What if instead of zero profits, all employees are paid in part via some amount of ownership stake in any company?

My issue with the “we take all the risk, tho!” argument is that I’m never even allowed to take the risk, too. For example, my current company is small, compensation has grown disappointing after we were acquired by VC, and there is no pathway for me to begin purchasing any kind of ownership stake. We’re just the labor, despite all of us having been here longer than the new owner, in many cases having been here to build the thing the new owners bought.

So it must be pretty damn attractive, actually, for those at the top to continually offer that to one another, while withholding it from anyone below executive leadership. I’m pretty tired of hearing it as a justification when those “taking all the risk” end up doing so goddamn well, and the rest of us are locked out of it in the first place. It’s just abusive language we’ve all internalized.

Edit to add: ya know, it was probably easier to swallow and originated in the prior eras, where a steady paycheck was a safe and stable way to go through life. These days being an underpaid wage slave is far riskier than being any kind of investor. I don’t think “all the risk” is even meaningful or remotely accurate anymore.

I mean, “theft” implies depriving someone of something, to me. But I don’t want to bicker about definitions if your position is more about morality of taking something for free than about the definition of theft.

For myself, I’ll happily pay for things that provide fair value and a fair agreement / relationship. That includes donating to stuff that is offered for free - there are a handful of content creators and other services (Internet Archive, Signal, etc.) that I directly support, every month. And by the same token, I don’t feel bad at all about enjoying something, for free and against their wishes, from a company or publisher that only offers unacceptable (to me) terms.

To me those are perfectly consistent. My dollars go to individuals and publishers that produce the kind of media ecosystem I think is good for us. Because - we must be clear - it’s not a level playing field, and the shift away from consumer ownership is a plague of exploitation inflicted upon us. It’s now metastasizing away from strictly digital domains, now to physical hardware, which is outrageous. Roku, for instance, can update your streaming device overnight and force you to accept their new terms, in order to keep using your device. This is not hypothetical, it happened (may have gotten company wrong).

Do you think the companies enacting policies, particularly ones prohibiting ownership outright, are operating from an ethical or moral framework? I promise they don’t believe in anything like that. They screw us precisely as hard as the courts, and the court of public opinion, allow. And they’re always trying to move that line in their favor.

Why do you care about pirating? Who or what are you standing up for, I guess I’m asking?

Oh, yeah that makes sense too. Bad premise all around I guess.

I mean, are you taking your definition of “theft” from the law? Or from your own internal set of ethics for right and wrong? Is it theft if no one is deprived of anything, because bits copy, and because you’d never trade dollars for the privilege of maintaining an exploitative relationship with a company but that is all they’ve made available?

If you’re hung up on whether the legal system thinks it’s theft - I dunno what to tell ya, it obviously does.

Edit: uh, maybe you’re literally asking for how the logic in that statement works, which I read as just “if it can’t be owned, how can it be stolen?”

Easy, teeth mash the plants into plastic 👍 makes sense if you squint real hard and have a few TBIs

Hmm, I don’t remember much, and not in his books in general. Although I am the kind of reader that’s wholly uninterested (no shade to those who feel differently!) - but it’s entirely possible it’s there and my brain doesn’t really hold onto it! But put bluntly his stories are usually bleak, romance would fit a little oddly.

You say complacent, I say complicit.

Awesome!! And I don’t think it was a series when I read it, so been a while for me too lol. And yeah, Revelation Space books are just so, so good. Can’t say enough good things about the worlds this guy builds. Artifact in the meme would fit right in, lol

This post really doesn’t call for this comment but here we go -

One of my favorite authors wrote at least one book in a setting where many galactic civilizations have come and largely gone, and treasure hunters try to “crack baubles” - break into old vaults and such left behind. Think Space Indiana Jones! But what’s really compelling and brain melty to me is that these civilizations used entirely unknown tech and physics in some cases. So they’re trying to break into and steal things they cannot possibly even comprehend, which is SO foolish and so fucking cool, and if that were available to me, my curiosity would utterly demand I keep at it until dead or worse.

Book is Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. Plus it’s got one of the scariest fuckin pirates ever, so I mean, Space Indiana Jones with horrifying unknown tech treasure and implacable, immortal(?) pirate villains…that’s gonna be a strong recommendation for the right flavor of reader lmao.

For real, what a braindead (at best) thing to say. His attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestine and build resorts on the coast, and his attempts to steal mineral wealth from Ukraine while under brutal attack by Russia, those attempts have faltered? Yeah, thankfully they have, I’m sure he’s still trying though.

I’m so tired of all the “reasonable language” used for this administration. It just amounts to flat out lying to avoid upsetting the very worst fucking people. Again - at best - that’s me being charitable, there are even worse motivations than that of course.

Lol who is downvoting, it’s not THAT hot of a take!