this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Yes, that is what I meant by simplification.
On the other hand Google as search engine and ads (the part that makes money) needs fraction of the employees alphabet has. If they had to pay them that much, they would have never hired most of them.
exactly. A company tant doesnt overexplore its workers cannot grow like alphabet did. The underpayment of the workers is an essential feature of alphabet, and part of what makes its market capitalization that high.
This implies that the answer to my question is "no": if the workers had been paid properly from the start, there wouldnt be the discrepancy that makes the founder billionaires.
No, alphabet has always made most of its money from their ad business, supported by search. Most of their other efforts, including YouTube were never profitable or insignificantly profitable. If they did not over-explore, they would create even more value per employee by not wasting resources. Maybe even more value in absolute terms.
Revenue and market cap are two different things. The 2 trillion you mentioned is market cap, not revenue, much less it is profit.
I agree it would be a prettier picture if companies paid their workers fairly. But the companies would grow differently. Maybe they would grow better, but differently and more distributed. Comparing absolute values between our world and this dreamland seems silly though.
And I hope that in a world where we are paid fairly we would produce less crap, pollute less. Workers wouldnt be desperately making bad/useless products in order to just survive. A smaller gdp could be a good thing.