• cygnus
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    26 days ago

    Did they get their fair share of that ‘grossly overpaying’ by Yahoo?

    If they owned shares, yes. If they didn’t, then why should they? The owners of the company sold the company at a massively overinflated valuation, so the shares were “worth” a lot of money. This really isn’t a complicated situation.

      • cygnus
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        25 days ago

        Work and ownership are not the same. If I hire a plumber to fix something in my house, does he become a part owner of it?

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          25 days ago

          If you hire a plumber, you do it as a customer and not an employer. Quite a difference!

          A customer pays the full value of the purchase, the plumber is the one in charge and charges as much as possible. That’s how they make profit. That’s why you still own your toilet, the plumber already got the full value they were owed.

          An employer never pays the full value, though! The employer, as the one in charge, pays as little as possible. They pockst the difference as profit. That means the employees are always cheated out of the full value of their labor, they are never paid what they are actually worth.

          • cygnus
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            25 days ago

            A customer pays the full value of the purchase, the plumber is the one in charge and charges as much as possible.

            Except here we’re talking about ownership/shares, not payment for labour. Many in this thread are outraged that not every employee of Broadcast owned shares, and the implication is that as soon as you work for someone, you should receive a share. My plumber example still stands. Should he get a “share” of my house, even though I already paid him for his labour, as Cuban paid his employees?

            An employer never pays the full value, though! The employer, as the one in charge, pays as little as possible.

            Again,we’re talking about shares, not labour. For all you know Cuban was drawing zero salary from the company. The two are completely different. You’re all so doctrinaire that you can’t mentally distinguish labour versus ownership of a thing.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              25 days ago

              Your plumber doesn’t own a share of your toilet because you actually paid them what they are worth, because they can demand it from you. They have all the power in that relationship.

              No employee is ever paid what they are worth. They can’t be, if they were then the company could never make a profit. That’s literally where profit comes from - it’s all surplus value created by the workers. Hence, they should get a share of the company.

              • cygnus
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                24 days ago

                Funny you mention that! Broadcast.com was in fact not profitable. It lost millions the year it was sold to Yahoo.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  24 days ago

                  And who got the profit from that sale?

                  So the company never operated at a profit - it was profitable in the end, was it not? And who created all of that profit? Who sacrificed for the company and were never paid what they were worth to make it good enough to sell in the first place?

                  • cygnus
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                    24 days ago

                    So if I sell my house at a loss because I’m inept, the plumber should get an even bigger share of the sale money?

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Because the only ethical kind of company is a worker-owned co-op. It should not have been possible for employees to not own shares, but it was, and that’s bad.

      • save_the_humans@leminal.space
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        26 days ago

        I personally try to avoid absolutes. I would have probably said, “a more ethical kind of company…”, but totally agree. Also really wish more people understood and supported co-ops.