smurficus103 t1_jebt3h9 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 9:32 PM

Reply to comment by Dwarfdeaths in It's becoming increasingly clear that fintech has a fraud problem by marketrent

Wow, yeah, that does seem to solve the "old money" conundrum without bloodshed, if you expand the definition of land into all sufficently old property and charge a property tax on even, say, automation systems. A productivity tax? Sounds bizarre, but, also the opposite of a regressive tax.

/s, If only there were a way to itemize taxes,

Production taxes could go toward developing small buisness, little guys and gals getting out of h.s., for example

I had a similar thought that nobody cared for: as companies "write off" old equipment, they could choose to donate it for an additional write off & it gets lottoried to the public. Hopefully, this could encourage competitors to emerge from their backyard, or something. "Honey, i won a silicon furnace!"

Dwarfdeaths t1_jebwqhd wrote on March 30, 2023 at 9:57 PM

For corporations, at least, I think a stock-based solution might be a good approach to the transition of capital to land.

The work you do for a company can be divided into two broad categories: (1) directly trading time for product, and (2) creating stuff that increases productivity of future labor. Manually stamping every part on a factory line or waiting tables would be type 1, and writing code or building robots would be type 2.

So, it seems logical that you could define two classes of stock: "labor stock" and "productivity stock." Labor stock is issued when you join and dissolved when you leave, which basically pays wages for type 1 work (companies must now issue regular dividends as their wage process).

Productivity stock is issued as you work and stays with you when you leave, until it expires (end of life or some fixed time). When productivity stock expires, it is transferred to the public.

Depending on the scope of work, a worker may be paid in some mixture of the two classes.

As time moves forward, ownership of a company (and its assets) will gradually move from the original workers to the public, while still incentivizing the production of new capital at the company. In this system you could no longer issue stock to raise money; instead, money would have to be raised through "loans" with fixed payback terms, rather than indefinite future ownership of the company.