RE: You're Going To LOSE Your Job Soon!
You are so smart @Dana-edwards
You always blow my mind with your comments! haha
I agree with that completely. When you own it you can step back easier and watch everyone else run it! This is something I hope to eventually transition to as I grow my businesses large enough. But of course I'd have to find someone who is "qualified" to run the whole thing.
I think for those of us with less income, It's easier to step into an Entrepreneurs shoes rather than an Owners. Because sometimes having that money to buy out the company can be difficult. So first growing as an Entrepreneur can help us work our way up to owner.
@telos
True! I wouldn't be able to have employees. But maybe I could hire a someone who creates software, To make me a program that will do the work for me. Similar to an employee but it's all automated.
You actually already are an owner. The Steemit platform gives you a taste of what being an owner feels like because you own a digital stake in Steemit. There are many opportunities even better than Steemit in the crypto-sphere which you should be on the look out for. You have great skills for writing and have an audience, so at least some of these projects may be willing to offer you a stake in exchange for you writing about your experiences using their platform, or to explain the benefits (philosophically). I think you and I are both better off as owners because I think we have more to offer the world.
For traditional businesses you are pretty much correct that you do need to pay a human being to be your CEO. If you reach a point however where you've got enough saved that you can begin investing then you can look into REITs (real estate investment trusts) and other dividend paying stocks, along with crypto-assets, so you can get the benefits and income of the owner without even having to hire anyone or do anything but hold shares. In the case of crypto-tokens it might be the case that you just have to hold the token to get the dividends.
Time will tell I suppose. The idea to hire someone to create software is excellent thinking, that is what the ICOs are about, but you can also do your own ICO if you have a good idea and can get someone technical to help you launch it. There are companies set up to handle ICO launches even so even that has become a service so all you actually need is a good idea, to have a good reputation, to be trustworthy, then an Ethereum smart contract collects funds which go straight to a multi-signature wallet which you and your team access to hire the necessary programmers. If you ever decide to launch an ICO let me know.
Note on Aragon: It doesn't let you avoid any legal obligations or registrations for starting a company but it might make running one decentralized easier.
What the fuck is an ICO?
Anyway, I wouldn't equate stock ownership to company ownership. You have very little control, you're just hoping to soak up dividends. I'm moving towards real estate now where I'll actually be owning, along with founding a software company where I'll also have actual control compared to shareholders.
An ICO is a fundraiser where people give you crypto tokens worth money to create a dAPP or smart contract. It is similar to Kickstarter.
The smart contract can earn a profit and pass it through dividends for token holders or through increased valuation of the token. ICO really has nothing to do with companies or firms as legally registered entities but is ownership in a completely automated piece of software which exists distributed on a blockchain. So in the case of an ICO, ownership means control.
If you're asking about my opinions of real estate, I would say REITs are better for me because I like liquidity. I also see REITs as a lot less risk. If you just want the dividends why do you care about control of the company?
Owning the rights to the profit is the path to financial independence not owning control and voting power.
@telos
The goal and intent behind my posts was to show that you can automate profit generation using "bots" which exist as smart contracts on Ethereum, or other future blockchains. That is the game, that is the ultimate productive asset, just so long as your bot is creating something of value which other humans are willing to pay for then it can make a profit for you indefinitely.
A bot would be a fully autonomous profit generating machine for whomever owns it or holds shares in it. This is different from a company, as a company exists legally while a bot exists digitally written in code, and interacts digitally, as humans must communicate with it using it's token only. In the case of Steem you need Steem, in the case of Ethereum you need ETH, in the case of Bitshares you need BTS, and so on. A token sale is a way to buy these currencies, but also act as a way to communicate such as to vote.
If Kaylin, or you, or I, can come together to get an idea for a smart contract funded, then we will be founders. We could reserve for ourselves some percentage of the token supply, and design the system to pay dividends to holders, as proof of stake. The ICO being a fundraising mechanism sells or pre-sells the tokens to others who want to buy their seats on the deck so they too can get whatever benefits. Then all stakeholders work together to bring value and raise the price of their tokens.
I'm a software engineer. It's not as simple as that. :P
First off, we can write good maintainable code or we can write bad obfuscated code. The former is more likely when I know I'm the same person who will be maintaining the system for years, the latter is more likely when I know you'll keep bidding to change who codes the next changes. Not to mention the possibilities of putting in unethical backdoors, let alone the need for a team of people to create anything worthwhile.
Software is often outsourced, and many companies have ended up wishing they didn't because the quality is lower compared to that generated by employees.