Executive Pay - Good Capitalism Bad Capitalism?

Then you have a cooperative.Cooperatives have been around for a long time, they work for some forms of business, notably trading organisations. They're a minor part of our economies partly because they are necessarily under capitalised. You can't create a biochemical industry on a co-op model, you can't get the capital.There's nothing stopping anyone creating co-ops, so why don't they?

Because the wealthy hold most of the investment money. They are not going to enter into a business deal where they have to provide startup costs and then get a shared return that is less than what they initially spent.Unless they were just being nice.

Your biases are showing.

quote:

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Cooperative

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Research published by the Worldwatch Institute found that in 2012 approximately one billion people in 96 countries had become members of at least one cooperative.[2] The turnover of the largest three hundred cooperatives in the world reached $2.2 trillion — which, if they were to be a country, it would make them the seventh largest.[3]

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... Cooperative businesses are typically more economically resilient than many other forms of enterprise, with twice the number of co-operatives (80%) surviving their first five years compared with other business ownership models (41%).[5] ...

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In the United States of America

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In a 2007 study by the World Council of Credit Unions, the 5 year survival rate of cooperatives in the United States was found to be 90% in comparison to 3-5% for traditional businesses.[35]

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New generation cooperatives (NGCs) are an adaptation of traditional cooperative structures to modern, capital intensive industries. They are sometimes described as a hybrid between traditional co-ops and limited liability companies or public benefit corporations. They were first developed in California and spread and flourished in the US Mid-West in the 1990s.[37] They are now common in Canada where they operate primarily in agriculture and food services, where their primary purpose is to add value to primary products. For example, producing ethanol from corn, pasta from durum wheat, or gourmet cheese from goat’s milk. A representative example of an operating NGC is the Fourth Estate (association), a multi-stakeholder NGC journalism association.

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Now that could be due to all the workers being committed to the success of the company instead of just the owner ... or it could be due to consumers supporting their community organizations instead of remote corporations ...Or it could be due to the co-op being a better model to realize the goal of the entity.Or it could be that workers are tired of oligarchic corporations. Several co-ops have risen from the ashes of a failed company.Enjoy

And yet people are starving and living in poverty due to capitalism run amok.It's properly called hyperbole, where the argument is purposefully overstated to get people out of the shallow box they are in. No, it's a function of how they operate within the social structure. Your "regulation" elements are historically temporary at best. As long as oligarchic sociopathic corporations exist they will keep trying to chip away at them. Glass Steagall for example.Enjoy

Again with the elitist attitude to workers. They don't deserve anything because they are cheap?Doesn't apply to co-ops ... so not a truism. You're resorting to emotive caricatures here. Sometimes you need to get out of your shallow box thinking. And the wealth gap just keeps growing ... Curiously, there are existing example of businesses operating and growing without investors, and I know of no company that operates with no workers.Again your thinking is biased.Enjoy

It doesn't really matter how you play around with the numbers (ignoring taxation differences), you have to create a regime of out payments that result in a profitable company able to compete with other companies in the same market. If you pay your employees more than your competitor you either have to employ fewer people or raise your prices.Of course regulation can force an even playing field but this can make your country internationally uncompetitve and is not normally an act associated with a country like the USA. Sure but shareholders can choose where to invest, a rational investor wouldn't invest in a company that paid its employees far more that the going rate and was therefore less profitable - all other things being equal.

Correct, now explain that to RAZ ;-)

I think not, kettle, just facts. I see you'renot immune from your favourite confirmation bias. Coops are a minority part of your economy - about $658bn out of $19 trillion. Co-ops are ok, but given that the model has been around forever, you need to explain why they are still a minority part of modern economies. If thy're so obviously great, what's stopping them?

Tangle posits: or maybe you could SELL MORE WIDGETS?

If you have higher costs than your competitors, how can you sell more widgets than them? They will always out compete you on price and eventually force you into unprofitability.

False. Costco pays workers more, has the same prices as Walmart. What they don't have is the Waltons. Again, you are blinded by your preconceptions. Again Costco v Walmart proves you wrong.Co-ops go toe to toe with oligarchist companies in the marketplace and provide products at the same price while paying employees more, because they share.Enjoy

And exactly because of all that I have spent less than $10 in Walmart in the last 10 years and spend a few 1000 a year at Costco.

I'm afraid I know nothing about the relative economics of Costo and Walmart but the argument is moot. There are many examples of efficient and well run co-ops, but you have to deal with the general point of why they're only in a minority in our economies.

Customer service.

Customer service, branding, reputation, marketing, packaging, specialisation, distribution etc etc are all ways of diferentiating you service from others which is fine. But if your costs are higher than your competitors and he's doing the same you either take less profit or have higher prices.