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The societal change to do this 'properly' in your terms, how can this be achieved? I've come up with the more or less same solution, but I don't see it happenin

The societal change to do this 'properly' in your terms, how can this be achieved? I've come up with the more or less same solution, but I don't see it happening.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hnbad 3y ago
There are incremental approaches but they would require states to promote co-operatives and there are simply no political incentives for politicians to do that. E.g. government grants/loans, subsidies, or allowing workers to preferrentially buy out bankrupt businesses. And that's not even getting into the more radical ideas like mandating worker ownership for businesses beyond a certain size/age/revenue. Compared to the kinds of subsidies and preferential treatment that already exist for certain industries and businesses, these aren't exactly radical, they just lack a powerful lobby and donor class.
SequoiaHope 3y ago
Generally I prefer Richard Wolff’s approach, which is to educate people about cooperatives and promote their development. In the same way that our current government provides all kinds of support for capitalist firms (in this use of the term, this means top down owned and managed), we should provide similar encouragement and support for the growth of cooperatives. There are side quests like abolishing or curtailing intellectual property restrictions, which concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and make the rest of us dependent on them. (I have a whole philosophy about this but the takeaway is, no intellectual property restrictions don’t do what you think they do, and the economy and investment would work fine and actually much better without them.) For discussion of the need for cooperatives, see any of many talks or books by Richard Wolff. This is a fine place to start: https://youtu.be/a1WUKahMm1s https://youtu.be/a1WUKahMm1s
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Adding to this: there are a LOT of anti-democratic laws on the books, put there by powerful people who don’t want us to have power. Legal efforts to fight those are worthwhile. There’s also the strategy of building new economic tools that aren’t owned by anyone, via open source. That’s why I work on open source farming robots now. Building technology that can help people lift themselves up can reduce our reliance on the owners of the economy. When they put up roadblocks to our independence we protest, fight them in the courts, and build more tools to get around their control. It’s a battle that never ends. There is no triumphant moment when everything gets solved - we need to educate, work, fight, and build. Philosophers have been writing on subjects of our collective economic well being for hundreds of years, and we haven’t achieved their dreams yet. But we can make progress one step at a time.

The societal change to do this 'properly' in your terms, how can this be achieved? I've come up with the more or less same solution, but I don't see it happening.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hnbad 3y ago

There are incremental approaches but they would require states to promote co-operatives and there are simply no political incentives for politicians to do that. E.g. government grants/loans, subsidies, or allowing workers to preferrentially buy out bankrupt businesses. And that's not even getting into the more radical ideas like mandating worker ownership for businesses beyond a certain size/age/revenue. Compared to the kinds of subsidies and preferential treatment that already exist for certain industries and businesses, these aren't exactly radical, they just lack a powerful lobby and donor class.

SequoiaHope 3y ago

Generally I prefer Richard Wolff’s approach, which is to educate people about cooperatives and promote their development. In the same way that our current government provides all kinds of support for capitalist firms (in this use of the term, this means top down owned and managed), we should provide similar encouragement and support for the growth of cooperatives. There are side quests like abolishing or curtailing intellectual property restrictions, which concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and make the rest of us dependent on them. (I have a whole philosophy about this but the takeaway is, no intellectual property restrictions don’t do what you think they do, and the economy and investment would work fine and actually much better without them.) For discussion of the need for cooperatives, see any of many talks or books by Richard Wolff. This is a fine place to start: https://youtu.be/a1WUKahMm1s https://youtu.be/a1WUKahMm1s

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Adding to this: there are a LOT of anti-democratic laws on the books, put there by powerful people who don’t want us to have power. Legal efforts to fight those are worthwhile. There’s also the strategy of building new economic tools that aren’t owned by anyone, via open source. That’s why I work on open source farming robots now. Building technology that can help people lift themselves up can reduce our reliance on the owners of the economy. When they put up roadblocks to our independence we protest, fight them in the courts, and build more tools to get around their control. It’s a battle that never ends. There is no triumphant moment when everything gets solved - we need to educate, work, fight, and build. Philosophers have been writing on subjects of our collective economic well being for hundreds of years, and we haven’t achieved their dreams yet. But we can make progress one step at a time.