Three economics challenges
Jul. 28th, 2004 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nibot(1) Popular wisdom has it that corporations are quite concerned about their stock price, that when the company is doing well, the stock price goes "up", and when the company is doing poorly, the stock price goes "down". In other words, changes in stock price are directly tied to the performance of a company. (One share in a corporation means that you own 1/N of that company, where N is the total number of shares. Dividends are periodic cash payouts to shareholders, maybe $0.50 per share per quarter.)
My question is how? Tell me one way in which the performance of a company is actually tied to the price of its stock.
The price of a share in company FOO should be exactly the expectation value of all future dividends paid by that company, and at one time this was true. At one time, people invested in corporations in order to provide the capital to perform some undertaking (say, "Buy ships and hire a crew to sail to the New World and dig up riches!") with the expectation of future rewards ("Profit from riches dug up in the new world."). But these days this is no longer true. Companies rarely issue substantial dividends any more. Microsoft recently did, but that was sufficiently suprising to be sort of the "exception that proved the rule."
Shares in a company (stock) are bought and sold willy-nilly. After the initial sale of shares to investors (for publicly traded corporations, this is the venerated IPO, or "Initial Public Offering"), the price of stock is utterly irrelevent to the company itself, since the only time the company gains capital is when the company sells shares to an initial investor. An investor selling his share to another investor does nothing for the company.
People buy stock (shares) not because they expect future dividends, but because they expect the price of the stock to go up. But I see no actual mechanism to tie the performance of a company to its stock price. In this case, "investing" in the stock market is no more than speculation, and the whole system is nothing more than a pyramid scheme. Indeed, the only reason that investing in the stock market usually pays off is because the amount invested is growing. Every year more people invest in the stock market, fuelling the pyramid scheme.
Prove me wrong.
(2) I hate chains. I mean stores like McDonalds or Blockbuster or Walmart or Borders Books And Music or Best Buy. I detest them, but I can't put my finger on exactly what about them I find so reprehensible. I dislike the homogeneity, the impersonalness, the fact that the employees are robots. Somehow Independent Businesses just seem "better". Their products are more interesting and you can see that their revenue is reinvested directly in the local community, instead of being siphoned off to an absentee owner. I want to figure out whether this is a reasonable position. Should I just embrace "chain stores"?
One of my big suspicions is that we need chain stores, because the base of potential business owners simply lacks the creativity and manpower to produce a zillion independent businesses, whereas it's relatively easy to clone an already-successful business to operate in a zillion locations. Also, I understand the economy of scale. It's certainly vastly more efficient to have the supply chain available to supply your chain business with what it needs. It also mitigates risk. When there are a zillion copies of a business, the other copies can keep a less successful copy afloat until it takes root.
Then there is another distinction (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
squibb points out). Franchises, like, say, Subway, are independent business. The franchisee buys a "kit" from the motherbusiness (Subway, Inc) and starts a business using their paraphernalia. It's a recognizable copy of another business with a recognizable brand, but it's locally owned. Then there are centrally-owned businesses, like our old friend Starbucks, where every single store is owned and operated from central headquarters. Franchises seem a lot less evil than these centrally-owned businesses, but I really don't like either.
Are chains really bad? Am I irrational for hating them? I have never, and, as far as I'm concerned, I will never, patronize Starbucks. So far I'm Wal-Mart free as well. Is this reasonable?
(3) Define "wealth". How is it created? What is "inflation"?
--
By the way, a good site for background info is invest-faq.com. I think the only two books I've read in this milieu are A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Steven Landsburg's The Armchair Economist. Other references appreciated.
My question is how? Tell me one way in which the performance of a company is actually tied to the price of its stock.
The price of a share in company FOO should be exactly the expectation value of all future dividends paid by that company, and at one time this was true. At one time, people invested in corporations in order to provide the capital to perform some undertaking (say, "Buy ships and hire a crew to sail to the New World and dig up riches!") with the expectation of future rewards ("Profit from riches dug up in the new world."). But these days this is no longer true. Companies rarely issue substantial dividends any more. Microsoft recently did, but that was sufficiently suprising to be sort of the "exception that proved the rule."
Shares in a company (stock) are bought and sold willy-nilly. After the initial sale of shares to investors (for publicly traded corporations, this is the venerated IPO, or "Initial Public Offering"), the price of stock is utterly irrelevent to the company itself, since the only time the company gains capital is when the company sells shares to an initial investor. An investor selling his share to another investor does nothing for the company.
People buy stock (shares) not because they expect future dividends, but because they expect the price of the stock to go up. But I see no actual mechanism to tie the performance of a company to its stock price. In this case, "investing" in the stock market is no more than speculation, and the whole system is nothing more than a pyramid scheme. Indeed, the only reason that investing in the stock market usually pays off is because the amount invested is growing. Every year more people invest in the stock market, fuelling the pyramid scheme.
Prove me wrong.
(2) I hate chains. I mean stores like McDonalds or Blockbuster or Walmart or Borders Books And Music or Best Buy. I detest them, but I can't put my finger on exactly what about them I find so reprehensible. I dislike the homogeneity, the impersonalness, the fact that the employees are robots. Somehow Independent Businesses just seem "better". Their products are more interesting and you can see that their revenue is reinvested directly in the local community, instead of being siphoned off to an absentee owner. I want to figure out whether this is a reasonable position. Should I just embrace "chain stores"?
One of my big suspicions is that we need chain stores, because the base of potential business owners simply lacks the creativity and manpower to produce a zillion independent businesses, whereas it's relatively easy to clone an already-successful business to operate in a zillion locations. Also, I understand the economy of scale. It's certainly vastly more efficient to have the supply chain available to supply your chain business with what it needs. It also mitigates risk. When there are a zillion copies of a business, the other copies can keep a less successful copy afloat until it takes root.
Then there is another distinction (as
squibb points out). Franchises, like, say, Subway, are independent business. The franchisee buys a "kit" from the motherbusiness (Subway, Inc) and starts a business using their paraphernalia. It's a recognizable copy of another business with a recognizable brand, but it's locally owned. Then there are centrally-owned businesses, like our old friend Starbucks, where every single store is owned and operated from central headquarters. Franchises seem a lot less evil than these centrally-owned businesses, but I really don't like either.Are chains really bad? Am I irrational for hating them? I have never, and, as far as I'm concerned, I will never, patronize Starbucks. So far I'm Wal-Mart free as well. Is this reasonable?
(3) Define "wealth". How is it created? What is "inflation"?
--
By the way, a good site for background info is invest-faq.com. I think the only two books I've read in this milieu are A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Steven Landsburg's The Armchair Economist. Other references appreciated.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 02:33 pm (UTC)My impression is that stock prices are mostly used as a barometer for public confidence in the company, which will certainly affect dealings with big league investors and other corporations. Stock prices go up on good news, so it's causal, but only in the "wrong direction". So I could be wrong in general, but isn't an IPO supposed to be a way to raise lots of cash? If a company's stock price is in the gutter, it's probably difficult for them to raise any money by issuing more stock. This is probably super-important for stupid little web companies, and less so for gigantic corporations.
I don't think franchises are "better" than chain stores. I think Fast Food Nation talks a bit about franchises, and how evil some companies are to their franchisees. Which might be a motivation to be nice to the franchise owners... but really, you're still financing evil.
One of the interesting things about being here for the summer, *where there literally are no non-chain stores* (I couldn't boycott wal-mart if I wanted to), is that people actually seem invested in the chain stores. It's not so bad if the person working behind the counter is someone you went to high school with, though it's a bit sad that they'll never have a say in how the store is run. Even the farmer's market isn't that local--we asked where the produce came from and they told us it was from Georgia.
The takeover of chain stores in the bay area is particularly sad, because there are so many community-based stores who are losing the battle. If you're lucky enough to be in Berkeley, the choice between Cody's and Moe's and Border's is a no-brainer. But here... I don't think there was much of anything before the chain stores took over. Everyone's happy that a best buy is opening up nearby, because now they can get their cheap electronics locally instead of, well, probably driving to the next-closest best buy. If there was anything around originally, I'm pretty sure it died a long time ago.
I guess my point is that I'm all for boycotting chain stores, but I think it's important to understand why middle america seems to be embracing them, and why you probably would too, in the same position.