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At the heart of this article is the claim that buying equity is a form of theft. That is an extreme claim (in the sense of surprising, remarkable, unusual, and

At the heart of this article is the claim that buying equity is a form of theft. That is an extreme claim (in the sense of surprising, remarkable, unusual, and one that needs a lot more support than ordinary claims). It is inadequately defended here. The argument that it violates fair exchange is tautological.

cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
The article is clearly written from a bit of a Marxian perspective and I think there's a lot assumed ... presuppositions about exploitation and value theory. So yeah, even though on first skim I think I agree with the thrust of this article, I think you're right it's poorly defended, assuming it's at all for an audience outside of people who already think this way.
- rixed 10mo ago
  I haven't read Marx since I left college, but in my remembering the only thing that is "theft" in the capital is the initial accumulation. There is no idea that any form of ownership beside that is theft (I don't believe there is any notion of "evil" either.) To be honest, you don't give the impression that you have read anything from the author that you are siting. Marx is like those ancient greek phylosophers and classical scientists who are "quoted" more often than read. One could probably say that the privatisation of human communication is a form of "initial accumulation", or maybe just another step toward appropriation of culture, but that's apparently not the angle that the author decided to explore (can't be sure, I couldn't do better than skim that text which looked wrong in too many ways).
  - Retric 10mo ago
    I think you misunderstood his viewpoint. Marx’s writing predates the US civil war. When you “own” someone and then “own” their labor the fruits of that labor aren’t yours any more than the person. By that reasoning, if you then use the fruits of that labor to buy a house it’s a stolen house.
  - cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
    "you don't give the impression that you have read anything from the author that you are siting" Oh, ok. Anyways. First section of Capital Vol I is all about "surplus value" and exploitation, with a heavy dose of the labour theory of value. It has nothing to do with "initial accumulation" at all, it's about ongoing extraction of surplus value in production, and no, Marx doesn't call it "theft" -- he calls it "exploitation" (which to him is actually somewhat of a value neutral world describing a technical process, actually). Whether it's a defensible position in economics or philosophy is a whole other discussion. There's nuance. Also I assuming you mean "citing", not "siting"
    - rixed 10mo ago
      As the other person who responded to me wrote, I might have misunderstood your comment. I believed that you associated the idea that "property is theft" with Marx, and that's this association that I wanted to warn against. But that's indeed not what you were saying.
- api 10mo ago
  Marxism is back in vogue again. I guess people have tried reviving Naziism/fascism so now they’ve got to try reviving the other failed early 20th century totalistic political ideology. I get that the status quo has huge issues, but can we have some new ideas maybe instead of continuing to try to revive late 19th century ones that have repeatedly and disastrously failed?
  - cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
    As a person with Marxian leanings I can tell you it's not "back in vogue" in fact in both academia and general populace actual Marxist theory has probably never been less vibrant or popular? Maybe some people get that impression because they've conflated "Marxism" with general socialist urges or even cultural "left" wing identity politics, but that in fact is proof exactly of the opposite. It's never been more heretical to advocate for wealth redistribution or dismantling or restricting parts of the capitalist market, even in the context of a total ecological crisis brought on by industrial production and exponential growth. It's not even on the table of discussion in any western country, so I am not sure where you fear comes from. That a claim like this could be made shows me exactly how far to the right we've drifted since e.g. the 60s. That someone like Mamdani could be smeared or red-baited as a "Marxist" for advocating for rent control is hilarious really. (But frankly I'm not here to debate the merits or get into a drive-by debate with your half-formed opinions, nor was that the aim or thrust of what my comment above was about.)
  - immibis 10mo ago
    > the other failed early 20th century totalistic political ideology. I'm not sure how to square this statement with reality. Which countries were Marxist? The obvious "communist"/"socialist" country was the USSR, but it was Leninist/Stalinist.
  - rixed 10mo ago
    Certainly, to get new ideas it's better to start from a good knowledge of past ideas? If we had thrown an anathema on physics each time a rocket blowed up, nobody would have ever landed on the moon :)
  - queenkjuul 10mo ago
sumuyuda 10mo ago
I think the main argument that it is theft, is that they contribute nothing to the continued surplus generated after their loan was repaid. So they effectively steal the profits like a parasite. Why should they get ownership of the business? When you get a mortgage for your house, the bank doesn’t permanently own part of your house after you pay it off.
- Anon1096 10mo ago
  For one, in a mortgage the loan is secured by the house. But more importantly: you can get simple loans for startups too! Banks provide loans that are personally guaranteed (ie if the business goes under the founder is still on the hook). But if you want more money or something that is limited in liability then your pool of people willing to give money is much smaller and they usually want a stake in the business as a condition.
  - ffsm8 10mo ago
    The opposite argument would be that the default should behave like the house then, so ownership should switch over to the person providing the loan entirely - instead of passing on part ownership forever. But that's obviously less desirable to the person providing the money, and they've obviously got all the cards... Hence the argument of this post. I wouldn't call it evil myself, unless I wanted to classify capitalism as evil in it's entirety - which would feel disingenuous to me, considering the alternatives were always worse in hindsight.
    - labcomputer 10mo ago
      You aren’t thinking this through. If a startup defaults, it is because they have no money left (which is because they do not have a viable business yet). So there is nothing of value to repossess. This is the same reason the bank asks for an independent valuation of a house (and requires the buyer to maintain insurance) before releasing the money to pay for it: The value of the collateral needs to plausibly match the value of the loan, so that the value of the loan can be recovered in case of default. The only way this works is for the founder to personally guarantee the loan. Which means the founder needs to have sufficient personal assets to keep the bank happy. It also means the founder risks personal bankruptcy if those assets are not enough to cover the loan if the startup defaults.
haritha-j 10mo ago
For me, when you start to lobby, when you explicitly pay people to pass laws in your favour, that's when you cross a line. You go from playing within the rules of the system to making up rules that favour you, and it's wild that it's legal much less acceptable for corporations to do that.
- cjbgkagh 10mo ago
  While I agree it is unfair and it would be better if they didn’t, the reality is that there is a meta-game at a higher level and they are playing according to the meta-game rules. Part of the meta-game is to convince others to stay in the regular game sandbox which gives rise to the hypocrisy we are all familiar with. I don’t know what it would take to diminish the meta-gaming let alone eliminate it, it’s very hard to stop things that are very profitable. I also think we’re in the looting phase of corporatocracy. I think the result of this means the meta-gaming rapidly grows like a cancer to take over everything.
  - judahmeek 10mo ago
    The Atlantic just wrote an article that references this concept: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/marjorie-taylor-greene-resignation/685032/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/marjorie-taylor-gr... They also have several older articles directly targeting insider trading by politicians.
    - HumanOstrich 10mo ago
      Insider trading by politicians is not really what's being discussed. Rich people and corporations lobbying politicians is different.
      - judahmeek 10mo ago
        I was talking more about the mentality of the politicians who "get the joke"
- judahmeek 10mo ago
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
kmeisthax 10mo ago
Imagine for a second that any time you borrowed money to buy something, like a home or a car, you paid that back not by actually paying the loan plus interest, but by a % garnishment of your lifetime wages. That is what equity capital is like. Obviously, nobody would take that kind of deal. But what if regular loans were just flat out not made available to you? Like, if tomorrow, banks as a class individually decided they would only accept payment in this sort of lifetime wage equity. Then it's not really a choice anymore. One of the options has been taken away from you. If I take a fair deal and have one of the counterparties flat out remove some of the negotiating options - even if they were not the ones taken - is it still a fair deal? In other words, the argument that fair exchange has been violated is based on the idea that market power can be a form of coercion. If you don't agree, then you can argue that every possible counterparty deciding to only offer you a bad deal is perfectly acceptable and non-coercive. "Natural shorts[0] are not coercion", in other words. But why stop there? I mean, even in outright theft, where I'm holding a literal gun to your head and demanding payment, you could still choose to eat lead. We can redefine theft and coercion down to excuse any behavior we want on libertarian terms. The tautology is not with the argument, it's with fair exchange itself. [0] As in, "thing you need to exist". You have a natural short position in food, drink, and shelter.
- luckylion 10mo ago
  > Imagine for a second that any time you borrowed money to buy something, like a home or a car, you paid that back not by actually paying the loan plus interest, but by a % garnishment of your lifetime wages. That is what equity capital is like. Weird analogy. It's more like "what if you borrowed money to buy something, didn't have to return it, but if you made money with that thing, you give the lender a cut, forever". Because the point is: it's not a loan, you don't have to pay it back, and you're not on the hook for it if things go wrong. That's the big upside and why lots of people do that instead of getting a loan. Because loans are available, but people don't want that risk and are willing to give up some of their ownership to avoid it.

cmrdporcupine 10mo ago

The article is clearly written from a bit of a Marxian perspective and I think there's a lot assumed ... presuppositions about exploitation and value theory. So yeah, even though on first skim I think I agree with the thrust of this article, I think you're right it's poorly defended, assuming it's at all for an audience outside of people who already think this way.

rixed 10mo ago
I haven't read Marx since I left college, but in my remembering the only thing that is "theft" in the capital is the initial accumulation. There is no idea that any form of ownership beside that is theft (I don't believe there is any notion of "evil" either.) To be honest, you don't give the impression that you have read anything from the author that you are siting. Marx is like those ancient greek phylosophers and classical scientists who are "quoted" more often than read. One could probably say that the privatisation of human communication is a form of "initial accumulation", or maybe just another step toward appropriation of culture, but that's apparently not the angle that the author decided to explore (can't be sure, I couldn't do better than skim that text which looked wrong in too many ways).
- Retric 10mo ago
  I think you misunderstood his viewpoint. Marx’s writing predates the US civil war. When you “own” someone and then “own” their labor the fruits of that labor aren’t yours any more than the person. By that reasoning, if you then use the fruits of that labor to buy a house it’s a stolen house.
- cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
  "you don't give the impression that you have read anything from the author that you are siting" Oh, ok. Anyways. First section of Capital Vol I is all about "surplus value" and exploitation, with a heavy dose of the labour theory of value. It has nothing to do with "initial accumulation" at all, it's about ongoing extraction of surplus value in production, and no, Marx doesn't call it "theft" -- he calls it "exploitation" (which to him is actually somewhat of a value neutral world describing a technical process, actually). Whether it's a defensible position in economics or philosophy is a whole other discussion. There's nuance. Also I assuming you mean "citing", not "siting"
  - rixed 10mo ago
    As the other person who responded to me wrote, I might have misunderstood your comment. I believed that you associated the idea that "property is theft" with Marx, and that's this association that I wanted to warn against. But that's indeed not what you were saying.
api 10mo ago
Marxism is back in vogue again. I guess people have tried reviving Naziism/fascism so now they’ve got to try reviving the other failed early 20th century totalistic political ideology. I get that the status quo has huge issues, but can we have some new ideas maybe instead of continuing to try to revive late 19th century ones that have repeatedly and disastrously failed?
- cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
  As a person with Marxian leanings I can tell you it's not "back in vogue" in fact in both academia and general populace actual Marxist theory has probably never been less vibrant or popular? Maybe some people get that impression because they've conflated "Marxism" with general socialist urges or even cultural "left" wing identity politics, but that in fact is proof exactly of the opposite. It's never been more heretical to advocate for wealth redistribution or dismantling or restricting parts of the capitalist market, even in the context of a total ecological crisis brought on by industrial production and exponential growth. It's not even on the table of discussion in any western country, so I am not sure where you fear comes from. That a claim like this could be made shows me exactly how far to the right we've drifted since e.g. the 60s. That someone like Mamdani could be smeared or red-baited as a "Marxist" for advocating for rent control is hilarious really. (But frankly I'm not here to debate the merits or get into a drive-by debate with your half-formed opinions, nor was that the aim or thrust of what my comment above was about.)
- immibis 10mo ago
  > the other failed early 20th century totalistic political ideology. I'm not sure how to square this statement with reality. Which countries were Marxist? The obvious "communist"/"socialist" country was the USSR, but it was Leninist/Stalinist.
- rixed 10mo ago
  Certainly, to get new ideas it's better to start from a good knowledge of past ideas? If we had thrown an anathema on physics each time a rocket blowed up, nobody would have ever landed on the moon :)
- queenkjuul 10mo ago

sumuyuda 10mo ago

I think the main argument that it is theft, is that they contribute nothing to the continued surplus generated after their loan was repaid. So they effectively steal the profits like a parasite. Why should they get ownership of the business? When you get a mortgage for your house, the bank doesn’t permanently own part of your house after you pay it off.

Anon1096 10mo ago
For one, in a mortgage the loan is secured by the house. But more importantly: you can get simple loans for startups too! Banks provide loans that are personally guaranteed (ie if the business goes under the founder is still on the hook). But if you want more money or something that is limited in liability then your pool of people willing to give money is much smaller and they usually want a stake in the business as a condition.
- ffsm8 10mo ago
  The opposite argument would be that the default should behave like the house then, so ownership should switch over to the person providing the loan entirely - instead of passing on part ownership forever. But that's obviously less desirable to the person providing the money, and they've obviously got all the cards... Hence the argument of this post. I wouldn't call it evil myself, unless I wanted to classify capitalism as evil in it's entirety - which would feel disingenuous to me, considering the alternatives were always worse in hindsight.
  - labcomputer 10mo ago
    You aren’t thinking this through. If a startup defaults, it is because they have no money left (which is because they do not have a viable business yet). So there is nothing of value to repossess. This is the same reason the bank asks for an independent valuation of a house (and requires the buyer to maintain insurance) before releasing the money to pay for it: The value of the collateral needs to plausibly match the value of the loan, so that the value of the loan can be recovered in case of default. The only way this works is for the founder to personally guarantee the loan. Which means the founder needs to have sufficient personal assets to keep the bank happy. It also means the founder risks personal bankruptcy if those assets are not enough to cover the loan if the startup defaults.

haritha-j 10mo ago

For me, when you start to lobby, when you explicitly pay people to pass laws in your favour, that's when you cross a line. You go from playing within the rules of the system to making up rules that favour you, and it's wild that it's legal much less acceptable for corporations to do that.

cjbgkagh 10mo ago
While I agree it is unfair and it would be better if they didn’t, the reality is that there is a meta-game at a higher level and they are playing according to the meta-game rules. Part of the meta-game is to convince others to stay in the regular game sandbox which gives rise to the hypocrisy we are all familiar with. I don’t know what it would take to diminish the meta-gaming let alone eliminate it, it’s very hard to stop things that are very profitable. I also think we’re in the looting phase of corporatocracy. I think the result of this means the meta-gaming rapidly grows like a cancer to take over everything.
- judahmeek 10mo ago
  The Atlantic just wrote an article that references this concept: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/marjorie-taylor-greene-resignation/685032/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/marjorie-taylor-gr... They also have several older articles directly targeting insider trading by politicians.
  - HumanOstrich 10mo ago
    Insider trading by politicians is not really what's being discussed. Rich people and corporations lobbying politicians is different.
    - judahmeek 10mo ago
      I was talking more about the mentality of the politicians who "get the joke"
judahmeek 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

kmeisthax 10mo ago

Imagine for a second that any time you borrowed money to buy something, like a home or a car, you paid that back not by actually paying the loan plus interest, but by a % garnishment of your lifetime wages. That is what equity capital is like. Obviously, nobody would take that kind of deal. But what if regular loans were just flat out not made available to you? Like, if tomorrow, banks as a class individually decided they would only accept payment in this sort of lifetime wage equity. Then it's not really a choice anymore. One of the options has been taken away from you. If I take a fair deal and have one of the counterparties flat out remove some of the negotiating options - even if they were not the ones taken - is it still a fair deal? In other words, the argument that fair exchange has been violated is based on the idea that market power can be a form of coercion. If you don't agree, then you can argue that every possible counterparty deciding to only offer you a bad deal is perfectly acceptable and non-coercive. "Natural shorts[0] are not coercion", in other words. But why stop there? I mean, even in outright theft, where I'm holding a literal gun to your head and demanding payment, you could still choose to eat lead. We can redefine theft and coercion down to excuse any behavior we want on libertarian terms. The tautology is not with the argument, it's with fair exchange itself. [0] As in, "thing you need to exist". You have a natural short position in food, drink, and shelter.

luckylion 10mo ago
> Imagine for a second that any time you borrowed money to buy something, like a home or a car, you paid that back not by actually paying the loan plus interest, but by a % garnishment of your lifetime wages. That is what equity capital is like. Weird analogy. It's more like "what if you borrowed money to buy something, didn't have to return it, but if you made money with that thing, you give the lender a cut, forever". Because the point is: it's not a loan, you don't have to pay it back, and you're not on the hook for it if things go wrong. That's the big upside and why lots of people do that instead of getting a loan. Because loans are available, but people don't want that risk and are willing to give up some of their ownership to avoid it.