> their growth is tied directly to work that the humans in the company do
They're linked but it's not 1:1. The whole point of a corporation and a value-add economy is to do a force multiplier on the cost of labor. It doesn't matter how hard you work when digging with a shovel, a lazy guy with an excavator will create value faster than you can.
The guy providing the excavator is currently keeping the lion's share of the productivity gains, and that's not good. But it's also not quite the same as saying all of the wealth comes from exploitation.
The value of the stock is the value of the corporation, right? What’s the value of it if you don’t have humans to man the factory? The only reason Capital has capital is because they’re hoarding it since the beginning of human economics. If everyone shared equally then the guy with a steam shovel becomes a team who built, bought, or traded to get a steam shovel that they share to make their collective load easier.
So in my world view, yes, all wealth is exploitative. No one person can do enough work to earn millions and billions more than others.
They're linked but it's not 1:1. The whole point of a corporation and a value-add economy is to do a force multiplier on the cost of labor. It doesn't matter how hard you work when digging with a shovel, a lazy guy with an excavator will create value faster than you can.
The guy providing the excavator is currently keeping the lion's share of the productivity gains, and that's not good. But it's also not quite the same as saying all of the wealth comes from exploitation.