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The Man Who Sold Shares of Himself
RougeFemme writes "This is a fascinating story about a man who sold shares in himself, primarily to fund his start-up ideas. He ran into the same issues that companies run into when taking on corporate funding — except that in his case, the decisions made by his shareholders bled over into his personal life. This incuded his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend, who became a shareholder activist over the issue of whether or not he should have a vasectomy. The experiment continues."
The perils of selling yourself to your friends.
Well, I guess it voluntary.
This incuded his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend, who became a shareholder activist over the issue of whether or not he should have a vasectomy.
Talk about a Directors Cut!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This man defines the word 'sellout'.
Actually, in it's earlier forms (especially in Rome) slavery could in fact be voluntary. People actually were able to sell themselves into slavery, usually to pay a debt. Of course, back then slaves weren't really as exploited as they were in more modern times and one could even buy themselves out of slavery if the made enough money. A lot of slaves weren't just free/cheap labor, they became skilled craftsmen and could make a decent amount of money on the side. Or there was always the gladiatorial games if you were really desperate, since those rarely ended in death.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
A great read by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin about the distant future where everyone is incorporated and the one man who isn't. It might have been helpful if this guy had read that before his IPO.
and a funny way to say he borrowed a bit of money. :P. I think upstart.com was mentioned later too. So long as we keep laws in place to give borrowers leverage that's all it'll ever be.
That said, the recent trends in bankruptcy law that make it impossible to discharge debt unless you're rich, plus judges finding debtors in contempt of court for not paying and jailing them (aka debtors prisons 2.0) have me scared. This is all in America of course. We need to start breaking down the excesses of the protestant work ethic. Work ethics are good, but they can also be manipulated and abused.
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It's not slavery, it's indentured servitude. And that doesn't make it any less stupid or wrong.
I am officially gone from
Key differences from a bank loan:
(a) you may never be able to pay it back, since the more wealth and willingness you have to buy back outstanding shares and "go private," the more those shares are likely to cost, and
(b) the bank doesn't make detailed decisions about how you live your life; only that you must pay back $XX every month (regardless of how you get it)
Your post is a perfect example of the phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." More importantly, you haven't addressed what I wrote at all. In this situation he continues to have freedom of choice and to profit. He can choose to get a vasectomy regardless of what the board votes, for example. His stock may plummet, but again he can weigh the trade-offs and choose. Also, while I didn't I use the word force once, I'll accept your subject change and address it since it supports my first sentence in this post. Duress is a form of force. Teach yourself about how and why people "sold themselves" into slavery, and you will quickly find that a form of force known as duress was used every time.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Whatever he does, he better make sure he never lets Chainsaw Al Dunlap near him. He'll saw him up and sell off the body parts as assets.
Financial products are logical constructs. Virtual products. Like objects in an online game which people buy and sell.
The financial world depends on logical constructs. Currency, the base of the financial world, is a logical construct. Slips of paper to which people ascribe value. Gold is the same way. One cannot eat gold, wear it, drink it, shelter under it, use it to bind wounds or cure ailments. But to many (most) it has "value." Currency is a durable construct because it makes people's lives easier, and improves their standard of living.
Stocks ("shares of ownership") are an older financial product. So are bonds. Futures are bets. Then you get into the myriad financial products/bets and their derivatives on which today's global financial system is based.
1) "A financial product is about as conceptual as you can get,” says Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser at Credit Suisse. “You just need paper and ink.”-- The Economist magazine
2) "In an even more blunt description, Tourre calls the CDOs he produced "intellectual masturbation" and likens himself to Dr. Frankenstein. "When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?")" -- CNN / Money
"Financial Innovation" consists of two things:
1) Creation of new virtual products / logical constructs.
2) Methods by which one can entice others to take on more debt.
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said the only beneficial financial innovation of the last 30 years was the ATM. However, the ATM is not a financial innovation, but a technological one. So that leaves a dim legacy of recent financial innovation.
I'm all for financial innovation just as long as it doesn't lead to "financial pollution" - public costs. Like a tannery which dumps effluent into a river. The tannery keeps the profit and the public bears the costs. The concept is known in the financial sector as "privatize the profits, socialize the losses." In recent years, the financial sector has been able to successfully privatize its profits, yet push the costs onto the public. This is done by government insurance of private debt, and outright rescues and bailouts.
In any regulation of the financial sector, the key I think is to make sure that losses are limited to the participants in the transaction.
This fellow - well if he is able to make money, bravo. If he and his shareholders lose money, the laws regulating the financial sector should make sure that the losses are limited to participants in the transaction, and not imposed on the public.
Someone gave me a copy a couple of years ago (a galley proof I think) about a future where shares are issued at birth for everyone, and what happens when someone shows up who is not incorporated.
A good read, though I didn't like the ending. It was as if someone said "Quick, we need to publish the book, end it".
Well it would not be abuse... Prostitution was legal, and if you are a slave you cannot object to the type of labour your owner asks of you (within legal bounds at least).
Theoretically you could come up with a slavery contract that restricted what the owner could ask you to do and when and how much, but at what point would that still be called slavery?
If you are a slave, but only plant and harvest cotton, and only from 9 to 5, 5 days a week. then you are just a contracted worker who is paid upfront.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
This was kind of funny, but from reading the article it looks like he took it way too seriously. (And it seemed he frequently used "shareholder value" or "shareholder votes" as a good excuse for doing what he wanted to do instead of doing what his girlfriend wanted him to do.)
Conversely, at what point could employment conditions in the industrial world, where the threat of being fired is like the threat of losing access to healthcare or even losing your home, be called a slow, steady return to the servile state? In the Roman republic, the working poor largely chose to work as what we would call day laborers. Workers would hang out near the forum (they didn't have a Home Depot, or I suppose a Domus Depositum back then, the savages) and wait for someone to come hire them for the day. One of the most common jobs was simply carrying goods, mostly building material, from the outer to the inner parts of town since ox carts were forbidden in town. You'd get a flat wage for the work once the day was done and you'd likely work for someone else entirely the next day. I forget the exact calculations, but once the public grain dole was in place an unskilled laborer could make a living for himself and his family by securing such work for about 100 days out of the year. You wouldn't get rich but you'd have food in your stomach and enough money to rent an apartment in one of the massive apartment blocks (insulae). This was considered a preferable form of unskilled labor for many because there was a stigma attached to regular employment, i.e. going to work for the same person day after day, and taking his orders, looked too much like slavery.
In my opinion, that is one of major downfalls of living in civilization that has outlawed slavery. It becomes far harder, if not impossible, to tell if you are a slave or not.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
you put a lot of effort into a post full of hate for the poor :P. Are you really that ignorant of why people file for bankruptcy or do you get paid to spew that nonsense? A few points:
. 1. Bankruptcy is basically 8 years without credit. If you're a poor person that's a nightmare. No house and no car, both of which you need.
2. The lender should be expected to accept risk. It's funny how capitalists get shield from market risks by guys like you but workers are expected to suck it down. Workers pay for their masters bad decisions with lower standards of living.
3. Usury loans quickly become slavery. You're not really free if someone controls your access to food/shelter/health care.
4. People filing for bankruptcy have little money. They often can't afford the legal representation they need to avoid being taken advantage of. If they do hire a lawyer the settlement negotiated is often worse than the original loan terms. That's because there are hundreds of bankruptcy firms that just take your money and then take the first offer by the court. They pray on people trying to keep their heads above water by working 80 hours a week. I've known several people in that situation.
5. Nice to see you ending your post with the right wing's "Imma gettin' robbed by da poors" narrative that has absolutely no basis in fact. Well, I suppose giving all our money to 1% of the population WILL keep those damn poor people from stealing from you, if only because you'll have nothing to steal.
The way I like to put it is this: you're trying to get me to believe that a little kid with a sandwich that his mommy didn't pay for brought America to it's knees financially.
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Indeed many did choose to sell themselves into slavery, or their children, in order to secure a better life than they could make on their own. Slaves very often lived better off than the unskilled poor, and they weren't likely to be found starving on the street. To say they weren't as exploited as in modern times, however, is something I would hesitate to do. I suppose it depends on your definition of exploitation. In the end, the pater familias had the power of life and death over his household. He could even kill one of his own sons (though this was rarely done in later times), so a slave who was on his bad side much to fear. Sure, some bought their way to freedom or even pleased their masters so much that freedom was given them, but this depended entirely on the good nature of the owners who might just as likely work them to death in the mines. If you've ever heard those stories of the "good" slave owners in the U.S., whose slaves would willingly fight for them or were freed, you will recognize that they're exceptions used to justify a broadly exploitive system. The same applies to Roman slavery. Give that much power to any person and the same results will always show.
I never had to take out a student loan. Might have had something to do with going to in-state schools, and working part time.
I believe my parents took roughly the same course.
And I have a fairly good job.
Part of the problem is this ridiculous mentality that you cant get a job if your degree wasnt from Georgetown. Sure, you can.... youll just have substantially less debt and perhaps a slightly lower salary. But hey, if you want to gamble on years of debt on the off chance your salary will be a few thousand per annum higher, go for it. Just dont complain that anyone caused the problem but you.
In state tuition-- at least in virginia, and quick research indicates this is not unusual-- does not generally require years of debt @ 7%. I borrowed from my parents, and paid it off in ~15 months, if I recall, having taken jobs waiting tables and made roughly ~1/2 of the money back. This was from a technical school which cost for 1.5 years roughly the same as it would have cost for 4 years at an in-state college.
Right now, a virginia resident could attend UVA, VA Tech, JMU, GMU, or W&M for ~ $6000 / semester. You could do your Freshman and Sophmore years at VCC (community colleges) for ~ $1600 / semester; your entire degree would hit roughly $30,000, over the course of 4 years. As a waiter, I was able to pull in $15,000 / year, at a fairly standard restaurant. Working summers even as a maintenance guy would pull in ~$2000 (2002 dollars), so worst case you are ending your school career with $22,000 in debt, and more likely (if you can pull your weight as a waiter) something like $15,000 of debt.
You CANNOT tell me it is an impossible feat to get a degree and pay your debt off, unless you are insisting on a school choice that is completely irresponsible.
Indeed, slavery is a not a philosophical idea, it is purely an economic endeavor.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
You're talking about the debt bondage called nexum , which was outlawed in 326 BC, pretty early in Roman history. It had no real role in the bulk of Roman history.
The condition of slaves in ancient Rome varied considerably. Some were essentially professional workers, who had jobs and could expect to earn their freedom while they were still young enough to start a family and have a free life. At the high end, several future Emperors were educated by Greek slaves. At the other end, some slaves were miners who could expect to live only a few years. Some were agricultural workers who had a rough life with little chance of advancement, but who could hope to at least survive. Rome was a slave society, with a huge percentage of the population either current or former slaves. They did almost every job available, and their condition was just as varied.
As for gladiators, the best guess is that you had a 1 in 9 chance of dying in any bout. This means that the mean survival would be 6 bouts. Wikipedia suggests that 20-25% of losers died. These numbers are all educated guesses, but the general point stands. A slave who was a gladiator would probably have to survive something like 10 fights to gain his freedom, and his odds of surviving that were very, very poor.
It's easy. If you can terminate your contract at any time, and all you lose are the benefits, then you are not a slave.
Here's some additional reading on the topic including reference to some studies examining specific fields (e.g. baseball players with subject to a reserve clause, where the rate may be 100-600%).
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