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The consumers don't drive much. They just exist in the environment they were born into. The idea we vote with our money doesn't hold much water when the system

The consumers don't drive much. They just exist in the environment they were born into. The idea we vote with our money doesn't hold much water when the system is rigged with regulations set by the largest corporations to their own benefit. Keeping out competition. And that's just never going to stop either, so the economic system needs examined, not hoping for some sort of libertarian awakening. To make this worthwhile to continue at all, this conversation first needs to clearly define capitalism. Capitalism is not the free market. Markets existed long before capitalism. Capitalism is exclusively paying people less than the value they produce, to create a profit for the employer. To rectify that economic system's moral compass, you create incentives to moving towards worker-owned enterprise. Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each. To own a share you have to actively work there. That model resolves most issues with capitalism. Worker's unions also resolve it, but in a less ideal way as the tension between employer-employee still exists. Which is just a slightly kinder model as master-slave, or lord-serf. Not sure about the universe comparison. The universe is chaotic entropy as far as we know, but assigning human misery- that we actively create, to the universe is a bit much.

dnautics 5y ago
"Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each." This is laughably naive. The power, then, devolves to whosoever authority gets to conjure the legal definition of "actual work". How can I be that person, and how can then use my power to enrich my friends and cronies and screw BuckRogers over? After all, all employees are equal, but some employees are equaller, and some are not even employees.
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  Calling the idea "laughably naive" doesn't seem appropriate when many businesses today are ran this way, some of them producing billions of dollars a year. That makes me question your age, as anyone with some life experience knows about worker co-ops. They're all over the western world. GE and Microsoft are fully aware of them, they've researched this extensively, sending representatives around the globe to figure out why these businesses maintain such high quality. It's the removal of worker alienation. The authority to define what working there is decided upon by the shareholders, it's a democratic workplace. So you couldn't be that person on matter how hard you tried. That's kind of the point. To finally remove the master-slave class tension from the our places of work and replace it with democracy.
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    Not to mention worker-owned companies and co-ops have shown to be able to weather economic uncertainty better. I will say, with the limited data we have. There is some truth that in America, various things rig organizing a company around the idea of co-ops and worker owned, so there are not many and not an abundance of data to be had on this. But the example we do have internationally, they tend to show that they weather the boom and bust cycles better.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    nobody is saying that NO companies should be run that way. I have a lot of respect for worker co-ops. But to say that ALL companies should be run that way is silly. Look at the companies where co-ops are successful: They have either 1) very predictable revenue streams or 2) are in an enterprise where there are almost no material costs (costs are entirely personnel or upkeep/personnel-infra costs). In this universe are often high-capital-expenditure endeavours. You WANT the wealthy to take the risk on those, and not the workers. For example, a co-op of 20 needs a million dollars to create a factory to build widget X. Where does this co-op get the money from? What happens when widget X fails? Are the losses evenly distributed among the co-op members? What co-op-ing everything winds up doing, in effect, is either 1) socializing the losses of adventures of politically-connected "wantrepreneurs" who are adept at converting political capital, or 2) making participating in risky ventures only accessible to the economically wealthy. So in the long run enforcing it is likely to cause more economic disparity, not less.
    - BuckRogers 5y ago
      Good thing that I never said all companies were to be worker owned. Because that wouldn’t be my belief. Other than my views not aligning with the premise that you’re pushing onto me, I agree with your points and think that they are good. My belief is that capitalist and democratic business should coexist and even compete for employees. I know where I want to be a developer. I think some of your assertions would be proven false, such as a democratic workplace not having the ability or will to borrow money to expand. The majority of businesses actually are proven and stable business models. The local convenience store is pretty much the perfect cooperative opportunity. There’s really no reason for 7-Eleven out of Japan to be owning most convenience stores. Venture capitalism still has a place in the ideal mixed mode economy.[0] For those risky ventures. But that’s really not what the majority of the economy should consist of. And it doesn’t. We’re just really misaligned in our model for what the majority of our economy is. Unions did a good job of distributing wealth in a free market way. But those still drive out capitalist businesses to cheaper countries. Cooperatives have every incentive to stay here. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_socialism

dnautics 5y ago

"Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each." This is laughably naive. The power, then, devolves to whosoever authority gets to conjure the legal definition of "actual work". How can I be that person, and how can then use my power to enrich my friends and cronies and screw BuckRogers over? After all, all employees are equal, but some employees are equaller, and some are not even employees.

BuckRogers 5y ago
Calling the idea "laughably naive" doesn't seem appropriate when many businesses today are ran this way, some of them producing billions of dollars a year. That makes me question your age, as anyone with some life experience knows about worker co-ops. They're all over the western world. GE and Microsoft are fully aware of them, they've researched this extensively, sending representatives around the globe to figure out why these businesses maintain such high quality. It's the removal of worker alienation. The authority to define what working there is decided upon by the shareholders, it's a democratic workplace. So you couldn't be that person on matter how hard you tried. That's kind of the point. To finally remove the master-slave class tension from the our places of work and replace it with democracy.
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Not to mention worker-owned companies and co-ops have shown to be able to weather economic uncertainty better. I will say, with the limited data we have. There is some truth that in America, various things rig organizing a company around the idea of co-ops and worker owned, so there are not many and not an abundance of data to be had on this. But the example we do have internationally, they tend to show that they weather the boom and bust cycles better.
- dnautics 5y ago
  nobody is saying that NO companies should be run that way. I have a lot of respect for worker co-ops. But to say that ALL companies should be run that way is silly. Look at the companies where co-ops are successful: They have either 1) very predictable revenue streams or 2) are in an enterprise where there are almost no material costs (costs are entirely personnel or upkeep/personnel-infra costs). In this universe are often high-capital-expenditure endeavours. You WANT the wealthy to take the risk on those, and not the workers. For example, a co-op of 20 needs a million dollars to create a factory to build widget X. Where does this co-op get the money from? What happens when widget X fails? Are the losses evenly distributed among the co-op members? What co-op-ing everything winds up doing, in effect, is either 1) socializing the losses of adventures of politically-connected "wantrepreneurs" who are adept at converting political capital, or 2) making participating in risky ventures only accessible to the economically wealthy. So in the long run enforcing it is likely to cause more economic disparity, not less.
  - BuckRogers 5y ago
    Good thing that I never said all companies were to be worker owned. Because that wouldn’t be my belief. Other than my views not aligning with the premise that you’re pushing onto me, I agree with your points and think that they are good. My belief is that capitalist and democratic business should coexist and even compete for employees. I know where I want to be a developer. I think some of your assertions would be proven false, such as a democratic workplace not having the ability or will to borrow money to expand. The majority of businesses actually are proven and stable business models. The local convenience store is pretty much the perfect cooperative opportunity. There’s really no reason for 7-Eleven out of Japan to be owning most convenience stores. Venture capitalism still has a place in the ideal mixed mode economy.[0] For those risky ventures. But that’s really not what the majority of the economy should consist of. And it doesn’t. We’re just really misaligned in our model for what the majority of our economy is. Unions did a good job of distributing wealth in a free market way. But those still drive out capitalist businesses to cheaper countries. Cooperatives have every incentive to stay here. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_socialism