
L.A. Times to Furlough Workers as Ad Revenue ‘Nearly Eliminated’ - spking
https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/los-angeles-times-furlough-ad-revenue-eliminated-1234580425/
======
rgovostes
The LA Times's investigation into Purdue Pharma in 2016 revealed internal
Purdue documents demonstrating the company's culpability in fueling the opioid
crisis.

> The documents provide a detailed picture of the development and marketing of
> OxyContin, how Purdue executives responded to complaints that its effects
> wear off early, and their fears about the financial impact of any departure
> from 12-hour dosing.

I don't have many recurring subscriptions, and I don't live in LA, but I
signed up for the Times the day the reporting came out. So rare is quality
investigative journalism these days.

Fast forward 3 years, and "Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were in
negotiations to settle the claims for a payment of $10-$12 billion"
(Wikipedia).

As far as I know the settlement was never finalized. And I don't want to make
it seem that the Times was the only organization looking into Purdue. But I
wish a fraction of that settlement could be re-invested into investigative
journalism.

[https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-
part1/](https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/)

~~~
easytiger
At the end of the day, if a doctor is prescribing medication against clinical
guidelines, surely the doctor is at fault? If a pharma warehouse is burgled
then it's on the burglars.

Am I missing something regarding this case? Did they mislead doctors?

Edit: Downvotes to -4 with no engagement for asking a question. This place has
gone downhill rapidly

~~~
mehrdadn
> At the end of the day, if a doctor is prescribing medication against
> clinical guidelines, surely the doctor is at fault?

Even if you assume that's the case, there's no reason a doctor being at fault
would mean nobody else can be at fault.

~~~
easytiger
Well there would have to be some wrongdoing to be proven.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _there would have to be some wrongdoing to be proven_

Are you claiming the extensive evidence brought in numerous cases across the
country against Purdue and the Sackler family, accepted in many cases by
juries and judges, has not done that?

~~~
easytiger
I was asking what it was. I'm in the UK and am not familiar with this issue
despite the same medication being available here

~~~
mehrdadn
If you're genuinely interested, there's _so_ much reading on this. I'll quote
_one_ snippet here for you. Just to give you an idea. (This is _not_ an
invitation to reply to it and debate the issue. Just trying provide a pointer
for reading more on the topic since you expressed interest.)

> The drugmaker admitted in 2007, when confronted with evidence gathered by
> prosecutors, that it trained sales representative to tell doctors that
> OxyContin was less addictive and prone to abuse than competing opioids,
> claims beyond the one approved by the F.D.A.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-
oxy...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-
oxycontin.html)

------
GnarfGnarf
Why has no one developed a news subscription service yet?

I want to be able to pay 50¢ here or $1 there for an interesting article from
NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New Yorker etc., without paying
for a subscription.

I can't afford to subscribe to all of them. There are not enough hours in the
day for getting a return on my investment.

New York Times $50/yr Wall Street Journal $100 Bloomberg $420 LA Times $98 The
Guardian £119 Washington Post ~$80

I don't want to subscribe to just one paper. There are so many good articles
in all the papers.

A news combiner or aggregator would charge me for every article I select. At
the end of the month, he charges my account credit card for the sum of all the
articles.

He gathers up the money that all readers have paid for reading NYT articles,
and remits it.

The newspapers don't have to manage micro-payments, journalism is saved,
everyone is happy.

Blendle looks like they are trying to do this, but they've been in Beta since
2016.

~~~
pgrote
>I don't want to subscribe to just one paper. There are so many good articles
in all the papers.

A few years back I just went ahead and subscribed to the ones I wanted to
support to try to support journalism. It was more affordable than I thought,
but there is friction to keep them from taking advantage of you. For instance,
at one point it was cheaper for me to subscribe to the Sunday edition of the
NY Times to get digital access than just digital access. I live 1000 miles
from New York City. lol Renewals are a pain if they try to shift you to the
vanilla rates; no one has email support and it requires a call.

Anyway, I currently subscribe to NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post,
Cincinnati Enquirer, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Las Vegas Review Journal and The
Guardian US Edition. I would subscribe to the NY Post if they allowed it.
Former WSJ subscriber, but they do not offer long time subscriber discounts.
Bloomberg is too expensive.

My main complaint is only a few allow yearly subscriptions.

~~~
ceilingcorner
Spending $100 a month on a grabbag of various newspapers is completely
infeasible for the average person. Ergo, it's not a solution to the problem.

~~~
pgrote
I understand what you are saying and am grateful I can afford the monthly
cost. The cost I pay is worth the value I receive.

~~~
xnyan
I agree and I also subscribe to what I can.

The only problem for us is, like others are saying, I don’t think our
subscriptions are enough money and I don’t think it’s feasible financially for
enough people to do so at the level needed to keep enough quality newspapers
and journalists in business.

(in the us) The New York Times is arguably the only non-business paper that
makes enough money from subscriptions to make sense sticking it out alone.
Maybe the Washington Post, LA Times and a few others (and maybe not, i hear
the subscription rates are horrible) too, but for the vast majority bundling
digital subscription as a single package is the only way I see for small
papers to attract significant numbers of subscribers.

It would be really great to read papers from Las Vegas and Cincinnati, but I
can’t see myself ever setting up and managing individual subscriptions to them
if I am being honest.

------
rock8y
Things are much worse at Gannett, parent company of usatoday. Personally,
being laid off on March 31! Almost every employee is effected at this time,
either furloughed for few hours a week, pay cut or let go !!

~~~
tootie
I'm surprised. I'd think online news would be one of the industries
benefitting from this crisis. Is the revenue tied to lack of conversions on
online ads?

~~~
bootlooped
Brands are sensitive to where their ads appear. Many brands do not want their
ads adjacent to COVID 19 content.

~~~
Jommi
I'm still unsure how and if this is really even true nowadays. We have been
doing programmatic ads for ages. We should be over this.

~~~
chuniverse
Ad shows up with an ironic twist in a Coronavirus article >> somebody
screenshots and posts to reddit >> instant front page >> even more free
advertising but somebody calls the CEO who tells his subordinates to find
somebody to yell at

~~~
anewhope
So the more likely reason is just uncertain and unpredictable return on ad
spend, but that kinda rolls up into it.

------
rsweeney21
There is no point in advertising if no one can buy your product right now.
Retailers, dine-in restaurants, movies, hotels, travel, pro sports, big
clothing brands, concerts, events, tourism. The list goes on and it is
massive. All these industries are huge spenders on advertising.

Then there are all the products and services that _could_ be bought, but
consumers and companies have pulled back on because of uncertainty. Why waste
money on ads for TVs, new phones, SaaS software, hiring, etc?

We left our ads running even though conversion rates dropped by 75% because
Google offered something like $!00M in ad credits for small businesses. We
applied for the program but haven't heard anything. It might be time for us
(marketplace for quality contract work) to stop spending on ads too.

~~~
londons_explore
Since ads are a supply-demand market, supply _must_ equal demand. There is
nobody who can store ad slots in a warehouse and sell them later.

Since publishers are unlikely in the short term to take down their websites
just because revenue falls, that has led to prices dropping to near zero on
the open market.

The only real revenues now are from advertisers who have fixed price per
impression or per click contracts, or who aren't smart enough to see they
could drop their bids 90% and still win the same spots.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
That's not really how ads are priced, though. Google and FB will be reluctant
to see the price of ads go down. They also control the supply of how many ads
they put on the page. They make sure the supply of ads for keywords is always
less than the demand to fit an optimal price/revenue curve.

It's more like OPEC, and less like a free market.

~~~
Spivak
Sure but they aren’t immune to the fact that absolute revenue for both them
and the sites hosting the ads falls in proportion which is the point even if
they keep price/ad fixed.

------
tempsy
I’m definitely in the camp that “the cure cannot be worse than the disease”
itself. Sitting in California where there are so few cases makes me wonder if
the economic toll is totally worth it. Seems like we’ve used a tsunami to put
out a campfire.

~~~
thaumaturgy
It's been very hard for me to understand this line of thinking. As I see it,
there are so few cases in California _because_ of the measures that have been
taken. Do you think California would not have many more cases if the measures
were relaxed? Or do you think that the cases would not be all that bad? Or do
you think that they would only affect people that you aren't personally
concerned about?

I'm asking honestly for an explanation here, because you're certainly not
alone in this view, but I haven't heard a rational justification for it yet,
and I haven't been able to come up with one myself.

~~~
christophilus
> there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been
> taken

This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't
seeing a big spread. Our options aren't binary. It's not as if the only choice
is "Nuke everything" or "Surrender".

The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the
biggest impact on the spread of this thing. We probably could do something
like this:

\- Dense city? Quarantine. \- Moderately dense? High risk individuals
quarantine, everyone else social distances, but works. \- etc

Across the board, if your business is the sort that can WFH (such as software
companies), then you do work from home. If not, then you're open, but with
precautions. Restaurants are open, but pickup only, etc.

The point is, we've used a nuke, and it's not at all clear to me that that was
the right decision.

~~~
jacobolus
> _other countries haven 't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread_

Let’s be precise. _Some_ other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t
seeing a big spread _yet_.

You mentioned Sweden. Here was _Time_ a few days ago:

> _A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will
> “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his
> hospital who have tested positive for the virus but are asymptomatic have
> been advised to continue working. He asked to remain anonymous because “it
> is frowned upon to speak of the epidemic or to go against the official
> vision” but said he felt a need to speak out from an “ethical and medical
> point of view.”_

~~~
malandrew
On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other
countries that have shutdown. It's about middle of the pack. Personal
responsibility lets us have our cake and eat it too.

[http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-
visualization/](http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/)

~~~
chewz
> On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other
> countries that have shutdown.

This is so untrue.

Norway and Denmark had initially many more cases then Sweden but since their
curves flattened.

As of yesterday

Norway - 26 deaths / milion

Sweden - 102 deaths / million

Denmark - 52 deaths / milion

~~~
jeltz
But there is also "Beglium - 359 deaths / million" which had early lockdowns.
They started their lockdown one day before Denmark. By cherry picking
countries one can chose a story to tell. I think it is too early to say if
Sweden's strategy was stupid or not.

~~~
chewz
I guess Denmark and Norway as both Nordic countries with similiar wealth and
culture are as similar to Sweden as possible.

~~~
PunchTornado
one can argue that Sweden has a larger immigrant population than those
countries. Majority of deaths in Sweden are from immigrant populations. They
are blamed for not following the social distancing rules that most Swedens
follow day to day. Also they are poorer, live in larger families in small
houses etc. and it is harder for them to follow the rules.

~~~
CydeWeys
One can also argue that the virus doesn't care about your ethnicity, and just
because it's hit some particular community hard first doesn't mean it's not
going to spread through the rest of your society too absent serious measures
being taken. In the US, focusing on the "others" who had the virus, in our
case the Chinese, while not taking effective measures early enough to stop the
disease, was a huge mistake. It was a distraction, an excuse for racism and
not doing more. This is not just a disease of poor immigrants. It's coming for
everyone.

~~~
malandrew
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-
race.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html)

~~~
CydeWeys
That doesn't remotely change the fact that non-black people are still dying in
droves, and you can't attempt to minimize this pandemic as saying "Well it's
mostly black people dying, so if you're not black don't worry", which is the
analogy to the post about the poor foreign immigrants dying from it in greater
numbers in Sweden.

Don't just drop a link, let's hear your real argument here.

~~~
malandrew
I'm not making an argument. I'm just providing a reference to counter the
claim made. I have no dog in this fight other than I like to see references
and evidence. Hence why I only dropped a link. You don't need to pick fights
with everyone, you know?

------
eric_b
I understand modern media is slinging fear and outrage because that's what
gets clicks, but their whole business model is anachronistic. I've watched
previously reasonable publications go from honest fact-based reporting to pure
narrative/agenda based drivel. Like wow, Washington Post, what happened bro?

If most media organizations went out of business from the impending COVID
economic catastrophe, I think that would be karmic justice. They did their
part to cause it after all. The stress they've induced, the fear they've sown;
they've earned every bad thing that befalls them.

It's time for a new paradigm. Long form journalism as we knew it is gone. But
there are other formats ascending. Podcasts, Youtube series, etc are all
possibilities to fill the void of in depth reporting. Time will tell if
someone can figure it out, but our current media is a problem, not an answer.

------
DenisM
In related news I have noticed that most things I search on Google don't show
any ads at all. I went hunting for it and found that common household items
are showing ads, but other things don't. And most certainly there is no
obnoxiousness like an entire page of ads before the content.

~~~
xhkkffbf
I think Google and Facebook are going to deliver a very surprising result.

~~~
dx034
For a few quarters. They'll survive and be back where they are now when the
economy bounces back (whenever that may be). They could take a 100% cut for
several quarters without cutting expenses. Small ad companies are the ones
that will really suffer. They don't have Google's deep pockets and
diversification.

~~~
frockington1
Facebook will be in a great position with people having more and more phone
time due to the quarantine. Might be a short term hit but a big boost down the
road

~~~
CydeWeys
Big tech companies like Google and Facebook are seeing record usage (i.e.
increased costs) at exactly the same time that advertising revenue is
plunging. YouTube watches are at record highs while pays per view might be at
record lows. This just means that the expenses go up even as revenue falls.
It's not a good thing for profitability.

~~~
nostrademons
That's why they've stockpiled $105B and $55B in cash respectively, though.
Facebook could run the company for 1.5 years if their revenue went to _zero_ ;
Google could run it for 2 years. They know how the business works and position
themselves to weather and profit from downturns.

Some weaker shareholders may sell if they're only interested in quarterly
numbers, but in the long term their revenues go back up to what their userbase
justifies.

------
nerdbaggy
This is an interesting time for ads since people can’t buy most of the things.

~~~
colmvp
And also not a lot of companies want to be associated with Covid-19 content.

~~~
PudgePacket
Why don't they run non-covid content.. The amount they milk it is nauseating.

~~~
CydeWeys
"Milk it?" This is the biggest worldwide pandemic in over a century. It's
going to fundamentally reshape society for many years to come.

You can't bury your head in the sand about this. Frankly, in comparison to
this, almost nothing else is even worth mentioning. And anyway, it's not like
there's sports to cover. Almost nothing else is going on besides the pandemic
because everything was shuttered to fight the pandemic and even that is just
barely enough.

~~~
PudgePacket
I get it's big, I'm not saying don't run covid stuff. Just maybe use it for
less than 99% of their content, if the issue is they can't monetise it?

At a certain point it becomes information overload/noise and people just tune
out, myself included.

------
ipunchghosts
Is there a good news site worth paying for today that actually has ALL news.
It infuriates me that when I go to CNN.com's "news" site, there are ads at the
bottom with things like "Before you review Amazon Prime, read this" and
"America's #1 Stock Picker: 'Must buy now'" How can anyone be okay with this?

This is like picking up an astronomy journal that has ads in the back for
psychics.

~~~
goatherders
CNN used to be my preferred news site but its turned into garbage as you
mentioned. I tried to read a lost this morning about antibody tests and gave
up when I faced 2 ads, 2 stock pictures, and an image of the author before I
had made it to the 4th sentence.

Would gladly pay a reasonable amount of money for a news site.

~~~
rr60
You might enjoy [http://lite.cnn.com](http://lite.cnn.com) Gets rid of all the
cruft on the site and just shows you article text.

------
TekMol
I run a website that is monetized via Adsense and I do not see a negative
impact of the Corona pandemic.

What makes the situation so much different for the L.A. Times then for a
website?

~~~
TekMol
Upon closer inspection I see that cost per click is down quite a bit. But the
increased traffic makes up for it.

Strange, I would think that in the current times, the value of a visitor is
higher for many companies. If they sell digital goods and services, people
should have more time now for those.

~~~
AznHisoka
More time but less money, with so many of them unemployed. And nowhere to
spend it since most can’t venture far outside.

------
annoyingnoob
I think what is even worse is what recovery looks like. Seems like we are
going to be recovering for a very long time. We don't even know how deep the
wounds are yet.

------
HenryBemis
We did have a similar Artie and discussion yesterday about how people making
videos for/on Google see the viewing skyrocketing and ad-revenue collapsing.
Nobody is selling this nobody advertised, plus the (thank you - I haven't
thought of this) when crises hit, the ad budget is the first one to get
slashed.

~~~
HenryBemis
and this is what happens when you respond in the early AMs.. you write Artie
instead of Article and don't even notice it...

------
mcculley
Are newspapers going to start selling subscriptions without advertisements and
trackers? I would love to pay for one. I recently canceled my subscription to
my local paper over the unnecessary tracking:
[https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/1247247733133660160](https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/1247247733133660160)

------
ivankirigin
How might Google and Facebook revenue move? Facebook earnings per share
consensus is $1.78. In two weeks, we'll see how it stacks up.
[https://www.nasdaq.com/market-
activity/stocks/fb/earnings](https://www.nasdaq.com/market-
activity/stocks/fb/earnings)

~~~
daxorid
Not really relevant. Equities are completely divorced from reality at the
moment. FB and GOOG could guide down 2020 revenue by 50% and the stocks would
pop AH because $6T new money has to find returns _somewhere_.

~~~
ttul
And in any case, a temporary gap in revenue at Google or Facebook doesn’t
change the fact that they have virtual monopolies on audience.

------
WalterBright
I've noticed the decline in advertising in my (physical) mailbox - it's bereft
of junk mail for the last month.

~~~
dredmorbius
USPS are also being hammered:

[https://www.npr.org/2020/04/08/828949609/youve-got-less-
mail...](https://www.npr.org/2020/04/08/828949609/youve-got-less-mail-the-
postal-service-is-suffering-amid-the-coronavirus)

------
irrational
How many businesses are not going to recover at all after this is all over?

~~~
robjan
New businesses will be established to fill the void

------
ghaff
We've already been seeing this to some degree with harder and harder paywalls
--which mostly don't work besides lucrative niche and global brands. But I
suspect we're increasingly headed towards a case where quality content is only
available to those willing and able to pay for it.

~~~
OatMilkLatte
Which is how it worked before the internet.

~~~
ghaff
Yep. Maybe we move to a model where low quality/#FakeNews is free but quality
costs and, presumably, you then move to a point where pooled subscriptions are
a thing under that model. And it costs a substantial amount of money or you
get it through a library. There's a lot less accessibility under that model,
especially for those that don't really have disposable income. There's also
the question of whether enough will really pay for the quality. But it's
certainly a scenario.

e.g. you pay $100/month for an all-pubs subscription which is not all that out
of line for people who pay for newspapers or DirectTV.

~~~
slg
>Maybe we move to a model where low quality/#FakeNews is free but quality
costs

Are you being facetious with the fake news reference? I don't know what the
answer to this problem is, but I hope it isn't a system in which we just lie
to poor people and they can only get the truth if they pay up.

Prestige newspapers might not have been widely available for free, but there
were certainly credible news sources that were. Free over the air TV and radio
broadcasts were once the primary news sources for many Americans, but
unfortunately the quality of both has declined. It is a chicken and egg
problem so I don't know which started to decline first, but easy access to
high quality news is important for an educated electorate which is crucial to
a well functioning democracy.

~~~
ghaff
>Are you being facetious with the fake news reference?

Not really. Broadcast news is ad-supported too--hence the decline in quality.
You either have subscriptions--ad-supported, or taxpayer supported--as has
been historically the case in the UK. So, yes, if ads don't work, either only
the wealthier get access to higher quality news, people use libraries (good
luck with that), or the government funds (which has its own source of issues).

Someone needs to pay for it.

~~~
slg
Ok, I understand your reasoning. The use of the specific term "fake news"
rubbed me the wrong way. That term is linked with malicious propaganda so your
initial comment called to mind dystopian ideas of having an underclass that
the rest of society agrees to keep in their place through lies and deceit.

There are other options beyond just ad supported and tax payer supported. You
can make news reporting a requirement of other government deals like what
happened with over the air TV. You can do some sort of patronage model. That
can range anywhere from a single source like people expected Bezos to handle
WaPo, to the NPR model over numerous patrons, to the early internet model of
still selling subscriptions but not putting the news behind a paywall. I'm
sure there are plenty of other models out there too.

~~~
robjan
Is that not what happens anyway? In the UK, for example, the good quality
print newspapers cost £2+ whereas the tabloid rags cost 20p.

------
kediz
Just curious if Google has suffered similar level of revenue damage. If so it
would be really bad since they got a hundred thousand people on paycheck.

------
donohoe
Dear HN,

Support journalism. Subscribe for a month and see how it works for you.

[https://www.latimes.com/subscriptions/land-subscribe-
evergre...](https://www.latimes.com/subscriptions/land-subscribe-
evergreen/flyout.html)

~~~
Justin_K
Why does your paper have to be so one sided though? I live in LA and won't
subscribe because your paper has always followed an agenda.

------
devit
Wow, so it turns out that most of the products that were advertised were not
so necessary after all?

------
ninetyfurr
I wonder why nobody pays for newspapers, yet podcasts and talk radio shows
pull in millions of dollars annually.

~~~
anigbrowl
Podcasts and talk radio are mostly emotional porn.

~~~
anigbrowl
I was in a hurry and forgot to say that they differ from real news reporting
in the way that porn differs from a real relationship. Of course, the op-
ed/opinion columns in traditional news media are also mostly emotional porn;
but the point is that opionating is cheap and while doing it well and
entertainingly does require some research and planning each day, when you get
down to it it's just a performance rather than painstaking and often slow
production of factual data.

------
renewiltord
This doesn't matter. Low quality news sources are a dime a dozen, and the good
news costs money. You have to be sophisticated enough to be able to
differentiate news sources. For instance, as a WSJ subscriber, I'm not going
to read the editorials. They're complete garbage in terms of factual content.
The business page is gold.

And this is very good. All the freeloaders who block ads and only use low-
quality news will get poorer information and they will be out-competed. That's
a good thing. Humanity will move forward. So block your ads on your ad-
supported sources, grumble about "inequity of information", and exclaim in
horror that you can't access good information because of a paywall. This is
it. The future is here: ads are disappearing (temporarily, I think) and you're
seeing what happens when your desired world comes to be.

There's no schadenfreude here. Many of you were just sawing on a branch you
sat on, with the natural consequence. The LA Times railed against targeted
advertising. Well, they got what they wanted. And now they're subject to the
razor's edge that is the market.

~~~
egypturnash
_All the freeloaders who block ads and only use low-quality news will get
poorer information and they will be out-competed_

And they will go vote for the candidates who is best at grabbing them by their
poorly-informed emotions.

~~~
renewiltord
Other people's predictability is opportunity. This is not an undesirable
outcome.

------
phkahler
Not in CA, but our governor is deciding what must close, and even what items
stores can sell. I suspect any news outlet (sans politics) would be desired to
stay open. But you can't legislate everything.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Not in CA, but our governor is deciding what must close, and even what items
> stores can sell. I suspect any news outlet (sans politics) would be desired
> to stay open. But you can't legislate everything.

What are you referring to with 'Not in CA'? This _is_ in California.

I think you're confused about what's going on here, which is why you're being
down-voted. This isn't about whether the LA Times is allowed to stay open or
any Government direction on what businesses should be open. They are still
open. It's about their sharply declining revenue from advertising.

~~~
egypturnash
I think the "Not in CA" sentence fragment is intended to be expanded to "I am
not in California".

------
ColonelSanders
Idea:

Whenever there are furloughs or layoff, any payouts or profits for the C-Suite
and managers that are higher the average employee, is put into an annuity for
the laid off employees.

So if a CEO makes 30,000,000, and the average worker is paid 125,000. A
29,875,000 fund will be made to deposit a monthly check into the bank of the
fired employees. This includes any profits made from selling stocks.

To avoid loopholes and ensure enforcement, CEO's waive personal financial
privacy, giving regulators full access into international finance accounts and
to withdraw from those account debt due to workers. The lookback/forward time
can be tweaked to go up to 36 months to ensure it's not worked around.

This will retain employees - while simultaneously keep businesses operating
profitably.

Additionally, if there are any dividends by the company, any employees who
worked a certain time (even if fired) are entitled to payout, since they're
part of the collective. This shows appreciation for the employees which boosts
performance - they know a successful quarter will have their success kept -
not given only to investors.

~~~
jdminhbg
Even if the scale of the difference divided by the number of employees were
enough to be useful (it's not), all this would do is incentivize executives to
run inefficient businesses into the ground.

~~~
ColonelSanders
> all this would do is incentivize executives to run inefficient businesses
> into the ground.

What incentive would an executive have to run a business into the ground?

It's a business - the motive to gain profit and ambition won't leave because
profit is shared.

Regardless - my point is - what's wrong with being generous to workers? Why
not share a bit of that with people who work so the motivation and incentives
are spread out?

Why don't we try some ideas, test some regulations and see how they work, so
we know what incentivizes and what doesn't?

Have an administrative body view it on a case by case basis and come up with a
novel payment plan, in a case where a CEO gets a golden parachute and
employees are left unemployed, that payment would be suspended and apportioned
fairly. Maybe it will even go back to investors.

For a look a generous labor systems in powerful economies, I'd like to bring
up Germany: [http://www.siegwart-law.com/Sgal-en/lawyer-german-
employment...](http://www.siegwart-law.com/Sgal-en/lawyer-german-employment-
law-germany.html)

~~~
jdminhbg
> What incentive would an executive have to run a business into the ground

The one given above: laying off workers to make the business competitive
results in having your salary clawed back for three years. Staying inefficient
and getting out-competed does not.

~~~
ColonelSanders
> laying off workers to make the business competitive results in having your
> salary clawed back for three years.

If the company goes out of business due to inefficiency - then the market will
supply another one that can treat workers _and_ investors well.

And maybe it should be clawback against all assets and profits earned in the
CEO's lifetime. That will give them motivation to pay off the spurned
employees the fired, then start earning more for themselves.

Since this is all about free markets and scale, we need to have optimistic
forecasts. There's a credit against the CEO to pay off the employees due to
management failing, but the CEO can always try again in the future to pay off
their newly accrued debt by making better decisions for investors _and_
employees.

Imagine - if all management decisions were binded 50% to the welfare of the
employee and 50% to profit? Bound by the law? Or face strict liability,
financial penalties and possibly criminal charges for causing jeopardy to the
workers? That's absolute _genius_.

It's all about how we define competition. What if competition is redefined to
imply responsibility and obligation to caretake for workers, and every
business on Earth is subject to it? What's wrong with that?

