Showing posts with label dividends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dividends. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2022

The invention of truth

This paper proves the existence of God logically... And everyone will agree this is a terrible thing.  A more accurate description of the paper is that it proves a constraint on God, and constraint on the will of God, as a corollary to the axiom: if God exists, then God is good.  Theoretically, this should only make evil people angry, but stubbornness of beliefs has an emotional attachment.

The title is an homage to The invention of lying (movie by Ricky Gervais).  There will be a part 2 with film and culture references, but this paper will try to be more strict/serious.


Blaise Pascal and the economics of God

Pascal's wager is fundamentally that if loyalty to Church (different from loyalty to God) costs very little, and the payoff is potentially eternal reward.  The economics of God definitely exist.  Other rewards from loyalty to Church include feeling hope, experiencing the joy of spiritual fulfillment, overcoming fear of social disapproval for insufficient Church loyalty, and enjoying group community/identity for a group superficially supportive of the general good.  These describe the economics for buyers of Church adherence.

The economic sellers of Church adherence are a hierarchy of Men serving Church interests.  Capturing your soul is a monetizable/asset, while the liabilities of providing ponies from prayer and eternal mansions are shifted to an invisible sky fairy.  The economics of selling Church adherence incentivize scamming where the Church, as an intermediary, replaces/pretends to serve God with service to, or actually aiding, demonic influences of oligarchs and ruling classes.  When you sell your soul/loyalty to the Church, you empower it to Churchsplain your suffering as being caused by a mysterious God's will.  There is massive scamming opportunity for the hierarchy of Men controlling a Church to serve profitable rulership interests at the expense of their adherents.

Pascal's wager risks the small cost of your loyalty/soul for no benefit.  But instead risking the further cost of eternal damnation instead of eternal reward.  Whether or not you are responsible for your own foolishness in adhering to demonic evil, your soul has been pledged, nonetheless to Satan, by the Church brokers.  Not that the existence of a devil is needed to explain evil in our world, but the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is deceiving society into believing that he is God.  The business model of delivering your soul to an evil order is much more profitable than valuing humanist freedom.  There is only money in selling slaves.  No direct money in freeing them.

Media that promotes a nationalist order is a modern and more effective replacement for the Churches' selling of souls to the nationalist order.  Even when left and right perspectives are balanced, and the democratic framework extolled, a nationalist order where things will stay the same is ensured.  Media serves evil, by demonically framing national opinion within evil alternatives.

The proof of God in this paper fully recognizes providing an economic payoff to God.  The payoff of God is providing heaven on earth, low scarcity world with ample easy opportunity for all humans rather than just a heaven on earth for ruling elites, and hell on earth for the rest.  Any eternal  extra planar/dimensional rewards are a bonus cherry only available to those who adhere/support policies that a  good God must want for humans.  There is no need to prove the existence of the bonus cherry prize to prove God's relevance (relevance implies existence).  The God being proven is a supernatural force that guides towards good and against evil actions independently of the human consequence of being caught or the PR value of public acclaim.  The following 4 sections define God in a clear definitive structured-hierarchical-mandate way, whose consistency could not be reconciled with 20000 sentences from scripture.  In the end, God is presented here as a more consistent expression of human love than spiritual hope and joy given to those who abstain from sin, and an economic rationale is proposed to accept this God as the only possible one true God.

Truth

Ethics must be in the form of a mandate hierarchy.  The top mandate must be absolute.  The 2nd mandate must be absolute while never violating top mandate, and each subsequent mandates are absolute as well, while subservient to mandates above them.

Truth is such a primordial ethics mandate that God himself must be identical/slave/bound to truth.  If God is not evil, then he must demand truth, and be truth.  If God is evil, or wants us to be evil, then he is not worth respecting.  Any loyalty placed above a loyalty to truth is a loyalty against God, and a necessarily, loyalty to evil.

Implications of common violations of these axioms:

"God blesses our tribe" (no matter what lies/evil our tribe commits is direct corruption of God)

Loyalty to a Church that includes a mandate to deliver souls to demonic lying Conservative/Republican rulers that serve an evil oligarchy is a loyalty against God.


Humanism is maximizing the sum total of all individual humans' happiness, including the sustainable happiness of future humanity.  An act that improves any small/single subset of humanity is humanist as long as it doesn't disenfranchise another human.


Humanism

Humanism defines Good, and what good God wants for humanity.  Truth/God eternally transcending through generations means Truth/God will still be relevant in future.  Environmentalism is an essential component of human sustainability, but humanism must trump environmentalism as priority.  Humanism must trump tribalism.  Humanism is the 2nd prime loyalty (after truth) to God.  Loyalty above humanism or truth is loyalty to evil.

Individual acts of humanism include  self actualization, employment, consumption, production, kindness, having/raising children, and helping structure the world to be more conducive to human prosperity and sustainability.

Structural/social humanism is a world that provides all of us opportunity to "easily" thrive.  A world/society that supports you in meeting your "goodness quota" of 28 pregnancies with octomom fertility treatments = 224 births, is a humanist world the result of concerted social action to make the world more humanist.  While a 224 children quota is extreme, and difficult to expect sustainability if all women quickly adopted it, a world that is too harsh to consider the effort needed to raise some children is a world that is too harsh, and perhaps lacks the technical progress needed to sustain higher population.  A world that lacks the hope for opportunity that will affect parents and their potential children.

The most demonic anti human acts are manufacturing war to coerce arms sales and profit from food and climate destroying energy scarcity.  Such evil seeks/claims blessing from God, but we/humanity should not tolerate such victimization.

Humanism is the answer to the question "what policy is truly good?"  Tribal rulership striving to diminish others/humanity through economically destructive action/proxy war that even harms their tribe, is an obvious distortion of humanism for tribal rulership gains/power.  The importance of humanism to God is primarily in binding rulerships from evil.  Where Church/Media encourages/unopposes the evil, they participate in the evil.  Tribal enhancement policies are entirelly humanist where they don't depend on opposing tribal diminishment.

If you love God, you must love humanity and society subsets of humanity and its sustainability, because God loves humanity.  God cannot just be concerned with only your narcissist prosperity.  If you already respect humanism,  independently of a faith/certainty of God, then you are already good.  Humanism as the clear definition of good, under God or not, is a basis to provide a clear definition of evil, and actionable opposition to evil.


Freedom is a non-pejorative synonym for selfishness.  The right to choose self-interested behaviour.

Freedom under God is selfishness constrained by truth and not harming other people.  Including not preventing social structure that improves freedom of others.  Those born on 3rd base, 2nd base, or first base, do not deserve additional privileges over those whose lesser opportunities require taking an "at bat".   Those who have seized the opportunity to start on base, need not restrain the opportunities of those at bat to bring them to home/increase their own prosperity.


Freedom

As good is defined as humanism, neutrality is freedom.  The right to refuse maximal humanist productivity efforts is necessarily humanist, because the alternative is coercing productivity, and the coercion is harm.  Neutrality of freedom under God means that every action in between doing nothing (neutral) and doing good is permitted.

Valid reasons to refuse coercion for good/productivity include an unfair world where evil prevails.  A world structured to threaten you with starvation and cold if you do not find a sufficiently kind master to submit to.  A world that cannot sustain sufficient hope for parenting endeavors.  

Freedom under God prohibits shaming those who are on the neutral-good spectrum for being insufficiently good/humanist.  Behaviour that is respectful of God, is defined as not evil: ie. behaviour on the  neutral-good spectrum.  Equaling/synonymizing freedom and selfishness, and encouraging humanist behaviour through raising the awareness of social and personal benefits of humanist behaviour is the acceptable action for promoting humanism. Condemning/shaming selfishness that imposes no evil on others, is an act of coercion, that cannot be humanist, even if real humanist progress could be achieved through the coercion. 

Financial independence is also a fundamental definition of freedom.  If we took a survey for the question "Would you like to be employed in a function that serves to defraud consumers or investors, or secretly pollute the world killing neighbours or future generations?"  The only other non-demonic reply than "no", is "yes, if the position pays a lot more than non-evil work."  The reason that this is possibly a non evil/demonic answer is that financial desperation makes survival trump God.  The selfish need to survive is an understandable violation of God/humanism.  Even a wealthy individual can depend on the financial assets/income of a business. That greed/dependence requires obtaining sycophantic minions to fulfill the wealthy business owner's dependent financial needs.


Demonism: The advocacy and pursuit of evil  Justifying/implying it as good and necessary.

Indignity/Undignity: Service to evil.  Balanced between:  The freedom to say no, the awareness of harm done to others, and the rewards for doing harm.  Dignity becomes not the lack of indignity, but the pride of doing good.

A root of most evil is undignified sycophancy to organizational hierarchies that do harm.  The lack of individual freedom to say no is necessary for this evil.  Democracy has so far been ineffective in stopping "evil prevails".

Minimizing disorder

Property rights are necessary for prosperity/flourishing.  Constructing and believing violence, theft, fraud, and pollution are wrong and should be structurally deterred is unanimous.  A professional police force serving that deterrence is a viable path to maintaining civil order, and preventing disorder.  Food, healthcare, emergency security are important security too.

Rulerships require masses of "balanced" desperation in order to ensure a supply of soldiers and other slaves to enhance the strength of the rulership.  Democracy has so far been ineffective in limiting rulership evil because the prize of political victory is greater, the greater the rulership power.  Divisive championism (elect me and your special interests will be promoted) is the only basis for political war because political war requires effort and support, and championism can promise payoff.


Corporatism:  The supremacy of business interests.

Capitalism:  The supremacy of the investor class and capital.  Corporatism has significant overlap with investor class interests. 

It is the supremacism of capitalism and corporatism that is evil.  Not the investment and production it funds.  More production and investment is motivated instead through consumerism derived from less oppression. 

God is defined by principled hierarchy of Truth-Humanism-Freedom.  Diminishing the evil inherent to powerful rulership hierarchies is the principal act of devotion to God.  Security cannot be overlooked, including demonic manufactured instability/divisiveness made against God.  Where political battles over rulership control manufactures divisiveness and hate, it in fact manufactures disorder.  

Minimizing disorder, as this final clause of the God mandate hierarchy, is the necessity to significantly weakening current rulership power, without eliminating the peaceful stability of society.  Peaceful harmonious social stability is the goal of society.  Oppressive warmongering/thieving rulerships are not.

Unconditional Income (UI)/Freedom dividends

Also called Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Social Dividends.  UI is social policy consistent with/devotion to God.

UI eliminates poverty and homelessness.  It eliminates crimes of desperation.  UI provides the freedom to say no to underpaid or evil work, and lets those who are eager to say yes to work, to find well paid work easily.  The consumption boost of UI provides more work and more rewards to share between those who provide  and own the work.   Instead of a school to prison pipeline, youth can hope for a bright future.  UI provides family planning optimism, including your children having a future where they will receive over $500k in their lifetimes.  UI provides everyone the ability to afford academic or vocational training, including relieving parents from funding young adulthood.  UI is far more conducive to production output than welfare systems by not rewarding the poor/disabled/old only if they stay poor.

Financial stress amplifies mental health harm and mental deficiencies that amplify harm and abuse to self and others, including harming family and child development.  It drives people to crave outrage media and to limit others' freedom.  Financial stress or constant mental state of outrage at everything, distracts from the evil and misery inflicted on people by rulership, politicians, and oligarchs they serve.  The subservience and devotion to evil is manufactured by a harsh world that people are manipulated into serving.

An annual certain UI reduces the need for personal savings.  Extra spending from the near wealthy means that the very wealthy get richer through their consumption, or good investment opportunities are available to the near rich.  More spending, less savings is awesome for investment environment.  Lower risk for landlords, banks, and other creditors, and lower risk for theft insurance all significantly reduce parasitic pressure  on people from those sectors (who need to be paid more for higher risk).

Freedom dividends are easily affordable, by equalizing business, investment, and work income taxes.  Work income taxes are lowered compared to today by this process, encouraging everyone from investor class to entry level employees to earn more from work.  Funding from program cuts diminishes rulership evil, and false championism of politicians who will be bribed or berated out of fighting too hard to apply the inconsequential band aids  to oppression they falsely champion as a cure.  Funding from carbon taxes accelerates human sustainable survivability transition while still keeping fossil fuels affordable at any tax rate.  (A $10/gallon gasoline tax, with US consumption of oil at 1000 gallons/capita would fund $10k per person/family member in UI/carbon dividends, and by reducing gasoline demand, would bring the pretax cost of gasoline down to $1/gallon.  Saving the average user $3000-$4000 in surplus income.  Huge opportunities to save more by using less gasoline.)

A society that funds social dividends/cash to citizens first over rulership programs/power, provides a perfectly self-adjusting collective and individualist balance between growth/work, leisure, and inflation.  Social dividends allows pragmatism to prefer $2000 additional cash/year to tax payers over $500B in defense budget items.

Scarcity

A sufficiently heavenly paradise is the blue lagoon (film).  The work requirement to hunt and gather for survival is not a burden when resources are ample and sustainable.  The permissionless freedom is heaven.  A mutually beneficial relationship with a compliant and adoring spouse is heavenly and possible too.  But compliant slavery in service to all your needs is also sufficiently heavenly, for you.  Heavenly lifestyles on earth are available for those who can afford to buy compliance and buy/sell permissions.

The joy and hope instilled by hoping devotion to God/Jesus/Mohamed will lead to a low scarcity after life is a permissible hope for additional payoff for the devotion.  God just demands that following/idolizing your Church's promises of afterlife is prioritized below Truth-Humanism-Freedom.

A low scarcity world is easily achieved through technology/automation progress.  Clean renewable energy is the possibility to manufacture unlimited energy.  Industrial policy that makes such energy abundant means cheap energy for society, compared to protecting climate terrorist oligarchies that depend on energy scarcity for profit and power. US rulership manufacturing  Ukraine proxy war against Russia is manufacturing scarcity and climate terrorism.  Denying China technology access is a significant scarcity promoter (and prelude to further calamitous war against China), destroying technology's advance by limiting revenue/production capability.

US rulership power, and their weapons and fossil fuel oligarchy control, is directly terrorizing Americans and the world into a path towards hell on earth scarcity.  Blaming US rulership power for being the worst rulership among all rulerships is the natural answer, because it has the most power, and the most power to restrain its evil in exchange for requesting others' restraint of evil.

Strong absolute US/Global rulerships will turn post-scarcity advances of automation into extermination of the slave/serf classes, using divisiveness to have the slaves exterminate each other.  Automation replaces the need for slaves and their existential lives.  Only democratic ideal power, nominally held  by the slaves, can prevent the masses from elite controlled rulership extermination and hell on earth.  Continued absolute rulership sets a direct inescapable path to Robocop managed ghettoization followed by extermination.


Nationalist/identity hate 

Conservative political support requires manufacturing hatred and enemies.  "The real patriots support a war on sinners and minorities".  Victory is measured in harm achieved and normalized, regardless of (LBJ's) pocket picking costs to the minion zombies.   It is easy to add nationalist hatred points as a layer on other hatred.  The oligarch/elite demonic sponsors of conservatism do so to protect their financial/power empires, prevent innovation, and sell war.

“The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in entertainment, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years.” - Adolph Hitler, 1933


Ukraine nationalism has fanatical roots in anti-Soviet identification, morphing now into anti-Russian fanaticism.  The US empire is first a foremost managed by an unelected US weapons marketing team, funded by conservative/nationalist oligarchs profiting from the only way to sell weapons, and supporting both political parties harmonious weapon sales delivering power.  Funding nationalist fanatics to provoke and perpetuate a globally devastating war.  EU members, as US puppets, further allocate their unelected EU representatives on the basis of their devotion to NATO/US loyalty.  Media service to US empire is further disenfranchisement of the world, including the golden billion citizens. 

Nationalist hate is anti-God in that anti-human fanatical strength "deserves" power and rule over disloyal slaves captured within a border.  That this is a useful tool for US empire to sell weapons to other CIS states, or facilitate a path for war on China, is not a humanist God endeavor, and incompatible with a manifest destiny blessed by God.


True Liberalism: The freedom and equal opportunity for all. A centrist value approved by God.

Labourism, Zionism and Feminism

While capitalism and corporatism are categorically evil for their supremacism, oppression, competition/production and innovation stifling, and specifically for its control of rulerships to advance evil war as marketing operations, Labourist supremacism is not the answer.  Higher taxes, rulership program cost cutting, and social dividends is the answer.  Unions may improve the life of their members, but they do so by limiting the number of members.  Unions can also have enough power to gain "house slave" status from regulations/programs that make union membership more appealing to the "field slaves".  An example of this is Unions in NY state blocking universal healthcare for that state.  The freedom of social dividends is better labour empowerment than socialism/unionization's fight against capitalism.

Feminism and Zionism (defined with same parameters as capitalism above) are supremacist movements, not only for going above/beyond equality and social justice pursuits, but controlling the absolute supremacist power of being protected from criticism.  Apartheid, terrorist state, Israel, pursuing a final solution on exterminating Palestinians with bipartisan deep state political control of an approving US condemns criticism as anti-semitic.  Believing every woman's abuse complaints as incapable of lie, or preferring women for job and academic applications is supremacist evil whose criticism is deflected as misogynist.  Capitalism and warmongering murder also have evil speech protections where criticism is dismissed as Communist or paid Russia advocacy.  God does not permit this supremacism.

Oversensitivity/sensitivity laws/structure protects the supremacist powers that has achieved immunity from criticism.  Creating sensitivity safe spaces, and laws to enforce them, privileges those who are permitted sensitivity assertions.  It further empowers disinforming governments to crack down on "misinformation" that criticises them.   While demonic Republican evil serving corporatist oligarchy climate destruction needs to animate misinformation and hate as a populist distraction to destroy America and the planet, their political opposition must champion their own supremacists, while still taking funding from the same or opposing oligarchs.

Diversity as tokenism provides valuable societal/organizational diversity of perspective.  Racist/sexist exclusion of qualified opportunity is evil both in preventing tokenism diversity, or in seeking equality of outcomes, through suppressing the most talented from opportunity.  Academic admissions should be 42% female instead of 60% if an IQ of 115 is a gatekeeper.  Feminist supremacism should not influence academia.  If the top 0.6% (iq of 140) of intellectual talent are to have the opportunity to help humanity the most, then 29M of those 40M are male.  Blocking them from employment opportunity, or forcing hostile/sensitivity work environments on them, harms humanity.  The UBI/high tax model ensures that fortunes that are made either helping or harming humanity are taxed enough to help the rest of humanity/society's opportunities and freedom.  Opportunity means talent is set free to maximize humanism.  Taxes/freedom dividends just ensures that the benefits of humanism are shared, and the talented cheered on.

Corrupt democracy and corrupt liberalism form a basis for justifying warmongering murder for corrupt and evil objectives.  Justifies sycophancy of similarly corrupt allies to evil warmongers.  People are too easily hypnotized in picking a good side in war, ignoring the necessary evil of "the good side" manufacturing/insisting on the war.


Proof that Church and Media serve evil

The product of both Church and Media is the flock it controls.  Delivering fleecings and meat to demons is a more profitable, sustainable organizational model, than delivering freedom and happiness to the flock.  Serving "Satan"/lies to the flock is much more probable organizational mission than Truth or God.  The clear incentive to serve evil while pretending that it is God is the evil being blessed.

Judaism and Church-allied Nationalist hate share the same fundamental evil of  dangling a promise land for the in group, and permitting all evil against the out groups.  It relies on an absurdity of an evil god willing to Champion evil against its human creation because he's adopted a culture/sports team to cheer for, and war is entertaining for him.  God championing your tribe is purely and simply rationalizing your evil by lying that it is good/blessed. 

War is ultimate disorder.  Church and media supporting its manufacturing and legitimacy is evil.  Media, as Church, should have a responsibility to Truth, humanism, and freedom instead of being an agent of rulership power in its destruction.

Truth-Humanism-Freedom as a higher force

Principle because it is principle, is circular.  "Murder is wrong because murder is wrong" is a proof of God.  The circular aspect needs a higher force to validate it.  The alternative escape of God is "Murder is wrong, because that is the right thing to say, and saying so will bind you and protect me, and you better not fall asleep, and if I kill you, please God, protect me from revenge/investigation." is appeal to lowly, unprincipled, social forces to protect manipulative evil lying power to protect the liar without binding them.

The answer to why principle (universal equal binding for equal protection) is important, is that it is important because there is a higher force that makes it important.  The higher force is stronger the more people believe/respect the higher force. The force is omnipotent and eternal. Truth is omniscient.

People tend to want to accept or reject God as a being with full telekinetic control of every atom in the universe.  They are all angry that proof of God as a being is not the claim of this paper.  If God created Gravity, an omnipotent, eternal force that never rests or needs refueling, this is still a supreme being creating a higher force.  Creating the higher force of Truth-Humanism-Freedom, is an eternal omnipotent force, even if like rockets or jumping can escape gravity, lies are an effort that can escape truth.

Proving God as a Being is impossible.  There is a higher force for Truth-Humanism-Freedom. It is a force I, and believe most others, feel despite potential profit motives from lies, coercion, murder, and theft. The existence of the higher force is enough to prove God, even without evidence that God is a being. The force is entirely consistent with God, if he were a being. If faith or absence of faith determines for you that God is or is not a being, it doesn't negate the higher force that exists. Response to guidance prayer from a being or not will still be according to the higher force of Truth-Humanism-Freedom, if there is a God listening. So, understanding the being of God is enhanced by understanding Truth-Humanism-Freedom, and protecting yourself from demons who give you a different understanding.

The proof of God being offered here, is that independently of any supernatural powers of a being-God, or eternal gifts promises, the higher force of Truth-Humanism-Freedom is the true reflection of God's principles.  The higher force exists, but disproving God involves proving a better principled higher force.  A terrible, reprehensible, candidate that currently holds the Church-gatekeeped understanding of God in the US is US-Empire-Manifest-Destiny-ism as God's principle/blessing. Placing it above humanism, and any freedom to escape the rulership's ambitions. Diminishing Russia and China may greatly enhance US rulership power, but also cause massive human economic destruction, including a diminishment in American prosperity through recession and housing crash of higher interest rates.  Americans further risk nuclear weapons attack.  Truth-Humanism-Freedom is about enhancing Americans' prosperity through peaceful honest means that likely involves enhancing global prosperity instead of global destruction.  The principles that permit civilized peace, and better civilized peace once a path to low/post scarcity can be understood, is the human growth/prosperity that God wants for humanity.  God, as a being or as the eternal force of truth, does not want unprincipled tribal supremacy to destroy humanity.  God has already been constructed.  The relevance of the construction of God, completely independent/irrespective of the actual "physical" presence/being, must respect the will of God as if he were a being that wants good for humanity and not evil.

The US Republican party is demonic filth

Subhuman shitstain, Mike Pence, by declaring that Americans have "no freedom from religion" is saying that Americans should be punished for not obeying his Satanic death cult.  It invalidates the freedom OF choosing a non-Satanist death cult as an observance of God.

Demonic anti-human, genocidal American/Human baby suppressing, climate terrorist fossil fuel oligarch extortion supporting shitstain, Tom Cotton,  by denying global warming, and vowing the supremacy of fossil fuel profits and climate destruction for our lifetimes, wants to doom humanity while extorting them to their last breath.  The entire Republican congressional delegation blocking renewable energy expansion is them blocking the nearly limitless energy path that saves the planet, and blocking energy that can displace fossil fuels and so make them cheaper.

If you vote for Republicans in 2022 because of high gas prices or outrage over crime/immigration/trannies, then you will have high gas prices and outrage in 2024.  The oligarchs that enslave you will keep funding your enslavement.  There is no economic reason to invest in more fossil fuel development if its uses are rapidly dwindling.  There is only economic incentive to maximize extortion, while whining in order to support an extremist evil oppressive party who will provide subsidies for more oligarch and capitalist extortion.

Excommunicating, ostracisizing, and demonizing the Republican and conservative parties that share their evil, such that they are exterminated from public policy relevance, is needed in order for constructive political/social reform.  Nationalist/Religious hate groups allied with Republicans actively demonize hatred of liberals.  It is the wrong response to be defensive or dismissive of such attacks.  It is also the wrong response to let "Republicans own the construction of God"

Proof of God conclusions and attacks

Good must be defined as social/humanist outcomes, and good is only possible with freedom.  Deceiving the slaves/oppressed into an illusion of freedom is not freedom.  Freedom/abundance of opportunity motivates good/production.  Oppression/scarcity motivates evil and rebellious disorder. Where strength trumps Truth/God for self justification, then all murder/theft/lies/evil is justified merely by winning, including the disorder of harming the current winners. 

God focused on social/humanist sustainability, progress, and happiness is consistent with an eternal god for all.   An individualist/sin based God is a manipulation technique to bind the sheeple from murder and theft, while protecting the rulership (without binding them).  The only necessarily evil sin is wrath.  The other sins are falsely used as slavery production justifications.  Mother Theresa may have been motivated to do good by the vanity and pride of canonization, envying the other saints.  An athlete/business engaging in fair competition, will train/work hard with greed to win all competitions, perhaps to fund their gluttonous ice cream addiction and lustful dating ambitions.  Sloth/envy allows us to choose consuming others work/entertainment while further benefiting them by not competing against them.  Where Church can successfully market religion as an individual battle against sin, they can only attract psychotics who despise their nature and seek absolution by signing up.

An attack (Dostoyevsky + evil) on freedom is that most people have a need to follow and serve.  Following/serving good is a more attractive option than following/serving evil.  Evil justifying the deception of their minions as "natural dependence" is simple evil. For anyone who prefers obedience/service, the freedom of others enhances the value of your service to those needing to buy your loyalty.  Similarly, "meaning of life requires suffering" justification for suffering would be greatly enhanced through the maximum disorder of deconstructing property rights, and 99% income tax rates.  Protecting rulership elites from suffering is inconsistent with "suffering as a principle".

Instead of sustainable humanism, it would be a possible ethical position to democratically destroy civilization in say 2100.  It would satisfy truth and democratic will to inflict anti-sustainable despair on the future birth slaves.  Despaired disordered hellscape would be likely well before 2100, but after most older voters life expectancy.  While there is an ethical basis for choosing this only with honesty, it is still evil, and clearly against God.  Anti-sustainable evil of energy and other scarcity and march to war with Russia and China will be done with lies instead.

A probable truth is that slavery can produce more economic/birth output than freedom.  Total human output increased, but for the benefit of a few.  Calling slavery consistent with God is consistent with all disorderly chaos involved in counter-rebellious insurrection to enslave/eat the oligarchs.  Only principle is consistent with God.  Slavers claiming God to bless their ownership/position/victory because they are special individuals worthy of ruling invites the same unprincipled claim by whoever topples them.  Should God be a fate that punishes you with pregnancy and economic suffering of child obligation for lust?, or should God be a force that promotes society to want, including the sustainable economic empowerment of people, to have children as the greatest expression of individual and humanist wealth?

Constructions include marriage, rulership legitimacy and fiat money.  God exists as a Truth-Humanist-Freedom hierarchy.  Religion constructs God independently of his nature/existence.  Where religion allies with evil in making a construction of God that has loyalties higher than Truth/Humanism/Freedom, those religions' legitimacy must be deconstructed/destroyed.  Where this paper is a messiah/2nd coming of Jesus/Mohamed, an expectation that the 2nd coming would congratulate all the religious on their perfectness, perhaps with the only advice to buy more idolatrish crucifixes and rosaries,  was not reasonable.

If God does not materially exist in any dimension, constructing it still happens.  A construction of Truth-Humanism-Freedom is the rational economic construction that brings abundance and prosperity to earth.  Atheists and Agnostics should participate in the construction rather than throw away their democractic right to influence the construction.  Letting only evil vote is an evil corruption of democracy.  For those who love Jesus, a Truth-Humanist-Freedom-Messiah hierarchy is the only valid possible interpretation of the Messiah's speech, and only path to heavenly eternal paradise is to subjugate your adoration of the Messiah to its appropriate priority.  An earthly future heaven of abundance is an earthly hope to have children, and if reincarnation is an adventure option within heaven's kingdom, then a more pleasant eternity of more abundant options.

Economic rationality is truth.  It is not an imposition of freedom to impose economic rational solutions that benefit the whole of society even if individuals are too stupid or possessed to understand their benefit.  Under veil of ignorance, "thou shall not kill" binding you and everyone else, protects you from everyone else, saving you ultimate cost in that protection while binding a small cost in your freedom to do evil.  Freedom dividends paid from income taxes, binds a cost on those who freely choose/achieve success, provides a net transfer to those who are less successful-- a greater benefit to them than the cost to the successful -- while enhancing the success of the successful as money will flow back up to the working/rich as the poor spend all of their money/wealth.  UI further constrains rulership discretionary power/evil/spending.  It is not an imposition on freedom to impose a construction of true God that leads to prosperity, abundance, freedom and harmony.

Demonism exists independently of God.  It is the nature of evil to use all tools to enhance their evil including distorting God to bind their victims.  Accepting your suffering as fate while searching for meaning in/pleading your suffering to an invisible sky fairy, is the evil behind your suffering controlling you.  It is acceptance of demonism.  Demonizing demons is as important as accepting God to limit/eliminate the prevailing of evil.  If a construction of God can never satisfy those who refuse to consider God, demonism as defined here, exists pervasively without need for any construction.  Opposing demonism, or appreciating that it is unhelpful/unwelcome, is identical to accepting God.


Path for society's freedom and elevation of God

Lobbying Churches to accept God as Truth/Humanist sustainability/Freedom/insert-here hierarchy will divide them into God and demonic agents of rulership evil.  Excommunicating Republicans who corrupt God will disempower corporatist/capitalist oligarchy from oppression's legitimacy.  Judaism can be made inclusive of humanity in quest for promiseland.  Islam can delegitimize their rulership's power and their rulership's alliance/tolerance for US/Zionist empire.

Media needs to respect Truth more and US empire less.  Needs to avoid humanizing and platforming Republicans.  Needs to highlight the economic destruction caused by Ukraine proxy war on Russia.  Needs to highlight pragmatic needs of citizens over the rulership's ambitions and control.  There is a natural media self interest to promote citizens freedom and prosperity through UI, because advertising demand would shoot up as business would need to inform a broadly wealthy consumer base how to give them their money.  Media that needs sponsors to oppress citizens to their rulership masters is vulnerable to sponsors not wanting to be associated with evil.

Misinformation handling is difficult.  Trump lied/lies constantly.  So do all governments.  Well funded political misinformation is programmed to reach/outrage the right bubbles/filters.  Programming people is "a science".  While much misinformation is disorderly, divisive, and purely intended to destroy society, the empire's disinformation is theft and oppression.  Empire/rulership subservient media determining misinformation can be disinformation.  Censorship is an inappropriate means to deal with misinformation, because the censorship can be disinformation.  Accusing misinformation of being misinformation is the best/only free path.  God (truth/humanism/freedom) and the intolerance for demonism can help.

Tech companies, and the vast majority of business and consumers, and all labour all benefit far more from widespread prosperity than from slavery or empire.  Very few non-government/church institutions require desperation to prosper.  Tech companies, specifically, were born in a culture of "don't do evil", yet have become arms of the US empire.  Established tech companies may want to gatekeep innovation, capturing employees who have no other prosperous future than to submit to them, and so oppose UBI on that basis.  At the same time, UBI means massive sales growth and massive leverage opportunities of existing and growable talent pool, whose mothers will always be proud if their child is hired by tech giants.  US Empire's desperation war on China is a massive limitation to global progress and innovation, amplifying the global economic destruction of the proxy war on Russia.  It is critical for everyone who doesn't want poverty, collapse, violence and death to disempower rulerships before they cause collapse as a means to maintain empire.

The Forward Party, led by Andrew Yang (supporter of UBI, but lacking the full passion/understanding that UBI deserves), has the very sensible immediate priority of reducing divisiveness through election reform and unified political primaries.  While having more moderate candidates lowers the fear of fascism, and then lowers the left's need to rally behind the most neo-con warmonger candidate in order to achieve victory over domestic hate and fascism, moderate candidates can still bring problems.  Moderate republicans will still vote for climate destruction and energy scarcity.  Moderate politicians in general are more likely to support the Empire's strength and only listen to weapons manufacturers and capitalist supremacy lobbyists for policy ideas.  The centrism of populist/humanist UBI is not the same as the centrism of Oligarch serving empire strength, and moderate politicians still need a massive war chest to win.  If the Forward party adopted God, it would be very forward of them.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Linked in Q1, 2013 earnings (LNKD)

Linkedin reported earnings last night, and I plan to write an article after each quarter for now on as a diary tracking how an impossibly valued company adjusts to its real valuation, and how the financial industry may attempt to distort and manipulate that valuation.

Core maximum future value remains below current price
The total recruitment market was last measured 2 years ago, at $3B.  Even if that grows to $4B, linkedin is suited to only the higher end job portion of that market.  If it is paid $200 per job, it needs to place 15M jobs per year in order to generate $3B in sales.  A couple of months ago (end of article), I estimated worldwide online job postings at below 8M with many of the postings having fees much lower than $200 including free.

So it is hard to understand how LNKD could ever reach as high as $3B in core sales, and $1B in annual profits, and so a maximum corporate future value of $10B, which is a maximum future share price of below $90.  Considering the risk of failing to reach that maximum, a $45/share or below current price is appropriate.

The lack of takeover or dividend potential
The true value of a share of stock can only be measured by the payments that share is entitled to receive:  Dividends and takeover bids.  If a company is too large, and too highly valued, with no real cashflow stream then it cannot be taken over at a price near its current value.  Similarly if its structure discourages ever paying a dividend, its stock value can only be measured based on significant deterioration in stock price that is necessary before management considers selling or issuing a dividend, and a price that buyers can rationally consider the whole company based on cashflow.

LNKD meets all of these overvaluation criteria, as it has tightly controlled dual class shares.  A related issue is that it uses that concentrated control to issue extremely generous stock compensation to itself (and employees).  Its irresponsible for the financial analyst and media industries to ignore that compensation in its results.  That compensation has a real effect on the valuation of shares for both takeout and dividend purposes as well.  The below $90/share ($86.65 = 10B / 115.4M shares) maximum future value is based on current shares outstanding of 115.4M.  Just 18 months ago, that same $10B maximum total future value translated to over $100/share because the shares outstanding were 98.8M.

Linkedin estimates that it will award its insiders $195M in shares this year, and that number excludes the 512k shares it is giving out for its acquisition of Pulse.  The share issues are the main reason it has never been profitable, and there is no reason for it ever to stop issuing nearly all operating profit to insiders, because it has complete insider control of the company, the support of the financial analyst community, and the support of state of Delaware.  That future stream of insider share giveaways further reduces any maximum future share value estimate.  There is no reason for LNKD's management to ever pay all shareholders through a dividend when it can be applauded by the analyst community for paying itself.

Linkedin forecasts
For the next quarter, Linked in is forecasting year over year sales growth of about 55%, and core (after depreciation and stock compensation) earnings ranging  from a loss -$6M to 0.  For the next 3 quarters, it is also forecasting year over year sales growth of 55%, and core earnings range of $-21M to $4M.  A significant slowdown in growth is occurring in non-US markets.

Declining sales growth
Even if LNKD beats its own estimates considerably and achieves 60% growth, it would be a significant drop from 2012's year over year growth of 81%, and this quarter's 72% yoy growth.  It would also make the most reasonable optimistic estimate for 2014 growth to be 45%, and 2015 growth nearing 30%, even if you make the mistaken assumption of an infinite addressable targetable sales market for Linked in, instead of it approaching its potential penetration cap.

With declining sales growth and no real earnings, even with the mistake of assuming an infinite potential market, valuing the company at over 14 times 2013 sales ($202/share) is not close to reasonable.

Comscore vs. Alexa metrics
Another peculiarity of Linked in results is that it reported a healthy 13% quarter over quarter increase in comscore internet metrics for use and pageviews, but Alexa's more transparent internet monitoring service shows no change in the last 6 months for Linked in's pageviews, time spent on site, and reach.

I can't explain the difference, but someone should be explaining it.

The future of employment and robotics
Relevant to linked in's value 10 years from now, and so its real value today, is how robotics might transform employment.  General purpose personal robots are closer than we think, and it not only ends many types of employment, it ends the need for most types of factories.  The main reason personal robots will arrive soon is that they are cost effective if they can be transformed into self-driving electric cars as one of many potential transformations, and widespread adoption of standardized components makes programming and sharing the programming of the robots cost effective and easier, much like computer and phone apps are easier and cheaper because there is a large market available to share them.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Institutions that invest in stock market - extreme liability

Institutions that invest client and members funds in the stock market are very likely investing in pyramid schemes and thus very likely to be defrauding those clients/members by investing in instruments that are known to have no intrinsic value.  The intrinsic/inherent value of a share of stock is the future value of dividends and the future company buyout price.

Most large public companies trade at a value far higher than a reasonable estimate of their stock's inherent value to minority shareholders.  Any institutional fund or analyst that recommends or invests client funds at inflated market prices has a conflict of interest of participating in a pyramid scheme even if they have a genuine speculative belief that for the next few months collective market exhuberance/hysteria/mispricing will maintains a stock's price.

A valuable company with a worthless stock
A company that cannot be taken over either because it is too big, or because it is controlled by insiders who can block any takeover attempt, necessarily has a stock that is relatively worthless (to outside minority shareholders) compared to the value of the company.  For such a stock to have value as a piece of paper, it must be paid dividends or have the reasonable prospect of high future dividends. (Proof of this statement)  For a stock to be worth what it was bought for the company must either be bought out at a higher price or the sum of all dividends to be paid must be high enough.

A reasonable hoped minimum stock return of 7.2%
The concept of a reasonable hoped return is relevant as a threshold for establishing liability when influencing other people's money.  A 7.2% return per year on a company that cannot be bought out, and doesn't pay a dividend, means an expectation that its price will double in 10 years, or quadruple in 20 years.  After those 10 or 20 years, there should be an expectation of a continued healthy company, and an expectation of say a 3.6% dividend yield instituted in that future, and expected dividend growth that accompanies the company's continued health and prosperity.

The key part in the above analysis is the continued healthy future prospects.  If you believe the company's health will be deteriorated in 20 or 50 years, then its stock must pay significant dividends prior to its deterioration in order to compensate for its purchase price.  While I've said that all companies pay too little in dividends today, the big dividing line between reasonable disagreement on dividend policy is the division between sustainably hopefully permanent companies and those destined to eventual deterioration.  It is excusable to tolerate low dividend payout ratios from companies with sustainable growth, because there is a theoretical possibility of proper shareholder compensation in the future.

My previous article delves into the math behind this in more detail

The problem with social media companies
The core problem with investing in social media stocks is that the companies have no unique technology.  Its unlikely that the generation 10 or 20 years from now will want to use the same social networks as their parents, teachers and grandparents.  Its hard to maintain a sustainable value of 10s of billions, when competition can be created easily/cheaply, and necessarily provide better value to members by monetizing them less.

The core misunderstanding of social media company valuation is that their member/subscribers are equivalent to 1990s cable company subscribers with the assumption that they can be infinitely milked as a captive audience.  Social media members are in fact more sensitive to excessive monetization efforts, and likely to move to a new platform that buys growth.

The problem with high sales growth and no profit
Any company should be able to increase sales by $100M by increasing sales expenses by the same amount. Marketing rebates, bribes or "hookers and blow" can create the sales increase.  Financial reporting and auditing is not designed to inform investors whether the spending is legitimate or not, but even if legitimate, it is never an effective marketing program if its costs match the increased sales revenues.  There's no reason for investors to be impressed by unprofitable high sales growth, because it never includes evidence of sustainability.

Facebook (FB)
The majority of Facebook's shares are owned by its main founder.  Because facebook has a dual class share system, its founder can compensate himself by awarding and selling non voting shares without the possibility of diluting his ownership.  For that reason, and because of current dividend tax treatment rules, there is no possibility that FB will ever declare a dividend until the founder retires.  Because FB is currently worth $60B it is too large to be bought out.  It is also impossible for it to be bought out because the owner/founder doesn't want it to be.  The owner enjoys the surplus privilege to his shares of being able to control the FB empire.  Only significant deterioration in the company could change the outlook on a takeover.

So, even if FB as a company can be optimistically valued at $60B or even $100B, hoping that it has sustainable longevity, its shares cannot be worth more than $10B because minority shareholders rely on deterioration in the company to ever see compensation on those shares.

Linkedin (LNKD)
Linkedin shares FB's dual class share structure.  That means that its difficult for outsiders to buy out the company, and insiders that control the company strongly prefer issuing themselves additional shares over the prospect of ever paying out a dividend.  The other issue that makes a takeover impossible is that LNKD shares are grossly overvalued, and not something that informed investors using their own money would buy hoping to replicate current management's performance.  Its more sensible to launch a new job recruitment platform instead.

Linkedin's main problem as a company is that it pays its management and employees too well, has no real profitability this past year, forecasts no growth in the next quarter, and forecasts no real profitability for all of 2013 either.  The addressable market for its core recruitment services is saturating, as it has approximately the same recruitment revenue as Monster worldwide, and it has spent so much to gain that revenue.  I don't believe that users will ever value the social aspects of Linkedin, and may be turned off by constant sales communications.  For all of its sales growth, it has stagnated in page views even though it is buying high profile blog content, and investing heavily in redesigns.

With a current value over $16B, and the criteria outlined before, we could ask if it is reasonable that LNKD could be worth $32B in 10 years.  However, because LNKD pays its management and employess with a large amount of stock compensation, its shares oustanding grow about 5% per year.  We should be evaluating, as a criteria to justify a $16B valuation today, whether LNKD will be worth $50B+ in 10 years, if we take into account expected future issued shares.  I don't think it is possible or reasonable to expect LNKD to make more than $1B or so in annual profit in 10 or 20 years, and so would not understand a company future value of beyond $10B (and so max $5B in today's value).

There is substantial competitive risk to the company, because while it does the heavy lifting to penetrate international markets, it is simple to duplicate the useful aspects of the platform, and offer it with a cheaper self-serve model for recruitment.  It would seem impossible for LNKD to maintain a sustainable $10B+ value as a company, if easily formed competition is content with sustainable valuation under $1B.

Bigger issues than the value of LNKD as a company, is the value to external shareholders.  Will LNKD ever repay shareholders $50B before it deteriorates?  Will it ever even repay $16B or $5B?

Liability of ratings firms
When analysts announce a target value of $175/share ($19B) for LNKD, I have to wonder about their crack addiction based on Linkedin's own projections of sales and profitability growth.  It becomes blatantly irresponsible when you factor in the company's limited addressable market, dual class share structure, and its impossibility of being bought out or offering dividends, as well as its nearly assured eventual deterioration.

If it is indeed irresponsible for analysts to confirm a stock's current high valuation, or for institutions to invest client/member money in such stocks, then there is liability for investor losses both for short sellers that might suffer from a short term price hike, and buyers/members who suffer eventual losses from long term deterioration of that stock price.

The defense that investors have a short term horizon, and hope to flip out of the stock prior to any collapse, is invalid.  If it is irresponsible to view the piece of paper that is a stock as having any real long term value (possibility of receiving sufficient compensation through buyouts or dividends), then it is irresponsible to participate in the short term hype and greed manipulation surrounding that stock.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Stock vs Cash Dividend - The 3rd choice

Variable Dividends (or Fixed Yield Dividends) are a cash dividend that is equivalent choice to a fixed fractional stock dividend.  A fixed fractional stock dividend of 1/10th or 1/40th of a share has a variable cash dividend equivalent of 1/11th or 1/41th of the stock's market value.  The cash value of the dividend is variable with the stock price, which makes the dividend yield fixed.  So even if corporations don't pay as high a dividend as shareholders deserve, they can pay more when stock price is doing well, and less when it is doing poorly.  So can afford a higher target payout ratio, and smooth out stock price fluctuations by providing investors with a mechanism to hold low and sell high.

While all investors should be disappointed with management's primacy of self agendas over their contractual mandates, I recognize that there are far greater evils in this world.  Living with the reality of corruption of mandates to shareholder value,  and deceptions to investors regarding shareholder rights, the continued health and capitalization of the corporation does benefit other direct stakeholders (management, employees, customers).  Yet a higher target dividend payout is possible through variable dividends without compromising the health of the company.

A 3rd choice is possible to boost target payout rates much higher.  Issuing a loan option instead of or in addition to the cash dividend option provides a way for the company to issue high dividends without reducing corporate assets at all.  Issuing a loan, retains the same earnings power for the company.  The interest benefit is a shareholder benefit if the loan is issued as a dividend.

A queued soft loan is a superior alternative in every way to a bond loan for both investors and the honest fair-minded corporation.  Soft loans have a certain priority to payment that can not be worsened for investors, and so corporations can benefit from lower financing costs associated with providing a better valued security.

To boost payout the highest, a cash dividend choice need not be offered.  If the company is debt free, then a QSL vs stock dividend choice results in a virtually immediate cash payment to some of the loan dividend choosers.  the company can pay its earnings towards the new QSLs immediately.

To price the QSL dividend choice benefit, the principal amount is equal the cash dividend equivalent to the fixed fractional stock dividend (1/11th stock price if fractional stock dividend is 1/10th of a share).  The interest rate could be bid on, but that requires logistical support.  In healthy public companies, because QSLs guarantee no dilution of payment priority to the loan holder, every loan has an estimated organic (from operations) payment date.  Organic expected payment date can be used to set the Dividend replacing QSL interest rate to match the government bond rates of similar duration, adding a premium of, say, 20 basis points per expected year of repayment.

A high dividend choice not only allows a naturally efficient mechanism to separate shareholders into those that want to determine purpose of the enterprise vs. those that simply want financial benefit from the enterprise, but it also helps expedite purpose-aspirational shareholders to takeover the company without paying market premiums for it, but in a fair way to all other shareholders.  By bidding on dividend increase projects through QSLs, purpose aspirational shareholders encourage the corporation to boost dividend payout even more, and provide the benefit aspirational dividend choosers with cash payments.

A typical target dividend payout ratio for mature healthy public corporations (that pay dividends) is typically 50% of earnings.  It is 75%+ for Canadian Income Trusts.  When Income Trusts have poor performance periods where there payout reaches 100% of income, their market capitalization tends to drop below their book value, and yields go higher than P/Es.  The market is scared of high payout ratios, mostly because of fear that fixed dividends will be reduced rather than the fear that bankruptcy becomes imminent.  A variable dividend can allow the income trust to pay according to target earnings, and can payout 90%-100% of those earnings targets, because when it falls behind, it will naturally drop in stock price, and pay out less.  Their dividends become self adjusting.

Because of the obvious appeal of high dividend corporations, and the announced intentions of industrial icons (Bell Canada) to convert to Income Trust structure, the Canadian Government has effectively banned income trusts starting in 2011.  Variable dividends will allow converted Income trusts and  those corporations that wanted to be income trusts to boost payouts within management agendas.



Sunday, August 8, 2010

The Modigliani–Miller theorem is false

The Modigliani-Miller_theorem states that dividend policy doesn't matter.  The basis for that is that a $50/share company that pays a $1 dividend, might become worth $49, but the investor got $1, so the investor still has $50 total worth of economic value.

If that same $50/share company gives an absurdly high non-cash dividend of 1 share to every shareholder, then the share value drops to $25/share, but shareholders have twice the shares, so still have $50 of value.  The offer is a complete waste of time to all involved because the outcome is identical to offering no dividend at all.

The same offer as the last, but this time the shareholder is offered the choice between a $25 cash dividend or 1 bonus share.  If 80% of investors choose the cash option, then the company will have paid $20 per share in dividends.  Its new capitalization per share is still (300/12) $25, and both those who chose to accept cash or shares have $50 of value.  However, the choice itself is of extremely high value to shareholders, and at least of obvious greater value than no choice at all.

So dividend policy obviously does matter.  Modigliani–Miller theory is management serving.  It is used to preserve their right to run the company into the ground instead of ever paying the investor back.  Their mandate to serve shareholders is a minimum satisficing one, instead of a passionate one.  A foundation of natural finance is that the only ones who should want ultimate purpose-holding (right to unlimited profits) authority is executive management, because their agenda subjugates any mandates they pretend to have.

The specific real world flaw of Modigliani–Miller theory is that all investors necessarily want to continue investing, and if given cash and a decision would reinvest in the same company at current market prices.

Note that any firm (worth $50) that offered shareholders the more reasonable (from management's greedy perspective) regular option of a dividend of 1 share per 10 shares owned, or $4.55 per share, roughly a 9% (1 - 10/11)  yield, would even if maintaining theoretical shareholder value,  actually significantly improve shareholder value by making share holding more attractive (only real source of share price increases) to buyers.  The share price increase would be even more beneficial for those that take share dividend over cash dividend.

Proof that Dividends matter
The choice of a stock or cash dividend, under Canadian tax law, offers in the stock option, 0 tax, liquidity and transaction cost issues.  If everyone chooses the stock dividend, there is no impact on the market value which management cares about, but is irrelevant to investors.  Even though there are tax cost from accepting cash dividend, there is also a corresponding future tax bonus from the reduction in market cap.  The first proof that Dividends matter is that most rational people would choose the cash dividend despite the theoretical inferiority of receiving it.  Public companies sometimes approximate this choice with DRIPS which are inferior to the choice because they may (do everywhere I know of) incur non-deferred tax costs for those that choose the option closest to a stock dividend.  50%-85% (believe higher end) of investors choose not to reinvest.  This proves a market appetite for dividends.

In the case of banks, future earnings expectations are based principally on book value, as it makes money from its money.  When it issues dividends, it reduces both its book and market value by the dividend amount, and so affects its future earnings projections.  Since most healthy banks trade above book value, the second proof that Dividends matter, apparently in favour of not paying them, is that market price as a function of book value and earnings optimism, drops by more than the cash dividend payment amount.  Yet this again proves a market appetite for dividends.

If the dividend choice (cash or stock) is significantly above earnings, for example both of the above ($50) examples, then book value and market value will both converge to each other, and converge to 0 if the dividend is continuous. For a $50 stock, and a 1 share for share dividend choice, the capitalization per share in each successive period halves [25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125...], excluding  continued earnings contributions.  When companies trade below book value, then counter-intuitively, paying a high dividend increases shareholder value even if it decreases corporate survivability.  Trading below book value, is the market telling the corporation it is incompetent in managing its assets, and telling it, it should return investor capital.  The third proof that dividends matter is that since corporate capitalization goes to zero as a result of high dividend choice, Those who choose the dividend realize full theoretical capitalization payments in cash, while those who choose shares risk losing the full capitalization if bankruptcy results.  Whenever management chooses not to pay dividends it asserts its privilege to bankrupt the company without ever returning capital to shareholders.  Proof that traditional corporate structures are corrupt is that management asserts its privilege to power, salaries and longevity of the company over its mandate to maximize shareholder value.  Minority shareholders do not hold the democratic power to direct purpose of the corporation, and so are merely passive beneficiaries who are deceived by illusions of possible future dividends.

Note that the above offer of 1 share or equivalent cash dividend per share does not necessarily lead to a decrease in capitalization, much less bankruptcy!  A $50/share company with $5 in earnings (10%) maintains its capitalization if only 20% of investors choose the cash dividend.  The shareholder that chooses dividends each period will have collected (1023/1024) $49.95 over 10 periods, while his percentage of ownership will have decreased by 1/1024th.  Excluding the timing of tax payments, can be a net 0 tax benefit as well: capital losses offset dividend gains.

Very high dividend choices provide a natural, mathematical achievement of ideal perfect competition models for capital transfers, which imperfect markets corrupted by limited demand, supply, and information, and further corrupted by power, privilege and policy cannot achieve.