15 ms·

This sounds so obviously stupid I wonder why nobody stopped and said "You know, we might just make all these companies leave with stuff as ridiculous as this."

by akuji1993 9y ago

lev99 9y ago
In many socialist points of view companies do not provide value, they are viewed as rent seekers. Value = {Raw Resources} + {Labor} + {Tools used by labor}. Companies own the tools, and take a margin of value. If labor owned the tools they could remove that margin. This sounds like the world view used to design that policy.
- namlem 9y ago
  Yeah, that's Marx's Labor Theory of Value. The problem is that it doesn't account for the value of risk. It's easy to look at companies making money and assume they're extracting value if you ignore all the failed attempts that outnumber the successes 5 to 1. Now, rent-seeking is still a problem and corporations are often guilty of it, but the idea that all profit is rent is ridiculous. Some of it is compensation for risk.
saiya-jin 9y ago
That's not a mindset any true socialist/communist politician operate with. Good of economy, long term economical prosperity whatnot. More like how to tax rich till they leave, blame them for all the failures of politicians and central planning inefficiencies and so on.
fetbaffe 9y ago
Socialism always is. That generation of social democrats was more of socialists than democrats and that was where it all went wrong, making their own party ideology to state ideology. Taking over private property in that way is nothing more than theft and a breach of fundamental principals in Swedish society and especially against the consensus agenda (see Saltsjöbadsavtalet). Social democrats kicked out the communist from the party in 1917 and by that becoming a democratic party and in 1921 heading their first government, but by this communism where basically back in fashion again.
vec 9y ago
A someone who is broadly sympathetic to the idea of labor ownership of the means of production, could I trouble you to explain what's so obvious about the stupidity of this plan? Taxes on corporate profits are generally seen as reasonable in the abstract, and they're common all over the world. I could see setting an unusually high tax rate being problematic, but that doesn't appear to be what happened. And it doesn't appear that the state was seizing anything. They were buying up shares off the public market. This doesn't seem more objectionable than any other hostile takeover. If a business owner wants to maintain control of their company then it's trivially easy for them to do so. All they have to do is not explicitly sell it, which is what an IPO is after all. And I'm having trouble seeing where the creeping socialism concerns come in. The end goal, according to the wikipedia page, was that the companies would be owned and operated by their own labor unions, which isn't an uncommon or inherently controversial corporate governance model. The state appears to have merely been facilitating the transfer. With perfect hindsight we can of course see that it didn't work out, but I doubt I would have been able to predict that in advance with any confidence. Would this have been fine if the state used a different taxing model? Would it have been okay if the labor unions managed to do it of their own initiative? Is it that broadening ownership of a corporation is inherently objectionable for some reason? What am I missing?
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Labor running the company? This fails more often than it succeeds. Bread and circuses are the result, then bankruptcy. Indeed obvious without the use of hindsight.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    > Bread and circuses are the result I'm not interested in debating the merits or lack thereof of socialism as a system of government, but the "bread and circuses" thing applied to Roman citizens. Unless I was misinformed, the overlap between the people in the Roman empire who were citizens and the people in the Roman empire who were the labour force was very, very small.
    - 9y ago
WorldMaker 9y ago
It doesn't sound that obviously stupid to me. It's the stock purchase plan part of a 401k, where instead of the employee/employer-match coming before taxes, it comes from taxes. Either way it's tax incented, the difference is partly semantics. Giving those shares to trade unions instead of individuals makes it more like the classic pension system than the 401k, but the concepts are similar enough that it's quite possible to see the Swedish approach here as almost a direct forerunner to the 401k.

This sounds so obviously stupid I wonder why nobody stopped and said "You know, we might just make all these companies leave with stuff as ridiculous as this."

lev99 9y ago

In many socialist points of view companies do not provide value, they are viewed as rent seekers. Value = {Raw Resources} + {Labor} + {Tools used by labor}. Companies own the tools, and take a margin of value. If labor owned the tools they could remove that margin. This sounds like the world view used to design that policy.

namlem 9y ago
Yeah, that's Marx's Labor Theory of Value. The problem is that it doesn't account for the value of risk. It's easy to look at companies making money and assume they're extracting value if you ignore all the failed attempts that outnumber the successes 5 to 1. Now, rent-seeking is still a problem and corporations are often guilty of it, but the idea that all profit is rent is ridiculous. Some of it is compensation for risk.

saiya-jin 9y ago

That's not a mindset any true socialist/communist politician operate with. Good of economy, long term economical prosperity whatnot. More like how to tax rich till they leave, blame them for all the failures of politicians and central planning inefficiencies and so on.

fetbaffe 9y ago

Socialism always is. That generation of social democrats was more of socialists than democrats and that was where it all went wrong, making their own party ideology to state ideology. Taking over private property in that way is nothing more than theft and a breach of fundamental principals in Swedish society and especially against the consensus agenda (see Saltsjöbadsavtalet). Social democrats kicked out the communist from the party in 1917 and by that becoming a democratic party and in 1921 heading their first government, but by this communism where basically back in fashion again.

vec 9y ago

A someone who is broadly sympathetic to the idea of labor ownership of the means of production, could I trouble you to explain what's so obvious about the stupidity of this plan? Taxes on corporate profits are generally seen as reasonable in the abstract, and they're common all over the world. I could see setting an unusually high tax rate being problematic, but that doesn't appear to be what happened. And it doesn't appear that the state was seizing anything. They were buying up shares off the public market. This doesn't seem more objectionable than any other hostile takeover. If a business owner wants to maintain control of their company then it's trivially easy for them to do so. All they have to do is not explicitly sell it, which is what an IPO is after all. And I'm having trouble seeing where the creeping socialism concerns come in. The end goal, according to the wikipedia page, was that the companies would be owned and operated by their own labor unions, which isn't an uncommon or inherently controversial corporate governance model. The state appears to have merely been facilitating the transfer. With perfect hindsight we can of course see that it didn't work out, but I doubt I would have been able to predict that in advance with any confidence. Would this have been fine if the state used a different taxing model? Would it have been okay if the labor unions managed to do it of their own initiative? Is it that broadening ownership of a corporation is inherently objectionable for some reason? What am I missing?

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Labor running the company? This fails more often than it succeeds. Bread and circuses are the result, then bankruptcy. Indeed obvious without the use of hindsight.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  > Bread and circuses are the result I'm not interested in debating the merits or lack thereof of socialism as a system of government, but the "bread and circuses" thing applied to Roman citizens. Unless I was misinformed, the overlap between the people in the Roman empire who were citizens and the people in the Roman empire who were the labour force was very, very small.
  - 9y ago

WorldMaker 9y ago

It doesn't sound that obviously stupid to me. It's the stock purchase plan part of a 401k, where instead of the employee/employer-match coming before taxes, it comes from taxes. Either way it's tax incented, the difference is partly semantics. Giving those shares to trade unions instead of individuals makes it more like the classic pension system than the 401k, but the concepts are similar enough that it's quite possible to see the Swedish approach here as almost a direct forerunner to the 401k.