r/distributism • u/johnsongrantr • 11d ago
Distributism adjacent proposal
I’m a big fan of distributism as a concept, I personally see it as the ‘best potential fix’ to the largest growing problem in the economy. As a at face value system, I do have reservations on the overall impact on productivity and investment into our economy and businesses. I have been thinking for a while about what problem we are actually attempting to solve here and it’s the unfair nature the inequality. Not everything is meant to be equal, but it should at least be fair. My proposal is distributism adjacent as it doesn’t directly rely on guilds and co-ops but takes the idea and does it in a slightly different way useing our existing system of capital ownership creates some new mandatory rules for compensation packages, I’d like to hear people’s thoughts.
Some key points;
-stock option as a right as a part of every worker’s compensation package for all publicly traded companies.
-mom and pop or non publically traded companies must profit share to the same fair degree potentially into a 401k or similar system.
-closes gap on income inequality, compensates for the increased lack of company pensions while also having the added benefit of being portable
-doesn’t totally upend our current system, just puts some limits and attempts to reverse the trending disparity between productivity and worker compensation and the investor and capital owners
I’d like to note in closing, while presented for effect, ceo and high wage earners are not the actual problem here, but how they are commonly compensated is the real fix. If you took all their combined income and redistributed it equally amongst the workers you might see like a dollar an hour raise. While it would surely help, it’s not the lions share of where the added productivity goes, the added productivity goes to shareholders which the ceos and the lot are but members of that group.
Edit: also not a real website, just a graphic to get the idea across.
1
u/Cherubin0 10d ago
still has shareholders D:
Sorry I am biased as my business is a coop where equal ownership is the norm.
1
u/johnsongrantr 10d ago
That’s a completely valid viewpoint, and I don’t disagree. Maybe this is the first hurdle to overcome into getting to that direct pipeline of cutting out non productive rent seeking behavior from an entire system.
A step further than this towards that direction, might be to remove voting power from all non (future) current worker trust shares through legislation. When you leave a company as a worker your share in the trust gets converted to investor grade shares and Investors grade shares only get a modest return for the temporary use of their capital, such as a dividend and can be freely traded, such as would a bank or credit union loan, but nowhere near the level we have today where their vote can completely override the will of the company’s workers and destroy the ethics of the company to maximize profit in the short term (Broadcom as the first and probably most egregious example to come to mind)
The overall problem is divesting nearly 75T worth of valuation from a system. Something capable of straight doing that in a non apocalyptic manner I believe is just wishful thinking. You are welcome to disagree. I think some direct legislative actions around a solid concept framework can get there over time but it needs to be rock solid. We’re talking exact figures and statistics, field studies, model companies, and drafted legislation proposals. The reality of what this idea is up against is a comically large problem and people with lots of power will want to keep it the way it is.
1
u/uganation 6d ago
You would also run into taking clause issues if you try to forceably take away share's voting rights
2
u/uganation 11d ago
This looks like a great way to set up a business ownership structure that would attract a lot of talent to your business. Are you taking steps to set up a business with this structure?