Why Should My Boss Get All the Profits?

When a business makes a profit, who deserves the excess? Is it fair that the owner gets all the profits? Should the profits be shared equally among workers and owners alike?

[definiteisland]

"I Should have known you were a gold digger" :P

[big_pingu]

If workers are entitled to the profit of the buisniss, they would be entitled to the debt as well

[wolfpack]

There's an easy way to get the same rewards the CEOs are getting for a big business. Invest in the company's stocks. Don't forget though, you get their rewards AND their risks (in other words you share in their profits and their losses). Suddenly doesn't seem like you are interested in a fair relationship huh?

[SharkBait]

They way I see is that if I work and the store I work at that makes a profit. And that profit is from my work. Eventually with that profit being made my boss will give me a raise. So I just work, get paid, store makes a profit, and eventually I get paid more.

[TheNotoriousCheeto]

I have a good friend who used to be like this. He got out of the military and ended up homeless. When he finally got a job, it was as a barista at Starbucks. With the money and benefits they provided he was able to clean up his life and find a place to live. But he was constantly complaining about how he wanted to quit this "unfair" job. As he saw it three or four customers paid the equivalent of his hourly wage, and his Starbucks was always busy, so in an hour "he" brought in five times his hourly wage. And he was outraged that he didn't get more of that money. After years of me explaining why that didn't make any sense, he... well, okay, he just ignored me. But he figured it out on his own eventually when he tried to start his own business.

[zacharyparadis]

All of this can be summed up as "You want all the benefits of a shareholder, with none of the risk?"

[digaddog]

The problem here is that exploitation of labor is an amoral claim. Like basically everything Marx and Engels wrote about, the argument was not "this is wrong and this is right" the argument was "this is a fact of the world, and one that people will act on...We're just speeding up the process." In the same vein, you can argue that pushing people of a cliff will make them fall, and that's not a moral claim. And you can say that falling causes death, and that's not a moral claim. But say that killing is bad, and now you can make the moral claim that pushing people of cliffs is bad. It's a common mistake though, to the point that even most socialists believe it.

Exploitation of labor is the recognition of a couple facts:
Owning property does not increase its value. Management of property can, but a property owner can always pay someone else to manage and rest on their laurels.
Work does increase the value of an item, in fact work is the only way we can change items to fit our needs.
A capitalist enterprise has owners and workers.

These are really the only claims that exploitation of labor makes, but it serves as a building block for class conflict in capitalist society:
An owner of property likes it when they get more work for less of their money.
A worker likes it when they get more money, including indirectly such as safety precautions, for less of their work.
Sometimes, there are circumstances which let owners as a whole reach their interests and vice versa.
So, we can conclude that there is a class distinction there, as there are times when both groups have interests aligned.
Since these two interests if these classes are opposite, we can also conclude that there is conflict between the classes.
There is class conflict.

Now, this is the point where you can start making moral claims. Class conflict is used in one of two ways: the tug of war of class conflict has put resulted in unjust treatment of one or the other, typicallynthe workers, or alternatively, we should resolve class differences.

Personally, heres the argument that I buy for resolving class distinctions and how:
Happiness is good.
Democracy is good. It gives everyone a say in how their lives are run, and this both achieves happiness and achieves results that make us happier.
Under capitalism, there is competition between corporations. This will often result in the winner eating the market share of the loser.
Due to economies of scale, a bigger company will typically bear a smaller company.
Under capitalism, we tend to see the world converge to oligopolys, and it might just be for the aforementioned reasons.
This causes wealth inequality.
At a certain point, wealth inequality can corrode political inequality.
This could include methods such as direct bribery or more campaign ads. Alternatively, you could make direct use of your property. Increase prices if the president signs an order that would hurt you, dont release news or media that could hurt you, etc.
Workplace democracy has typically been shown to be effective in various ways including survivability and information dispersion. These advantages can typically be tied to the undemocratic nature of an autocratic firm. (Watch Unlearning Economics video on Workplace Democracy to learn more)
Worker coops resolve the capitalist class conflict within a firm. The democratic nature of them seems to reach good results. So we should get more of them.
Worker coops have so far to my knowledge have any significant weaknesses, while capitalist firms tend to corrode democracy. So, although we should adjust our views with new evidence, it might be best to make top down firms illegal. This is a long term proposal, because we'd need to run some tests first.
Worker coops do not eliminate the oligopoly problem, but they do distribute the wealth inequality problem. I do not know how to climb the staircase, but the only way up is one step at a time.
Therefore, we should push for workplace democracy, followed by eliminating top down form if the evidence calls for it, and work from there.

[The_FreedomZone]

Either provide for yourself or agree with the terms of an employer. Nobody owes you anything, plain and simple.

[Michael_Brenes]

Consumers pay suppliers for goods, suppliers than use their acquired money to pay consumers to produce goods, consumers use their acquired money to purchase the goods from the suppliers, the money is than used by suppliers to pay consumers to produce goods for them, consumers than use the money to purchase the goods from the suppliers, etc.

Disrupting this circulation by diverting money from the suppliers to the consumers would be catastrophic for everyone as if the consumers have to much money the suppliers can't pay anyone to produce so nothing is produced.

[seraphimfahmy]

the worker's share of the profits is their wages.

[hrgrhrhhr]

Thanks for this. I used to look at this from the employee in the video's perspective, so thanks for explaining this stuff.

[ashish]

Risk is what separates worker and businessman

[darthutah]

If worker-owned cooperatives are better, why don't we see them dominating the market?

[tylersingleton]

At the end of the day whoever has the stronger force will exploit the other's labor to make them profits. Since we live in a society that does not allow personal physical violence for these purposes, the "force" turns into government policies and privately organized forces (monopolies, regulatory associations, and labor unions for example). To say that there is some sort of moral high ground held by the business owner here is false. In fact the vast majority of the utility the business owner brings to the table is artificially created, albeit very real in today's world. The business owner sets up the mechanisms for a business to function and succeed (again many of the needs for those mechanisms are artificially created) and the laborer preforms the work that creates the value. The business owner is like the physical engine, complex and specifically organized to operate a certain way. Whereas the laborer is like the fuel. Both are needed for anything to be accomplished. How the profits are divided up all depends on who has more exploitive force.

[zacharymarentette]

you are paid to dig and get gold on your employers behalf where you didnt preemptively demanded a share of the gold in the first place. In this contract you dont have any right to any of the gold.

[Neffariousnyc]

This is why we have employee owned businesses ... and why so many of them fail.

[annabounds]

If your company doesn't make enough money to pay employees a living wage, then you shouldn't be a business owner. Businesses aren't people and are able to die without a life being lost. People should ALWAYS come before businesses.

[hikariyuki]

This! Why do people not understand this???

[bryan.flores]

the other side of the question is "Why should my Boss get all the Losses?"

[reilysmith]

I think this video missed out on a perfect opportunity to make a far better argument. This is the perfect example to illustrate the difference between being a wage worker or an entrepreneur who licenses mining rights from the owner. Instead of accepting a wage to mine for the boss, the person could have tried to negotiate with the boss and to mine for himself by paying for the rights to mine in a certain area.

This way he will have to pay a fixed amount upfront every period, but will be able to keep all the revenue he earns. In contrast, as an employee he will not get to keep the revenue of the gold he has mined, but he also won't have to pay licensing fees and instead he gets a guaranteed wage in return.

The difference between the two of them is risk and reward. As an entrepreneur you're taking the risk that you can't support your living expense or can't even recuperate the licensing fees with the gold you're able to mine. It's risky but potentially there is a high reward. As an employee, however, you have to take no risk and you're guaranteed an income. Even if the owner goes bankrupt eventually you'll retain the money you've earned.

The message to take away from this is obviously that the owner who's hiring the worker is in the exact same position as the worker who instead chooses to license mining rights and mine for himself. And since most people would think the latter is fair why wouldn't the former be fair either?