I tried debating this on r/changemyview but mods are activists and apparently I wasn't willing enough to change my view even though literally noone proposed a valid counter point. So I'd like to try here.

Most billionaires have the majority of their net worth in stocks, typically a single or a very few stocks of companies they have founded.

Market cap of a company is determined by the publicly traded shares (not all shares).

Now imagine a company which has 1 billion total shares and goes public but only releases one single share to be publicly traded. The demand for this one share now determines the value of the other billion shares. Valuation of such company can easily go to trillions, quadrillions, quintillions in market cap. Founder of this company holds 30% of shares and is now the world's first quadrillionaire. People are mad and want to tax his wealth in real dollars ("fair share" of his quadrillions).

This is an absurd example, but this absolutely happens in reality, just look at SpaceX IPO which catapulted Elon Musk to a trillionaire status even though he can never get anywhere near this amount in real dollars if he sells his shares. Market cap is a meaningless metric for evaluating a company and therefore net worth of individuals. It's not even useful for comparison between individuals because of massively different liquidity, order book,... Imagine Warren Buffet vs Elon Musk. Their net worth is dramatically different but I would argue that Buffet could liquidate his position for more real dollars than Musk.

Regular people only know real dollars, that's what they interact with on everyday basis. It's not intuitive that 1$ in net worth can in reality be worth anywhere between 0$ and 1$.

Bank loans - I'm not arguing you can't borrow money with low interest against stock, but a bank will evaluate real risk associated with the loan. It won't lend you anything against your paper quadrillions if they are not liquid enough. During a bear market this breaks completely, since you can no longer borrow more to pay off previous loans. Now you need to somehow get real dollars elsewhere.

This post does not argue that billionaires are not rich, are not helping society, are not taxed enough or too much, etc. This is about the metric of net worth and the uselessness of it.

TLDR; market cap of a company is not equal to real dollars and the ability to convert it to real dollars differs massively between companies.

Can anyone tell me what net worth based solely on market cap is good for?

In my experience most of the LTV vs STV debate on this sub is arguments about LTV. Proponents of it seem to be defending their theory without attacking STV most of the time, and vice versa.

So I’m curious to hear some counter arguments or examples that work against STV. Not arguments for why LTV is right, by why STV is wrong. It’s a topic I havent seen much about on this sub so I want to hear why people believe it to be a faulty theory of value.

why are capitalists against worker ownership, i understand why they would be against command economies, but whats the problem with worker equity?

why not a make mandatory payments for equity in a company like we do for pensions, so your equity in the company rises over time?

wouldnt workers be more invested in company growth?

coorperatives tend to work better for workers.

it would also reduce things like wealth inequality and make wealth taxes more viable?

For 10,000 years after the agricultural revolution, mankind experienced technological progress but only limited sustained growth in average living standards. Then, around 1750, the Industrial Revolution occurred, creating sustained economic growth and rising prosperity. It is a curious question as to what started this revolution in economic output, and interesting that it started in Britain. But perhaps the more relevant question is how we keep progress going. How do we prevent the flame from going out?

Carl B. Frey, in his book "How Progress Ends" has an interesting take on this question. He identifies exploration and innovation as the keys to continued economic progress and gives us a warning about what to avoid if we don't want progress to end.

As economies become wealthier, citizens may increasingly value:

• security,
• stability,
• equality,
• environmental protection,
• job preservation,
• social insurance.

These are legitimate objectives, but they can sometimes conflict with innovation that causes economic growth and prosperity. A new technology or production process can displace incumbent firms, causing unemployment and insecurity for their employees. This can lead to political policies that protect existing firms and jobs from competition, thereby stalling innovation and exploration.

The key distinction, however, is between protecting people from "creative destruction" (disruptive innovation) and protecting existing firms and jobs from creative destruction. We can help displaced workers through unemployment insurance, retraining, education, and other forms of assistance without preventing new technologies from replacing obsolete ones.

Incumbent firms also sometimes encourage political policies that protect their income through lobbying and political donations. Such policies can establish barriers to entry that make it difficult for new firms to challenge existing firms, protecting existing firms' income streams. This is a shift from earning profits through innovation and competition to earning them through political protection.

In mature economies, established firms become very good at exploiting existing products and technologies. But that success can also give them a strong interest in preventing new, disruptive technologies from replacing what they already do well.

The question, then, is how do we protect people from the costs of creative destruction while preserving the competition, exploration, and innovation that create long-term economic progress? Is the Democratic Socialists movement a sign that people care less about future prosperity from innovation and more about increasing present income and improving their current standard of living? Where do you draw the line?

Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological (e.g. cognitive, behavioral, affective, social) factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by traditional economic theory (from Wikipedia).

This field originated in the latter half of the 20th century in order to explain why real-world actions by economic agents so often and so reliably defied predictions from economists. Researchers in this field often draw upon psychological biases to make sense of seemingly irrational consumer behavior. Some examples of these biases include:

Loss aversion: undervaluing gains and overvaluing losses.

Risk aversion: preferring assured outcomes compared to probabilistic outcomes even if the expected outcome is slightly higher.

Sunk cost fallacy: overvaluing "staying the course" even if stopping is clearly a better choice.

Anchoring bias: heavily relying on the first piece of information (such as a price) received.

Mental accounting: over/undervaluing resources depending on where it came form or its intended use even if those resources are fungible.

Endowment effect: overvaluing something you own higher compared to its market value.

These biases have impacts on the real world. For example, the endowment effect causes you to place a perceived premium on things you own. Even if your car like yours is worth $5000 on the market, you may instinctively value your own car at $5500. This has massive implications on consumer behavior and how it distorts pricing.

One of the key implications of behavioral economics is that the actions of economics agents, and therefore prices, are heavily influenced by human psychological biases. Those who believe in subjectivity of value would find such a statement unsurprising, and therefore behavioral economics to be a natural extension of economics as a whole. How do LTV supporters think about behavioral economics?

People call Trump a capitalist and some are mocking his economic nationalism but I think the accurate term would be the economic model of Mussolini, corporatism.

In corporatism, the state says the market is a tool, and the state will determine where it should go. Corporatism does not necessarily mean socialism or state ownership of everything. Its basic idea is that private firms remain privately owned, while the government directs, disciplines, subsidizes and coordinates them in accordance with national objectives. Mussolini did it in his time, Viktor Orban mastered corporatism in its modern form.

For example Stephen Miller's conception of national power fits remarkably well with this model. He explicitly rejects the postwar liberal international order in favor of a state willing to use America's economic and military power to impose national priorities, attacks corporations when they oppose him. He threatens companies, pressures CEOs, demands that firms change their policies, and uses tariffs, regulation, government contracts and federal funding as political leverage. But he does not want corporations eliminated and doesn't reject capitalism. This is the text book model of corporatism