on home improvements or a nicer car for example?