8 ms·

This trend bothers me. Employees are not shareholders, or if they are, they ought to do this in their capacity as shareholders. If they want to govern the com

by mises 8y ago

This trend bothers me. Employees are not shareholders, or if they are, they ought to do this in their capacity as shareholders. If they want to govern the company, they ought to buy in or move to management. Or, they can always move companies. This is always an option. Also, socialism is an awful idea. I can't believe people actually support it. I have a massive moral objection to its core tenets: what right have you to the fruits of my labor?

kyllo 8y ago
Your employer is able to bargain with you as one massive, collective organization with all its resources to bear. Why should you have to negotiate with them as a one atomic individual person, when you and your coworkers can instead get together and negotiate from a much stronger position?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  The worst is that with the secrecy about compensation you don’t have enough information to negotiate effectively whereas the employer has full information.
- appleiigs 8y ago
  When you join the union, you lose the atomic individuality. I've been a union member and a manager outside of a union. When I was in the union, they tried to prevent me from getting paid more - they wanted me to fall in line with the collective agreement which specified my hourly rate. If you don't go with mob, they call you a scab. Not pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
- mises 8y ago
  There's a difference between unionization and trying to get board representation. Also, in many states, you're stuck dealing with a union in many jobs. You now have to negotiate with the union as one atomic person... The thing I personally hate about unions is their political advocacy. The idea that a worker is stuck supporting a politician he might not agree with is one that makes me very uncomfortable. Also, I think appleiigs summarized it better than I did, with the lack of individuality.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I can already negotiate better than my coworkers. Why should I tie my compensation to theirs?
  - kyllo 8y ago
    Because if you and your co-workers all negotiate together, you have more bargaining power and can extract much greater concessions.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      But it also means that the people of lower ability whether technical or negotiating get more but the people with more ability get less. Unions really fight against performance based differences... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/denver-teacher-strike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/denver-teacher-strike.... https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/union-performance-pay_b_6694350.html https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/union-perfo... As it turns out, union contracts don't just set minimum prices that employees can be paid; they also tend to set pay ceilings that employers cannot exceed without the union's permission--and that permission is rarely forthcoming. Paying the most talented, hardest-working employees more than the average Joe who barely works to rule is not allowed, you see.
z_ 8y ago
Who is doing the fruit labor in this example?
- mises 8y ago
  Sorry, overall my above comment had two sub-points: First, the point that employees are not always shareholders. They get payed to do a job at a wage accepted by both the company and employee. Second, the idea of socialism over all. As Marx described it, it's merely a transitional phase: the means of production is taken from capitalists and given to the government to basically hold in custody until it can be passed to the people. Don't believe me that this push is happening? Elizabeth Warren wants workers placed on company boards. The fruits are those produced by someone who works, be it for a company or starting his own. I go out and earn money, and socialism says I must give that money away, not to the government to uphold the social contract. Rather, it says I must give it to anyone who does not have a constantly-changing set of "basic needs", simply by virtue of their existence. It's not encouragement to give to charity (which I already do, as I can), but rather coercion by the government.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I hate this straight jump to warnings of socialism whenever somebody questions the current system. There is much more nuance. In Germany workers get a seat on the board of directors and from what I know these companies still make the owners rich and the country is quite different from Venezuela.
    - mises 8y ago
      The headline of the article is that Silicon Valley has a "budding socialist movement". Even if it's not a full-scale war, it's still a move toward it (and quickly). Don't believe me? Take a look at this recent article: https://qz.com/1580091/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-how-far-left-the-democrats-are-going/ https://qz.com/1580091/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-how-far-left... Scroll down to the graphic, and look at the massive recent leftward lurch by the Democratic party.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Employees share responsibility for the success of a company so they should also have stake in the company. This whole idea that a company exists exclusively for the owners doesn’t make sense to me. There is a bigger picture to make a society work for all citizens. Warning about “ socialism “ also doesn’t make sense. We don’t have to choose between the way the US is at the moment and the Soviet Union or Venezuela. There is a lot of room between these extremes.
- mdorazio 8y ago
  There are plenty of employee-owned companies to join if that's your opinion. Trying to shoehorn that ownership into companies that often got to where they are by not being employee-owned seems really entitled.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    There was a time when nobility was complaining about peasants who wanted to have a say in how the country is run.
    - mdorazio 8y ago
      There's a little bit of a difference between the social structure of governance in a place you have to live and an opt-in corporate structure for people who can choose where they want to work.
- philwelch 8y ago
  This is why every tech company worth its salt has some sort of RSU or stock option compensation.
- tenpies 8y ago
  > Employees share responsibility for the success of a company so they should also have stake in the company. Exactly, so what is stopping them from using their salary to buy shares? If you believe you are doing such a good job that the company will sustain or do better, it would almost be silly not to. You have domain expertise by virtue of working there. You may even have a solid insider feel for the pulse of the organization.
shraremywin2 8y ago
Socialism is when the government owns production. capitalist are allowed to aggregate in the form of corporations why shouldn't workers be allowed to aggregate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TomMarius 8y ago
  They are able to incorporate just as well.
  - whytaka 8y ago
    Unionzation is just another way to do exactly that.
  - shraremywin2 8y ago
    I'm sure large corps would make that a clause in your employment contract against that.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      They can't. In some places you can even compete.
scarmig 8y ago
> what right have you to the fruits of my labor? Socialists ask the same thing of capitalists. There's no reason to elevate one particular (and historically rare) version of property rights over all others. And there's no particular reason economic organizations should or must be authoritarian dictatorships ruled by "shareholders" instead of workplace democracies.
- option 8y ago
  “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.” - M. Thatcher
  - orblivion 8y ago
    She's referring to the distribution and central planning aspects of socialism, which are secondary consequences of the philosophy. The discussion here is more relevant to the core tenet: worker ownership of the means of production.
    - jdhopeunique 8y ago
      If only there was something analogous to the inflationary monetary system except for equity instead. Shareholders equity in companies could be diluted just like workers' wages are diluted by inflation.
      - orblivion 8y ago
        Interesting thought. Well, workers can buy equity in some company if they want. And shareholders' dividends get diluted.
      - mises 8y ago
        Ever heard of dilution? This does happen at times. It was banned over a hundred years ago, if I recall correctly, because people got clever and abused it.
      - mises 8y ago
dgzl 8y ago
> what right have you to the fruits of my labor? Edit: Nobody. If you allow someone to have rights to another person's product or service (I'm thinking healthcare), then you're saying you have a right to the people who produce the product or service, which is slavery. The government can't guarantee your "right" if there's no people to produce it, unless the government forces it (slavery), or just throws random workers into the position (low quality).
- mises 8y ago
  > If you allow someone to have rights to another person's product or service Who said this should ever be the case? You're assuming I support a right to healthcare. I don't support that, nor do I support most positive rights. Especially if they're not constitutional and are federally implemented. The obvious solution to all the problems you mentioned is that nobody has a right to anyone else's product or service, which goes back to my original point: what right have you to the fruits of my labor?
  - dgzl 8y ago
    I was agreeing with you, maybe I didn't make that clear.
  - lixtra 8y ago
    > what right have you to the fruits of my labor? You mentioned the constitution so you agree that some effort has to be made to enforce it. This effort has to be paid for by tax on your labor. Once you agree on that you only haggle if it is more tax efficient to put someone in jail for stealing a pizza or handing out free pizza. You’re free to take part in this democratic process.
    - mises 8y ago
      The constitution has been enforced via tax, yes, but I would argue that income tax is (or was and ought to be) unconstitutional (and wrong) and amendment XVI was an overt power grab. Sales tax, excise tax, sin tax, road toll, pick some other way. The goal is not tax efficiency but upholding the most basic freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and performing the very few duties specifically outlined in the Constitution. Notice how there is, for instance, no "right to healthcare" in it. Point me to the clause in the Constitution where it says anyone has a right to healthcare or that the federal government is allowed to dispense it.
logfromblammo 8y ago
Conversely, companies that oppose employee unions should hire and employ only shareholders, with a number of shares commensurate with the importance of their work roles. That door swings both ways. Unions are not an exclusively socialist construct. I support unions as an anarchist, because I recognize that it is both useful for corporations with concentrated capital to exist and necessary to counterbalance their power with opposing institutions to keep their perverse incentives from directing their behavior unchecked. If all social institutions are set up such that they check and balance one another, no single one of them can safely dominate. Each has a time to be supported, and a time to be undermined. For now, government institutions and religious institutions have refused to counter commercial/mercantile institutions, so the lowest-energy path to doing so is reviving the unions. Growing a neo-socialist voting bloc now is a longer play, but that one will be beneficial between 6 and 12 years from now, and probably won't become threatening for 20 years. One can never know in advance; democracy is messy. Socialism is an awful idea in isolation. It's a great idea if your goal is to temporarily undermine those whose power is based on accumulations of wealth and pre-existing social contacts. If you feel that those in power are keeping you from breaking into their ranks, you can promote socialism to clear them out, and then move into their vacated places of power to quash the socialism before it gets out of hand. As I am not one of the elite, and do not currently have any plausible way to become one, I fully support a socialist political movement. For now. My personal morality does not compete well against those whose ethics revolve around "might makes right", "them that has the gold, makes the rules", and "F U, I got mine". So I have a newer rule: to suppress my other ethical rules in all situations where those who do not share them are exploiting my respect for them, and any information asymmetries, in order to influence my behavior to my own detriment. I have no right to the fruits of your labor, but rights are a political construct. They have to be protected by a chain of support, like chess pieces. And right now, someone has sacrificed all of the pawns. The right to keep one's own property weakens in the face of a growing class of people who are somehow completely unable to accumulate significant wealth, even after a lifetime of toil and diligence. Middle class purchasing power has been stagnant since the 70s. That's more than enough time for all those getting screwed by the system to forget why they ever believed in it, and to raise children who never believed in it, who then decide to replace it with literally anything else. The seeds for the democratic socialist resurgence of 2019 were planted in the 1980s and 1990s. Sow sighs; reap gales. I can live with socialism for a few political cycles, if it can clear out some cruft at the top. It's dangerous, and difficult to know when to hit the brakes, but I feel ill used by the current system, and I'm not going to go down with it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by mises 8y ago

kyllo 8y ago

Your employer is able to bargain with you as one massive, collective organization with all its resources to bear. Why should you have to negotiate with them as a one atomic individual person, when you and your coworkers can instead get together and negotiate from a much stronger position?

maxxxxx 8y ago
The worst is that with the secrecy about compensation you don’t have enough information to negotiate effectively whereas the employer has full information.
appleiigs 8y ago
When you join the union, you lose the atomic individuality. I've been a union member and a manager outside of a union. When I was in the union, they tried to prevent me from getting paid more - they wanted me to fall in line with the collective agreement which specified my hourly rate. If you don't go with mob, they call you a scab. Not pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
mises 8y ago
There's a difference between unionization and trying to get board representation. Also, in many states, you're stuck dealing with a union in many jobs. You now have to negotiate with the union as one atomic person... The thing I personally hate about unions is their political advocacy. The idea that a worker is stuck supporting a politician he might not agree with is one that makes me very uncomfortable. Also, I think appleiigs summarized it better than I did, with the lack of individuality.
scarface74 8y ago
I can already negotiate better than my coworkers. Why should I tie my compensation to theirs?
- kyllo 8y ago
  Because if you and your co-workers all negotiate together, you have more bargaining power and can extract much greater concessions.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    But it also means that the people of lower ability whether technical or negotiating get more but the people with more ability get less. Unions really fight against performance based differences... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/denver-teacher-strike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/denver-teacher-strike.... https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/union-performance-pay_b_6694350.html https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michel-kellygagnon/union-perfo... As it turns out, union contracts don't just set minimum prices that employees can be paid; they also tend to set pay ceilings that employers cannot exceed without the union's permission--and that permission is rarely forthcoming. Paying the most talented, hardest-working employees more than the average Joe who barely works to rule is not allowed, you see.

z_ 8y ago

Who is doing the fruit labor in this example?

mises 8y ago
Sorry, overall my above comment had two sub-points: First, the point that employees are not always shareholders. They get payed to do a job at a wage accepted by both the company and employee. Second, the idea of socialism over all. As Marx described it, it's merely a transitional phase: the means of production is taken from capitalists and given to the government to basically hold in custody until it can be passed to the people. Don't believe me that this push is happening? Elizabeth Warren wants workers placed on company boards. The fruits are those produced by someone who works, be it for a company or starting his own. I go out and earn money, and socialism says I must give that money away, not to the government to uphold the social contract. Rather, it says I must give it to anyone who does not have a constantly-changing set of "basic needs", simply by virtue of their existence. It's not encouragement to give to charity (which I already do, as I can), but rather coercion by the government.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I hate this straight jump to warnings of socialism whenever somebody questions the current system. There is much more nuance. In Germany workers get a seat on the board of directors and from what I know these companies still make the owners rich and the country is quite different from Venezuela.
  - mises 8y ago
    The headline of the article is that Silicon Valley has a "budding socialist movement". Even if it's not a full-scale war, it's still a move toward it (and quickly). Don't believe me? Take a look at this recent article: https://qz.com/1580091/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-how-far-left-the-democrats-are-going/ https://qz.com/1580091/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-how-far-left... Scroll down to the graphic, and look at the massive recent leftward lurch by the Democratic party.

maxxxxx 8y ago

Employees share responsibility for the success of a company so they should also have stake in the company. This whole idea that a company exists exclusively for the owners doesn’t make sense to me. There is a bigger picture to make a society work for all citizens. Warning about “ socialism “ also doesn’t make sense. We don’t have to choose between the way the US is at the moment and the Soviet Union or Venezuela. There is a lot of room between these extremes.

mdorazio 8y ago
There are plenty of employee-owned companies to join if that's your opinion. Trying to shoehorn that ownership into companies that often got to where they are by not being employee-owned seems really entitled.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  There was a time when nobility was complaining about peasants who wanted to have a say in how the country is run.
  - mdorazio 8y ago
    There's a little bit of a difference between the social structure of governance in a place you have to live and an opt-in corporate structure for people who can choose where they want to work.
philwelch 8y ago
This is why every tech company worth its salt has some sort of RSU or stock option compensation.
tenpies 8y ago
> Employees share responsibility for the success of a company so they should also have stake in the company. Exactly, so what is stopping them from using their salary to buy shares? If you believe you are doing such a good job that the company will sustain or do better, it would almost be silly not to. You have domain expertise by virtue of working there. You may even have a solid insider feel for the pulse of the organization.

shraremywin2 8y ago

Socialism is when the government owns production. capitalist are allowed to aggregate in the form of corporations why shouldn't workers be allowed to aggregate.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TomMarius 8y ago
They are able to incorporate just as well.
- whytaka 8y ago
  Unionzation is just another way to do exactly that.
- shraremywin2 8y ago
  I'm sure large corps would make that a clause in your employment contract against that.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    They can't. In some places you can even compete.

scarmig 8y ago

> what right have you to the fruits of my labor? Socialists ask the same thing of capitalists. There's no reason to elevate one particular (and historically rare) version of property rights over all others. And there's no particular reason economic organizations should or must be authoritarian dictatorships ruled by "shareholders" instead of workplace democracies.

option 8y ago
“The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.” - M. Thatcher
- orblivion 8y ago
  She's referring to the distribution and central planning aspects of socialism, which are secondary consequences of the philosophy. The discussion here is more relevant to the core tenet: worker ownership of the means of production.
  - jdhopeunique 8y ago
    If only there was something analogous to the inflationary monetary system except for equity instead. Shareholders equity in companies could be diluted just like workers' wages are diluted by inflation.
    - orblivion 8y ago
      Interesting thought. Well, workers can buy equity in some company if they want. And shareholders' dividends get diluted.
    - mises 8y ago
      Ever heard of dilution? This does happen at times. It was banned over a hundred years ago, if I recall correctly, because people got clever and abused it.
    - mises 8y ago

dgzl 8y ago

> what right have you to the fruits of my labor? Edit: Nobody. If you allow someone to have rights to another person's product or service (I'm thinking healthcare), then you're saying you have a right to the people who produce the product or service, which is slavery. The government can't guarantee your "right" if there's no people to produce it, unless the government forces it (slavery), or just throws random workers into the position (low quality).

mises 8y ago
> If you allow someone to have rights to another person's product or service Who said this should ever be the case? You're assuming I support a right to healthcare. I don't support that, nor do I support most positive rights. Especially if they're not constitutional and are federally implemented. The obvious solution to all the problems you mentioned is that nobody has a right to anyone else's product or service, which goes back to my original point: what right have you to the fruits of my labor?
- dgzl 8y ago
  I was agreeing with you, maybe I didn't make that clear.
- lixtra 8y ago
  > what right have you to the fruits of my labor? You mentioned the constitution so you agree that some effort has to be made to enforce it. This effort has to be paid for by tax on your labor. Once you agree on that you only haggle if it is more tax efficient to put someone in jail for stealing a pizza or handing out free pizza. You’re free to take part in this democratic process.
  - mises 8y ago
    The constitution has been enforced via tax, yes, but I would argue that income tax is (or was and ought to be) unconstitutional (and wrong) and amendment XVI was an overt power grab. Sales tax, excise tax, sin tax, road toll, pick some other way. The goal is not tax efficiency but upholding the most basic freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and performing the very few duties specifically outlined in the Constitution. Notice how there is, for instance, no "right to healthcare" in it. Point me to the clause in the Constitution where it says anyone has a right to healthcare or that the federal government is allowed to dispense it.

logfromblammo 8y ago

Conversely, companies that oppose employee unions should hire and employ only shareholders, with a number of shares commensurate with the importance of their work roles. That door swings both ways. Unions are not an exclusively socialist construct. I support unions as an anarchist, because I recognize that it is both useful for corporations with concentrated capital to exist and necessary to counterbalance their power with opposing institutions to keep their perverse incentives from directing their behavior unchecked. If all social institutions are set up such that they check and balance one another, no single one of them can safely dominate. Each has a time to be supported, and a time to be undermined. For now, government institutions and religious institutions have refused to counter commercial/mercantile institutions, so the lowest-energy path to doing so is reviving the unions. Growing a neo-socialist voting bloc now is a longer play, but that one will be beneficial between 6 and 12 years from now, and probably won't become threatening for 20 years. One can never know in advance; democracy is messy. Socialism is an awful idea in isolation. It's a great idea if your goal is to temporarily undermine those whose power is based on accumulations of wealth and pre-existing social contacts. If you feel that those in power are keeping you from breaking into their ranks, you can promote socialism to clear them out, and then move into their vacated places of power to quash the socialism before it gets out of hand. As I am not one of the elite, and do not currently have any plausible way to become one, I fully support a socialist political movement. For now. My personal morality does not compete well against those whose ethics revolve around "might makes right", "them that has the gold, makes the rules", and "F U, I got mine". So I have a newer rule: to suppress my other ethical rules in all situations where those who do not share them are exploiting my respect for them, and any information asymmetries, in order to influence my behavior to my own detriment. I have no right to the fruits of your labor, but rights are a political construct. They have to be protected by a chain of support, like chess pieces. And right now, someone has sacrificed all of the pawns. The right to keep one's own property weakens in the face of a growing class of people who are somehow completely unable to accumulate significant wealth, even after a lifetime of toil and diligence. Middle class purchasing power has been stagnant since the 70s. That's more than enough time for all those getting screwed by the system to forget why they ever believed in it, and to raise children who never believed in it, who then decide to replace it with literally anything else. The seeds for the democratic socialist resurgence of 2019 were planted in the 1980s and 1990s. Sow sighs; reap gales. I can live with socialism for a few political cycles, if it can clear out some cruft at the top. It's dangerous, and difficult to know when to hit the brakes, but I feel ill used by the current system, and I'm not going to go down with it.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]