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I don't entirely agree with the Marxist analysis of surplus value. What happens in practice is that some people have unusual talents for inventiveness, imaginat

I don't entirely agree with the Marxist analysis of surplus value. What happens in practice is that some people have unusual talents for inventiveness, imagination, and social organisation. They can invent and innovate and that's broadly a social good. It becomes exploitative when their talents are owned by rentier investors, whose sole contribution to a project is financial. Of course the money doesn't exist physically. The investment is really a political endorsement of the project and the individuals. This unlocks resources and creates social credibility. Sometimes this comes with an explicit personal message from the investor, sometimes it's just numbers. The problem is that stock markets support casual rent-seeking which disconnects investors from the projects they throw money at. Casual investors have zero interest in the long-term health of a company. All they want is the highest possible short-term return. And this culture is what forces corporations to aggressively devalue wages and worker comp, right from the initial seed round all the way through to the other side of IPO. The typical HN reader is somewhat insulated from this, because their skills are needed to make projects happen. But casual labour is considered a fungible expense that needs to be minimised. Politically this leaves most of the population disenfranchised. Some token electoral democracy doesn't change the fact that most people have almost no political power in their work environment, and have to accept top-down orders that undermine their own prosperity and welfare.

hnbad 4y ago
Oh, sure, I'm not saying founders or C-level executives don't contribute anything. A lot of entrepreneurs are extremely talented (although in practice finances are a much more important factor for success than exceptional talent). The problem is that because the system is set up on the principle of generating money from mere ownership, employees will always be exploited (i.e. be paid less than they produce, even after accounting for business expenses and operating costs). This ownership model inevitably poisons everything. A founder may be an active contributor to the company but they fulfill a dual role of owner and worker that is unique to them and alienates them from other workers in their company. This is most evident as companies grow and founders retreat into C-level roles isolating them from the day-to-day work via multiple layers of management or eventually phase out entirely, either retaining a seat on the board, transitioning to fully passive ownership of their shares or selling their stake entirely to cash out, at which point they will likely want to reinvest most of their money in ways that generate "passive income" (i.e. rent-seeking). I'm not a big fan of Marxist theory, especially in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, but even from a capitalist lens I think what I said holds true even if one may disagree with the framing or the moral implications (capitalist theorists famously prefer framing the system is natural, innate and thus amoral and inevitable, despite the recency of its more recognizable modern iterations). But if you want to go into the political implications, the ability to generate income from property (whether it is a stake in a company, housing or just literal heaps of money) necessarily enables the unequal accumulation of wealth and in a capitalist system that wealth beyond a certain point directly translates into political power as this wealth represents an exclusive claim on resources (production, housing, finance) that can be withheld from society with state violence if necessary. This directly contradicts the abstract idea of a democracy by amending "every vote is equal" with "but you vote with your wallet" (and some wallets are bigger than others). I'm not proposing a solution. I think cooperatives are an interesting model though they are hard to bootstrap in this system as even without institutional biases (e.g. cooperatives allegedly find it harder to take out loans because banks prefer having a central individual representing the debtor) the incentives align against them: if you have the capital to start your own company, why pick a structure giving you less power by empowering those who can only bring in their labor? But cooperatives can't change this system and thus have to operate within the same system, feeding into and benefiting from the same exploitative system.

hnbad 4y ago

Oh, sure, I'm not saying founders or C-level executives don't contribute anything. A lot of entrepreneurs are extremely talented (although in practice finances are a much more important factor for success than exceptional talent). The problem is that because the system is set up on the principle of generating money from mere ownership, employees will always be exploited (i.e. be paid less than they produce, even after accounting for business expenses and operating costs). This ownership model inevitably poisons everything. A founder may be an active contributor to the company but they fulfill a dual role of owner and worker that is unique to them and alienates them from other workers in their company. This is most evident as companies grow and founders retreat into C-level roles isolating them from the day-to-day work via multiple layers of management or eventually phase out entirely, either retaining a seat on the board, transitioning to fully passive ownership of their shares or selling their stake entirely to cash out, at which point they will likely want to reinvest most of their money in ways that generate "passive income" (i.e. rent-seeking). I'm not a big fan of Marxist theory, especially in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, but even from a capitalist lens I think what I said holds true even if one may disagree with the framing or the moral implications (capitalist theorists famously prefer framing the system is natural, innate and thus amoral and inevitable, despite the recency of its more recognizable modern iterations). But if you want to go into the political implications, the ability to generate income from property (whether it is a stake in a company, housing or just literal heaps of money) necessarily enables the unequal accumulation of wealth and in a capitalist system that wealth beyond a certain point directly translates into political power as this wealth represents an exclusive claim on resources (production, housing, finance) that can be withheld from society with state violence if necessary. This directly contradicts the abstract idea of a democracy by amending "every vote is equal" with "but you vote with your wallet" (and some wallets are bigger than others). I'm not proposing a solution. I think cooperatives are an interesting model though they are hard to bootstrap in this system as even without institutional biases (e.g. cooperatives allegedly find it harder to take out loans because banks prefer having a central individual representing the debtor) the incentives align against them: if you have the capital to start your own company, why pick a structure giving you less power by empowering those who can only bring in their labor? But cooperatives can't change this system and thus have to operate within the same system, feeding into and benefiting from the same exploitative system.