[aalleavitch]

> And taking on debt to do it isn't inherently irresponsible. In fact, it's just a wise financial decision when interest rates are low. New revenue streams aren't required to be generated -- it's just shifting a subset of future revenue to the present.

I don't know how someone could possibly make this statement RIGHT NOW of all times? How many businesses are sitting on the edge of folding right now? Whoops! Looks like all that future revenue didn't show up! Guess who's going to suffer for these decisions? Not the investors, they sold out! How about all the employees who just had all the blood sucked out of their job security and future livelihood?

In what sense are investors in this scenario not just hostile parasites? At least if it were dividends then the investors would have any sort of remaining long-term interest in the success of the company, and not just how they can most quickly disentangle themselves from taking any responsibility for the survival of the company that they ostensibly had ownership over by gulping down revenue it didn't even generate yet? In what sense is the investor not crippling the company and leaving it weaker than they found it? It's vampirism! Just because the money is there for the taking doesn't mean you should, it doesn't mean that what you're doing isn't irresponsible and even morally reprehensible.

You create a nightmarescape of shambling zombie companies just waiting for a global pandemic to remind them that they're all already dead. Enjoy your artificially juiced stock value after it craters because our entire economy is short of legs to stand on.

[heartbeats]

Well, this was a one in a million thing. Nobody could have predicted the world to just shut down for six months, and it's not productive to plan for it.

It's far more reasonable to do business as usual and then take loans if things go south.

As Matt Levine put it: the dividends they gave since the GFC come to $15 billion, and their equity comes to $12 billion. So it's not even given it would have been the appropriate thing.

> How about all the employees who just had all the blood sucked out of their job security and future livelihood?

Right. It's like banks. How do we handle it?

Insurance: if you want to be a FDIC-insured bank, you must pay the FDIC insurance, and in return they will backstop your creditors up to a certain limit if they go bankrupt.

Why couldn't we do the same for employees? If you're an employer of systemic importance, you must have employee bankruptcy insurance: if you go tits-up, your employees get their salary paid up to a maximum limit of $X/yr until they find a new job. The insurance premiums are set by the free market, purely capitalist.

[lumost]

> It's far more reasonable to do business as usual and then take loans if things go south.

How can a business take out loans when things go south if it already leveraged itself in good times? Why would new investors buy into a company saddled with debt used to pay the old investors?

[aalleavitch]

> Well, this was a one in a million thing. Nobody could have predicted the world to just shut down for six months, and it's not productive to plan for it.

This is the most shocking hubris I've witnessed in a long time.