Tesla shareholders awarded CEO Elon Musk a pay package on Wednesday that could grant the tech entrepreneur nearly $1 trillion in compensation over the next decade.
I hope an economist can come in here and correct me if I got anything wrong. This is my personal take.
I sort of understand money as a manner of storage. It a battery for potential influence of other humans. Like a note with I.O.U depicting that someone’s future behavior is to provide some good or service to you, that note is a battery for influencing someone’s behavior (the behavior of providing a good or service). Money is just slightly more abstract than an I.O.U because money isn’t tethered to a specific provider, recipient, good or service. Yet, the logic remains. This really stands out when you consider people work for money, and negative money (debt) incentives us to perform legal means of reducing that debt.
We’ve as a society all but accepted this use of money, being a battery to influence us, by manner of participating in the game it invokes for us. We work to earn money, and we use that money to buy that which we need or want, to pay debt, to invest (depending on how much you you can spare)… Goods and services are provided by others in aim of receiving the money we worked for. On the macro scale, we refer to these exchanges as the economy. Both: goods and services readying themselves for the potential to receive money, as well as the exchange itself when transactions are made. Each are conduits for money to flow, and this tool (the battery) benefits us humans in many ways.
But the manner in which we’ve structured and regulated this process has yielded a system which is vulnerable. Our manner has created a class divide where the successful may use their success to hoard and prevent others from obtaining the same success. We’ve fallen into yet another type of society where hierarchy exists, alike slave-master. Now, less obviously, we are in a society where the rich control the poor. The rich influence legislation to control the incentives of the poor, by legal coercion (e.g., non-competes, hiding free tax filing options, zoning laws inflating housing costs, …), all the while influencing legislation to provide corporate loopholes and tax cuts. Meanwhile there is social coercion, by means of controlling mass media, social media, market media, and entertainment media — giving the minority of the rich a megaphone with few alternative voices to compete at such scale.
This cycle is one which can become self-perpetuating. As the rich become richer, they have more power to make themselves yet richer. The class divide widens. The poorer are stripped evermore of their voice in the matter. Yet, let’s remember where this economy thing began — it was a tool for our exchange. Our tool, now exploited for their gain.
So when you say they stole $125 from everyone, I agree with you. We are on the exact same page there. The working class is practically voiceless, powerless, and in many cases coerced to fight against their best interests — and this is why they are scared of democratic socialism. They don’t want the working class to control the means of production, because that stands to balance the scales here. Balanced scales, by virtue of where we are now, means a deep contest of control which the rich are so privileged to have freely now.
I hope an economist can come in here and correct me if I got anything wrong. This is my personal take.
I sort of understand money as a manner of storage. It a battery for potential influence of other humans. Like a note with I.O.U depicting that someone’s future behavior is to provide some good or service to you, that note is a battery for influencing someone’s behavior (the behavior of providing a good or service). Money is just slightly more abstract than an I.O.U because money isn’t tethered to a specific provider, recipient, good or service. Yet, the logic remains. This really stands out when you consider people work for money, and negative money (debt) incentives us to perform legal means of reducing that debt.
We’ve as a society all but accepted this use of money, being a battery to influence us, by manner of participating in the game it invokes for us. We work to earn money, and we use that money to buy that which we need or want, to pay debt, to invest (depending on how much you you can spare)… Goods and services are provided by others in aim of receiving the money we worked for. On the macro scale, we refer to these exchanges as the economy. Both: goods and services readying themselves for the potential to receive money, as well as the exchange itself when transactions are made. Each are conduits for money to flow, and this tool (the battery) benefits us humans in many ways.
But the manner in which we’ve structured and regulated this process has yielded a system which is vulnerable. Our manner has created a class divide where the successful may use their success to hoard and prevent others from obtaining the same success. We’ve fallen into yet another type of society where hierarchy exists, alike slave-master. Now, less obviously, we are in a society where the rich control the poor. The rich influence legislation to control the incentives of the poor, by legal coercion (e.g., non-competes, hiding free tax filing options, zoning laws inflating housing costs, …), all the while influencing legislation to provide corporate loopholes and tax cuts. Meanwhile there is social coercion, by means of controlling mass media, social media, market media, and entertainment media — giving the minority of the rich a megaphone with few alternative voices to compete at such scale.
This cycle is one which can become self-perpetuating. As the rich become richer, they have more power to make themselves yet richer. The class divide widens. The poorer are stripped evermore of their voice in the matter. Yet, let’s remember where this economy thing began — it was a tool for our exchange. Our tool, now exploited for their gain.
So when you say they stole $125 from everyone, I agree with you. We are on the exact same page there. The working class is practically voiceless, powerless, and in many cases coerced to fight against their best interests — and this is why they are scared of democratic socialism. They don’t want the working class to control the means of production, because that stands to balance the scales here. Balanced scales, by virtue of where we are now, means a deep contest of control which the rich are so privileged to have freely now.