5 ms·

Market and also the structure of corporations which allows a small number of people to collect all the profits generated by the many workers beneath them. We co

Market and also the structure of corporations which allows a small number of people to collect all the profits generated by the many workers beneath them. We could, for example, alternatively have a free society where most firms are collectively owned and managed by their workers. Then no individual would be likely to earn $100m per year, but in such a firm you could see everyone become a millionaire.

sbacic 5y ago
Would your argument still stand if this hypothetical corporation had no employees but the owner? That is, do you take issue with the fact that one person, employing many, profits much more than the people he employees or that he profits much more than his fellow man on the street?
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Actually the idea of firms being cooperatives is only an approximation of my ideal. It is one step we can take which I believe would help. I do think that if the majority of firms in your society are top-down winner take all firms, you're going to end up with a top-down winner take all society and I think that's bad for society. In that sense I advocate that we move to more worker self-managed firms. The question of the self employed person making huge profits is another one. I advocate for a somewhat selfless mindset (beyond meeting basic needs for your well being and happiness). So if a single individual can make huge profits, that means it's costing the customers a lot of money. In my mind, a person making a lot of profit could save a lot of people money if they shared how they are solving these problems, and recruited others to help with the effort. So that might look like: make their project open source and help others join in the effort to make their solution more accessible. I see this as best for society. What then of the food and shelter this entrepreneur requires? As long as food and shelter are hard to come by, the entrepreneur will be incentivized to withhold their solution from society and keep charging high prices to ensure they meet their own needs. The solution I see is for society to provide for the needs of all. This can happen by ensuring that food and shelter are abundant. If we do that, we can see more developers and entrepreneurs willing to share what they know for the benefit of all. I believe that if executed well, this strategy can lead to a better and more innovative society than one in which every person is incentivized to withhold their knowledge from others. Going back to your original question - it's not that I take issue with a single business owner earning a high profit, it's that I think we can do better. Instead of a few earning high profits while others freeze to death on the street, we can provide food and shelter to all, eliminate material poverty, and do this all while innovating faster. But to do so, we must drop the self-centered individualist mindset and think about how to both look after ourselves while also looking after others. We must think as a community instead of atomized individuals.
  - nverno 5y ago
    Nobody is either a self-centered individualist or a selfless community member. These ideologies are terrible representations of reality. It's easy to entertain philosophies of individualism, self-reliance and empowerment along with caring for your community, the greater good, etc. I think most people would agree that all these ideas are beneficial to both individual and communal well-being.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      I specifically advocate for community centered economics. This is in contrast to the rather myopically individualist economics we have in the USA today. Of course people are often selfless in the social realm (helping others etc) but I am intrigued by alternative arrangements of our economy which would see more of the profits generated by workers go directly to those workers rather than see those profits accrue to a minority at the top. I see our economic system as somewhat predatory and highly hierarchical, and I seek alternative arrangements which would eliminate technically unnecessary hierarchies.
      - nverno 5y ago
        The way businesses and the private economy in general are structured today seems to have arisen organically, though, it wasn't masterminded and imposed on anyone. It's natural for someone to have a business idea, take on a role of leadership and enlist other's to help. When Adam Smith wrote his treatise on capitalism he was just describing already typical commonplace behaviors, right? "Community centered economics" on the other hand, always seems to be a forced endeavor
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        > The way businesses and the private economy in general are structured today seems to have arisen organically, though, it wasn't masterminded and imposed on anyone. Simplest counter example is labor unions. There was in fact a huge campaign to dismantle labor union power in the United States. Look at the way labor power was limited by state force in the 1947 Taft Hartley Act for one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act Meanwhile in Germany every big company legally must have representatives from the union on the board of directors. A lot has happened since Adam Smith and some of it was "masterminded" on both sides. For example the "organic" work day was 14 hours long until labor activists fought and in some cases died for the 8 hour work day. We have made many decisions about the structure of businesses in USA and unfortunately much of it favors the accumulation of power at the top to the detriment of most people. Finally, we must recognize that no matter what structure we have, we can always imagine better ones. And we can apply the same effort and pressure to make change as has happened in the past.
grapist420 5y ago
I have no idea why the workers of, say, Uber would know how to decision make for tech infrastructure and strategy. unless you mean “give them board seats”, which is rather different.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Many schemes have been discussed to handle this problem. Giving a workers union board seats as is done in Germany is one possible way. Another, if we are imagining a different society, is to make sure our educational system teaches every student the principles of worker self-management. People would grow up learning how to make decisions collectively. A great example of another world not yet to be realized is the Oakland Community Learning Center run by the Black Panthers, shown in this 1977 television piece [1]. In that school, students learn to work together not just to solve problems, but also to determine justice (under guidance from adult teachers). In a world with bosses and workers, we are teaching everyone to do as they are told and follow orders. But we could, I believe, see a much better world if we teach everyone to be community leaders and collaborators. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dYsjDqUdr0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dYsjDqUdr0
  - grapist420 5y ago
    giving workers board seats doesn’t reduce their order following, it makes the orders better. > Another, if we are imagining a different society, is to make sure our educational system teaches every student the principles of worker self-management what are those principles? Yeah modern work absolutely crushes the soul, but ... how else do we make the heckin .1% tolerance raw materials in the heckin factories? Where’s the room for improvisation or self driven innovation if you’re a line worker in a butcher shop? Seems hard. Not sure black panther community leadership is gonna help.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      It is not an issue of following orders, it is an issue of hierarchy. When all the workers are below the board in the hierarchy, the board can take all the profits, push the workers super hard, and squeeze out all their benefits. In that scenario a few people get rich off of the work of many, and you develop a society where a small minority of people hold all the power and rule over everyone else. The board seats are not about "better orders" (tho that may be another benefit) they are about ensuring the needs of the workers are represented in board decisions. For example if the Amazon warehouse workers had representatives on the board, they'd get bathroom breaks and better pay. The only reason I mention workers making more decisions is if you want to eliminate the board entirely. > what are those principles? > Not sure black panther community leadership is gonna help I know most people do not watch the videos I link (obviously), but it sounds like maybe you did not watch the video. If you want to know what principles I think would help, I really recommend the video! It will be better than me trying to tell you from memory (esp because I am sleepy). It's a great piece of history and it shows some ideas that would help make all students better community leaders and cooperative workers.
grapist420 5y ago
okay so if nobody can have personal control over $100M how do $5B infrastructure investments (tens of thousands of which you personally benefit from, like chip foundries or joint city infrastructure and pharmaceutical ventures) or billion dollar company investments (again you depend on many ... apartments, factories, agriculture)
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  It's kind of a funny question, because there probably has never been any $5B infrastructure investment which came from a rich person's pocketbook. They money comes from governments, which are institutions run by many people who don't personally control that money. Anyway let's say you have a society where all the firms are worker self directed. It makes sense for firms to form broader organizations that represent different interests. So for example lets say you have an industrial zone on the edge of a geographic region. There's a shipping port, some bridges, electrical infrastructure, etc. All the firms in the area depend on this infrastructure to operate. And because they share this common interest, they have formed a regional cooperative made up of delegates from each firm in the region. When they need to make a decision about when to perform major infrastructure work, it is decided at one of their regular meetings. The delegates are not their to make their own decisions but to bring with them decisions made at their firm's meeting on the matter. If the delegate agrees to something their firm's people actually do not like, their people can recall them. So the regional cooperative holds a regular meeting and there they decide they are going to build a bigger bridge and then decommission the old one. All the firms in this regional cooperative keep their money at a credit union which was set up specifically to represent these firms. They need to rustle up $500m to pay for this. They discuss how to raise the funds. There is a particularly big firm that will benefit substantially from the new bridge. They put up $50m on the condition that the bridge will have tolls and they will expect to be paid back $30m over 30 years. The rest of the firms together put in another $50m. The industrial zone regional cooperative takes their $100m to the broader regional cooperative which represents a large geographic region including several major cities which benefit from the industrial zone. The broader cooperative agrees to stake the other $400m for the bridge improvements with the agreement that the industrial zone regional cooperative will pay it back over 40 years. So yeah. That's generally how you manage that. You can look up Murray Bookchin, David Harvey, and Richard Wolff if you want to know more. Also look up Zoe Baker on youtube. If you don't like my made up scenario, maybe look up how ITER or LHC get their funding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost EDIT: Of course ITER and LHC are not workers cooperatives, just examples of how people delegating funds could make decisions.
newfriend 5y ago
You're free to create a firm collectively owned and managed by workers right now, nothing is stopping you. I guess we do actually live in a "free society". It's interesting that your idea of a free society is forcing businesses to organize in a certain way. Doesn't sound very free.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  > It's interesting that your idea of a free society is forcing businesses to organize in a certain way. Doesn't sound very free. You're reading that in to what I said. Look again. "We could, for example, alternatively have a free society where most firms are collectively owned and managed by their workers." I do not in any way advocate for the use of force to achieve this, and you have assumed I did. Tho I did not mention it, my philosophy is explicitly voluntary. I argue that it makes economic sense for workers to organize in this way, and that they should do it for their own benefit. > You're free to create a firm collectively owned and managed by workers right now, nothing is stopping you. Yes you are right I can. That's what makes this plan great! It is voluntary and doable today. However what I want to achieve is not just one more co-op. I want to live in a society where all of the goods I depend on are mined, manufactured, and delivered by cooperatively run firms. To achieve that level of change I have to go on the internet and talk to nerds about why it's so great for all of us to do this thing. So that's what I'm here to do. You may have misunderstood my comment as a complaint that I want the government to fix my problems for me, but again that is a misunderstanding of my position. EDIT: I am doing things in the real world to achieve these goals too (see my profile), I only make the point about talking about it online because I tire of the “go do it then no one is stopping you” line. I am on HN to discuss theory with theory nerds.

sbacic 5y ago

Would your argument still stand if this hypothetical corporation had no employees but the owner? That is, do you take issue with the fact that one person, employing many, profits much more than the people he employees or that he profits much more than his fellow man on the street?

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Actually the idea of firms being cooperatives is only an approximation of my ideal. It is one step we can take which I believe would help. I do think that if the majority of firms in your society are top-down winner take all firms, you're going to end up with a top-down winner take all society and I think that's bad for society. In that sense I advocate that we move to more worker self-managed firms. The question of the self employed person making huge profits is another one. I advocate for a somewhat selfless mindset (beyond meeting basic needs for your well being and happiness). So if a single individual can make huge profits, that means it's costing the customers a lot of money. In my mind, a person making a lot of profit could save a lot of people money if they shared how they are solving these problems, and recruited others to help with the effort. So that might look like: make their project open source and help others join in the effort to make their solution more accessible. I see this as best for society. What then of the food and shelter this entrepreneur requires? As long as food and shelter are hard to come by, the entrepreneur will be incentivized to withhold their solution from society and keep charging high prices to ensure they meet their own needs. The solution I see is for society to provide for the needs of all. This can happen by ensuring that food and shelter are abundant. If we do that, we can see more developers and entrepreneurs willing to share what they know for the benefit of all. I believe that if executed well, this strategy can lead to a better and more innovative society than one in which every person is incentivized to withhold their knowledge from others. Going back to your original question - it's not that I take issue with a single business owner earning a high profit, it's that I think we can do better. Instead of a few earning high profits while others freeze to death on the street, we can provide food and shelter to all, eliminate material poverty, and do this all while innovating faster. But to do so, we must drop the self-centered individualist mindset and think about how to both look after ourselves while also looking after others. We must think as a community instead of atomized individuals.
- nverno 5y ago
  Nobody is either a self-centered individualist or a selfless community member. These ideologies are terrible representations of reality. It's easy to entertain philosophies of individualism, self-reliance and empowerment along with caring for your community, the greater good, etc. I think most people would agree that all these ideas are beneficial to both individual and communal well-being.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I specifically advocate for community centered economics. This is in contrast to the rather myopically individualist economics we have in the USA today. Of course people are often selfless in the social realm (helping others etc) but I am intrigued by alternative arrangements of our economy which would see more of the profits generated by workers go directly to those workers rather than see those profits accrue to a minority at the top. I see our economic system as somewhat predatory and highly hierarchical, and I seek alternative arrangements which would eliminate technically unnecessary hierarchies.
    - nverno 5y ago
      The way businesses and the private economy in general are structured today seems to have arisen organically, though, it wasn't masterminded and imposed on anyone. It's natural for someone to have a business idea, take on a role of leadership and enlist other's to help. When Adam Smith wrote his treatise on capitalism he was just describing already typical commonplace behaviors, right? "Community centered economics" on the other hand, always seems to be a forced endeavor
      - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        > The way businesses and the private economy in general are structured today seems to have arisen organically, though, it wasn't masterminded and imposed on anyone. Simplest counter example is labor unions. There was in fact a huge campaign to dismantle labor union power in the United States. Look at the way labor power was limited by state force in the 1947 Taft Hartley Act for one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act Meanwhile in Germany every big company legally must have representatives from the union on the board of directors. A lot has happened since Adam Smith and some of it was "masterminded" on both sides. For example the "organic" work day was 14 hours long until labor activists fought and in some cases died for the 8 hour work day. We have made many decisions about the structure of businesses in USA and unfortunately much of it favors the accumulation of power at the top to the detriment of most people. Finally, we must recognize that no matter what structure we have, we can always imagine better ones. And we can apply the same effort and pressure to make change as has happened in the past.

grapist420 5y ago

I have no idea why the workers of, say, Uber would know how to decision make for tech infrastructure and strategy. unless you mean “give them board seats”, which is rather different.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Many schemes have been discussed to handle this problem. Giving a workers union board seats as is done in Germany is one possible way. Another, if we are imagining a different society, is to make sure our educational system teaches every student the principles of worker self-management. People would grow up learning how to make decisions collectively. A great example of another world not yet to be realized is the Oakland Community Learning Center run by the Black Panthers, shown in this 1977 television piece [1]. In that school, students learn to work together not just to solve problems, but also to determine justice (under guidance from adult teachers). In a world with bosses and workers, we are teaching everyone to do as they are told and follow orders. But we could, I believe, see a much better world if we teach everyone to be community leaders and collaborators. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dYsjDqUdr0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dYsjDqUdr0
- grapist420 5y ago
  giving workers board seats doesn’t reduce their order following, it makes the orders better. > Another, if we are imagining a different society, is to make sure our educational system teaches every student the principles of worker self-management what are those principles? Yeah modern work absolutely crushes the soul, but ... how else do we make the heckin .1% tolerance raw materials in the heckin factories? Where’s the room for improvisation or self driven innovation if you’re a line worker in a butcher shop? Seems hard. Not sure black panther community leadership is gonna help.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    It is not an issue of following orders, it is an issue of hierarchy. When all the workers are below the board in the hierarchy, the board can take all the profits, push the workers super hard, and squeeze out all their benefits. In that scenario a few people get rich off of the work of many, and you develop a society where a small minority of people hold all the power and rule over everyone else. The board seats are not about "better orders" (tho that may be another benefit) they are about ensuring the needs of the workers are represented in board decisions. For example if the Amazon warehouse workers had representatives on the board, they'd get bathroom breaks and better pay. The only reason I mention workers making more decisions is if you want to eliminate the board entirely. > what are those principles? > Not sure black panther community leadership is gonna help I know most people do not watch the videos I link (obviously), but it sounds like maybe you did not watch the video. If you want to know what principles I think would help, I really recommend the video! It will be better than me trying to tell you from memory (esp because I am sleepy). It's a great piece of history and it shows some ideas that would help make all students better community leaders and cooperative workers.

grapist420 5y ago

okay so if nobody can have personal control over $100M how do $5B infrastructure investments (tens of thousands of which you personally benefit from, like chip foundries or joint city infrastructure and pharmaceutical ventures) or billion dollar company investments (again you depend on many ... apartments, factories, agriculture)

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
It's kind of a funny question, because there probably has never been any $5B infrastructure investment which came from a rich person's pocketbook. They money comes from governments, which are institutions run by many people who don't personally control that money. Anyway let's say you have a society where all the firms are worker self directed. It makes sense for firms to form broader organizations that represent different interests. So for example lets say you have an industrial zone on the edge of a geographic region. There's a shipping port, some bridges, electrical infrastructure, etc. All the firms in the area depend on this infrastructure to operate. And because they share this common interest, they have formed a regional cooperative made up of delegates from each firm in the region. When they need to make a decision about when to perform major infrastructure work, it is decided at one of their regular meetings. The delegates are not their to make their own decisions but to bring with them decisions made at their firm's meeting on the matter. If the delegate agrees to something their firm's people actually do not like, their people can recall them. So the regional cooperative holds a regular meeting and there they decide they are going to build a bigger bridge and then decommission the old one. All the firms in this regional cooperative keep their money at a credit union which was set up specifically to represent these firms. They need to rustle up $500m to pay for this. They discuss how to raise the funds. There is a particularly big firm that will benefit substantially from the new bridge. They put up $50m on the condition that the bridge will have tolls and they will expect to be paid back $30m over 30 years. The rest of the firms together put in another $50m. The industrial zone regional cooperative takes their $100m to the broader regional cooperative which represents a large geographic region including several major cities which benefit from the industrial zone. The broader cooperative agrees to stake the other $400m for the bridge improvements with the agreement that the industrial zone regional cooperative will pay it back over 40 years. So yeah. That's generally how you manage that. You can look up Murray Bookchin, David Harvey, and Richard Wolff if you want to know more. Also look up Zoe Baker on youtube. If you don't like my made up scenario, maybe look up how ITER or LHC get their funding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost EDIT: Of course ITER and LHC are not workers cooperatives, just examples of how people delegating funds could make decisions.

newfriend 5y ago

You're free to create a firm collectively owned and managed by workers right now, nothing is stopping you. I guess we do actually live in a "free society". It's interesting that your idea of a free society is forcing businesses to organize in a certain way. Doesn't sound very free.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
> It's interesting that your idea of a free society is forcing businesses to organize in a certain way. Doesn't sound very free. You're reading that in to what I said. Look again. "We could, for example, alternatively have a free society where most firms are collectively owned and managed by their workers." I do not in any way advocate for the use of force to achieve this, and you have assumed I did. Tho I did not mention it, my philosophy is explicitly voluntary. I argue that it makes economic sense for workers to organize in this way, and that they should do it for their own benefit. > You're free to create a firm collectively owned and managed by workers right now, nothing is stopping you. Yes you are right I can. That's what makes this plan great! It is voluntary and doable today. However what I want to achieve is not just one more co-op. I want to live in a society where all of the goods I depend on are mined, manufactured, and delivered by cooperatively run firms. To achieve that level of change I have to go on the internet and talk to nerds about why it's so great for all of us to do this thing. So that's what I'm here to do. You may have misunderstood my comment as a complaint that I want the government to fix my problems for me, but again that is a misunderstanding of my position. EDIT: I am doing things in the real world to achieve these goals too (see my profile), I only make the point about talking about it online because I tire of the “go do it then no one is stopping you” line. I am on HN to discuss theory with theory nerds.