>The benefits should go to whoever is responsible for the success of the company. This obviously opens up a political can of worms: the Left will say the CEO can't get anything done without the workers, the Right will say the workers can't get organized without the CEO
And a pragmatism can say that all kinds of CEOs have driven companies to the ground, reducing their valuation even 1/10 what it was, and destroying their market share, and walked away just fine, with golden parachutes and even bonuses...
CEOs get more because CEOs get to determine what they get (and the board members and execs rub each other's back when it comes to their collective advantages).
It has little to do with performance and "whoever is responsible for the success of the company".
A sharper metric: it tends to do with whoever is responsible for the success of the company at the least cost to shareholders.
Imagine a company starting out. If they need you to join or they fail, and they can get you for 1% of the company, that founder is rewarded incredibly for securing you with very minor cost to the company, making them rich and you not, even if you are responsible for the success of the company. The reason being: if you’re so integral why didn’t you start your own company and keep all the equity? Why didn’t you bargain for more?
Capitalism doesn’t make any prescriptions about what should happen, it’s just a system where individuals make consensual transactions and the chips fall where they do.
In the above scenario, whether the founder “deserved” to be rich or not doesn’t matter, because you “made” them rich with your consensual transaction. As long as we are all free to be the founders or the employees, I don’t see why there should be some moral issue there. If your effort is worth more to others, either you need to haggle harder, start your own company, or you’re lying to yourself.
Everyone is a stock in capitalism, that’s all that is true. Everyone sets the value of each other’s labor and capital. If your stock isn’t doing so hot it’s because others aren’t buying it.
The problem with this position is its naivety. Are you going to say with a straight face that all potential founders are equally likely to be funded by investors purely on their probability of success, and not via false signals and stereotyping if not straight up bigotry? That there aren't credentials that can be effectively bought to gain access to that?
Markets are just markets, not oracles of unbiased merit. Making whatever the market does morally normative as you're doing is frankly, evil. They're useful tools, but that is all. They should not be a religion.
That argument sounds familiar, but it's not reflected in the latest YC stats (32% of founders come from underrepresented groups). I feel good knowing that one of the fastest career paths in the history of the world has a 32% admission rate to practically anyone anywhere in the world (again, if you're feeling down about your chances as a US citizen, spend a minute talking to one of the Nigerians in YC and your perspective with change instantly).
>I feel good knowing that one of the fastest career paths in the history of the world has a 32% admission rate to practically anyone anywhere in the world
Anybody, as long as they had a westernized upbringing, access to computers and education, and a middle class or higher status in their country...
Fair enough. But having all those things in Nigeria still puts you way behind someone who was born into a poor family in the US (out of around 200 founders I met at YC, far more of them reminded me of Garry Tan - who is awesome! - than of the Winklevoss twins). It's not ideal in either case, but some things are less ideal than others.
I was making the opposite point actually: markets ARENT moral, and what they support isn’t moral. It isn’t necessarily immoral either. They’re just systems of consensual transactions where everyone collectively decides value. The parent comment was making the point that markets should be moral, but are currently immoral. My stance is that they have nothing to do with morality.
They certainly shouldn’t be a religion, but they aren’t just “useful tools”. Not infringing on people’s freedom to make consensual decisions should be the default, not some “tool” we “allow” because it’s “useful”.
This isn’t about worshipping capitalism or markets, this about the fact that preserving individual freedom necessarily results in free markets. The core ideal is individual freedom - which is moral - free markets are just the byproduct.
> As long as we are all free to be the founders or the employees
But we're not. Much of it comes down to the simple lottery of the circumstances into which you were born.
If you have an inherited trust fund, or wealthy parents and friends to fall back on, you can take huge risks, one of which might eventually lead to a multi-million dollar payout even if several of them fail dismally in the meantime.
But if keeping a roof over your head and putting food on the table today is dependent on working two backbreaking jobs today and every day, you're not "free" to be a founder.
As someone who grew up lower middle class to poor, with parents that struggled to put food on the table for a great many years, and who dropped out of an abysmal highschool to go full time into tech at 16 - and is now in stealth mode founding a startup - while what you are saying is OFTEN true, it is never ALWAYS true.
The things I got from my parents are things many people have had - some of which; such as help buying a terrible beat up old ‘78 Dodge Van to move states to my first real job, or a relentless drive to get better, to DO better, a great many people have had. I’ve also been lucky to get into the industry when someone motivated but without credentials could get started.
I’ve had zero money from them since I started working at 16, and before that it was a minimal allowance I earned through hard work with chores. I earned the $200 to buy my first computer digging holes and repairing fences.
Don’t buy into the myth it’s not possible. It’s self defeating. Also, don’t buy into the myth it’s easy for anyone - even those from money. It will test you like nothing else will, and I’be done enough hard things over the year to know
And a pragmatism can say that all kinds of CEOs have driven companies to the ground, reducing their valuation even 1/10 what it was, and destroying their market share, and walked away just fine, with golden parachutes and even bonuses...
CEOs get more because CEOs get to determine what they get (and the board members and execs rub each other's back when it comes to their collective advantages).
It has little to do with performance and "whoever is responsible for the success of the company".