4 ms·

How about instead abolishing privately owned companies? Most western countries are democracies because people got fed up of being exploited by dictators (somet

How about instead abolishing privately owned companies? Most western countries are democracies because people got fed up of being exploited by dictators (sometimes called "kings"), removed them and setup a system in which they elect who makes the decisions. This system has issues but is less bad than dictatorship. Yet, companies kept their hierarchical power structures. Workers should decide who makes the decisions. If they don't wanna invest time into selling their product, they hire a salesman. If they want somebody to make long term projections, plan what gets worked on and communicates with other teams, they hire an assistant. And they decide how much he gets paid according to how much value he actually brings them. Managers should be assistants.

geor9e 1y ago
There should be a name for this sort of communal economic system
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I wonder if it’s ever been tried and, if so, how those economies and populations are doing as compared to the exploitive systems that Microsoft and FAANG workers are forced to endure.
  - 9rx 1y ago
    Yes, communalism (that's the name, for those who were wondering) has been tried. In the USA, the Hutterites are one such example. They are generally regarded as doing very well economically. The more interesting question is: Can communalism work without the community having a deep attachment to the idea? The Hutterites achieve that through religion, but if you threw a group of random people together into a similar economic situation without some kind of strong belief system would they endure or would it quickly devolve back to what we see in the broader economy?
- deleted 1y ago
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- martin-t 1y ago
  Did you notice how communism was always about central control with only superficial or absolutely no elections? Did you notice I specifically said decisions should be made democratically? Are those two not in direct conflict? Please, stop pattern matching, and actually consider what I wrote.
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  - 9rx 1y ago
    The name you are looking for is communalism, not communism. You can tell we're not talking about communism because the previous commenter said "economic system", whereas the whole concept of an economic system vanishes with communism. It does not imagine an economic system would serve a purpose when scarcity is no longer a constraint. Hence the whole no state, money, or class thing. You, yourself, literally wrote the original description of what we are talking about. How did you manage to end up so confused? > Did you notice how communism was always about central control with only superficial or absolutely no elections? And no. That sounds like you are thinking of a dictatorship. Probably a dictatorship at the hands of a political party that includes "Communist" in the name, granted, but thinking of that as communism is like thinking the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. Communism is science fiction that is imagined on the same basic premise as Star Trek. It is not about central control. As before, it rejects the idea that a central control (the state) would even remain. Marx and Engels hypothesized that the proletariat would have to temporarily seize control from the capitalist elite in order to usher in communism, but even if you somehow managed to confuse communism with their work, that isn't really central control either. What they pictured is still closer to being a democracy, except one that that excludes the bourgeoisie, similar to how women were historically excluded from democracy.
nkrisc 1y ago
I think there are worthwhile, incremental steps to take before it comes to that.
- martin-t 1y ago
  Can you expand on that?
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    We could start by abolishing overtime exemptions so workers are fairly compensated for working hours beyond reasonable amounts.
sekai 1y ago
> How about instead abolishing privately owned companies? We tried that in my country for about 50 years, it didn’t work out.
- martin-t 1y ago
  Are you referring to communism? Because that was all about central control - the exact opposite. It was about as cooperative as countries with "democratic" in name are actually democratic. Don't let a bad implementation ruin a good idea. Instead, look at what specific ways the implementation fails to learn for next time.
  - whobre 1y ago
    > Don't let a bad implementation ruin a good idea. It would certainly help to see at least one good implementation of the “good idea”
    - martin-t 1y ago
      Worker cooperatives: - A bunch of examples here: https://old.reddit.com/r/cooperatives/comments/p23rxr/what_are_some_of_the_most_successful_worker/ https://old.reddit.com/r/cooperatives/comments/p23rxr/what_a... - Some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ownership - Oxide computer company - idk how exactly the ownership works but AFAIK all workers except sales have the same salary. - The early idSoftware AFAIK worked similarly with all 4 core gamedevs getting paid the same Note that nothing says everyone has to get paid the same, it just ends up happening in some examples.
      - CactusBlue 1y ago
        I'd say Oxide is the exact opposite, in that they have the same base salary but they vary compensation by adjustment of equity
zahlman 1y ago
Hierarchy is not dictatorship, and most small groups of people doing productive (in the literal sense of creating a marketable product) work would never get off the ground like this for a wide variety of reasons.
- martin-t 1y ago
  > Hierarchy is not dictatorship Sure, the difference if whether the hierarchy is determined from the top or bottom. Top leads to unfair benefits for the top layer. This is called exploitation. > wide variety of reasons Can you give me examples?
nicbou 1y ago
This has been attempted multiple times and the results were disastrous.
- martin-t 1y ago
  A dictator deciding that every village needs to produce X amount of steel instead of actually harvesting their crops and them millions of people dying is exactly the opposite of what I described. RMS said whenever he promoted software freedom in the US, everybody pattern matched on communism and he had to explain the difference between voluntary and compulsory. This is the same problem. This is related: https://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/ https://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-a...
  - nicbou 1y ago
    I meant cooperatives and other structures at a lower scale. Stalinism was not the only attempts at collectivisation.
OJFord 1y ago
Companies didn't 'keep' hierarchical power structures, companies emerged exactly from that separation of industry and state.
- martin-t 1y ago
  One theory I read is that historically states got bigger only up to the limit of their ability to manage the land and force people to pay taxes. I don't know if it's right or wrong (and to what extent, most natural systems are complex with a multitude of factors influencing them) but I can easily imagine a similar principle applying to companies. If you wanna expand by starting an office in the next town over, you need a way to communicate with it, otherwise it's just a separate business with a cash injection to start. So you have a point. But the core issue stands - the power hire/fire people, determine their salary and also capture their entire economic output leads to a power imbalance.
twoodfin 1y ago
[flagged]
- martin-t 1y ago
  I am not from the US but this comment is rude and not constructive.
majormajor 1y ago
If you're a worker with a bad boss you need other options to leave for and go to. Let's have MORE companies, not fewer. Put in strong escalating taxes to incentivize cooperation between small companies instead of bowing to the math that encourages consolidation otherwise. But if there's no private ownership, how would the different companies in the market get created and exist?
- martin-t 1y ago
  > bad boss It's not (just) about a bad boss. It's about somebody being in a position of power who captures the entire value you produce (sales, IP, patents) and decided what fraction out of it you deserve. > But if there's no private ownership, how would the different companies in the market get created and exist? I don't see the problem. Every company starts with just a few people, maybe some machines, maybe some real estate. The issue starts when these people call themselves "founders" and everybody else becomes an "employee"[0]. Even though they are all doing the same work, employees get paid per unit of work, founders capture the remaining value produced. And then they hire "managers" who should be there to help workers be more productive but instead end up serving their own goals (see the Gervais principle). And yes: 1) the founders took some risk in starting the business. They should get rewarded based on the amount of risk and their investment. Not in perpetuity. 2) some companies need a large up-front investment. Similarly, the investory should get rewarded based on invested amount and risk, not by owning a large chunk of the company in perpetuity. Key point: as time goes on, the amount of work done by regular "working class" people completely outstrips the initial investment. The reward should go to people doing the actual work. [0]: literally meaning "person being used"
  - simianwords 1y ago
    >It's not (just) about a bad boss. It's about somebody being in a position of power who captures the entire value you produce (sales, IP, patents) and decided what fraction out of it you deserve. Wrong on many levels. They don't capture your entire value. They don't decide what fraction you deserve - that's what the market decides. >Even though they are all doing the same work, employees get paid per unit of work, founders capture the remaining value produced. And then they hire "managers" who should be there to help workers be more productive but instead end up serving their own goals (see the Gervais principle). False, they don't all do the same work. Some people do more valuable work than others.
ThrowawayR2 1y ago
Anyone is free to create a worker-controlled, worker-owned business anytime they want. There are plenty of examples anytime the question comes up. In light of this, where is the need to abolish privately owned companies?
- martin-t 1y ago
  Same reason we have laws against slavery and indentured servitude.
  - sershe 1y ago
    One is very much not like the other. If I create a piece of software then hire a helper to expand under a defined contract, if anything is at all like slavery, it is taking away my ownership so we could "share"
AngryData 1y ago
I agree, but the problem is that is actually socialism by definition and as soon as people hear the word socialism or communism they freak the fuck out because capital owners has made people believe that socialism or communism is the end-times and all will starve and die under a dictatorship. Yeah it doesn't really make sense that worker owned and/or controlled and straight up dictatorship control are mutually exclusive, but you aren't going to have too great of luck convincing people that they, and likely most of their family and friends, were completely duped for the last 90+ years and completely bought into the lie. All that said, co-op businesses have seen slow but steady growth for decades now.

geor9e 1y ago

There should be a name for this sort of communal economic system

sokoloff 1y ago
I wonder if it’s ever been tried and, if so, how those economies and populations are doing as compared to the exploitive systems that Microsoft and FAANG workers are forced to endure.
- 9rx 1y ago
  Yes, communalism (that's the name, for those who were wondering) has been tried. In the USA, the Hutterites are one such example. They are generally regarded as doing very well economically. The more interesting question is: Can communalism work without the community having a deep attachment to the idea? The Hutterites achieve that through religion, but if you threw a group of random people together into a similar economic situation without some kind of strong belief system would they endure or would it quickly devolve back to what we see in the broader economy?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
martin-t 1y ago
Did you notice how communism was always about central control with only superficial or absolutely no elections? Did you notice I specifically said decisions should be made democratically? Are those two not in direct conflict? Please, stop pattern matching, and actually consider what I wrote.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 9rx 1y ago
  The name you are looking for is communalism, not communism. You can tell we're not talking about communism because the previous commenter said "economic system", whereas the whole concept of an economic system vanishes with communism. It does not imagine an economic system would serve a purpose when scarcity is no longer a constraint. Hence the whole no state, money, or class thing. You, yourself, literally wrote the original description of what we are talking about. How did you manage to end up so confused? > Did you notice how communism was always about central control with only superficial or absolutely no elections? And no. That sounds like you are thinking of a dictatorship. Probably a dictatorship at the hands of a political party that includes "Communist" in the name, granted, but thinking of that as communism is like thinking the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. Communism is science fiction that is imagined on the same basic premise as Star Trek. It is not about central control. As before, it rejects the idea that a central control (the state) would even remain. Marx and Engels hypothesized that the proletariat would have to temporarily seize control from the capitalist elite in order to usher in communism, but even if you somehow managed to confuse communism with their work, that isn't really central control either. What they pictured is still closer to being a democracy, except one that that excludes the bourgeoisie, similar to how women were historically excluded from democracy.

nkrisc 1y ago

I think there are worthwhile, incremental steps to take before it comes to that.

martin-t 1y ago
Can you expand on that?
- nkrisc 1y ago
  We could start by abolishing overtime exemptions so workers are fairly compensated for working hours beyond reasonable amounts.

sekai 1y ago

> How about instead abolishing privately owned companies? We tried that in my country for about 50 years, it didn’t work out.

martin-t 1y ago
Are you referring to communism? Because that was all about central control - the exact opposite. It was about as cooperative as countries with "democratic" in name are actually democratic. Don't let a bad implementation ruin a good idea. Instead, look at what specific ways the implementation fails to learn for next time.
- whobre 1y ago
  > Don't let a bad implementation ruin a good idea. It would certainly help to see at least one good implementation of the “good idea”
  - martin-t 1y ago
    Worker cooperatives: - A bunch of examples here: https://old.reddit.com/r/cooperatives/comments/p23rxr/what_are_some_of_the_most_successful_worker/ https://old.reddit.com/r/cooperatives/comments/p23rxr/what_a... - Some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ownership - Oxide computer company - idk how exactly the ownership works but AFAIK all workers except sales have the same salary. - The early idSoftware AFAIK worked similarly with all 4 core gamedevs getting paid the same Note that nothing says everyone has to get paid the same, it just ends up happening in some examples.
    - CactusBlue 1y ago
      I'd say Oxide is the exact opposite, in that they have the same base salary but they vary compensation by adjustment of equity

zahlman 1y ago

Hierarchy is not dictatorship, and most small groups of people doing productive (in the literal sense of creating a marketable product) work would never get off the ground like this for a wide variety of reasons.

martin-t 1y ago
> Hierarchy is not dictatorship Sure, the difference if whether the hierarchy is determined from the top or bottom. Top leads to unfair benefits for the top layer. This is called exploitation. > wide variety of reasons Can you give me examples?

nicbou 1y ago

This has been attempted multiple times and the results were disastrous.

martin-t 1y ago
A dictator deciding that every village needs to produce X amount of steel instead of actually harvesting their crops and them millions of people dying is exactly the opposite of what I described. RMS said whenever he promoted software freedom in the US, everybody pattern matched on communism and he had to explain the difference between voluntary and compulsory. This is the same problem. This is related: https://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/ https://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-a...
- nicbou 1y ago
  I meant cooperatives and other structures at a lower scale. Stalinism was not the only attempts at collectivisation.

OJFord 1y ago

Companies didn't 'keep' hierarchical power structures, companies emerged exactly from that separation of industry and state.

martin-t 1y ago
One theory I read is that historically states got bigger only up to the limit of their ability to manage the land and force people to pay taxes. I don't know if it's right or wrong (and to what extent, most natural systems are complex with a multitude of factors influencing them) but I can easily imagine a similar principle applying to companies. If you wanna expand by starting an office in the next town over, you need a way to communicate with it, otherwise it's just a separate business with a cash injection to start. So you have a point. But the core issue stands - the power hire/fire people, determine their salary and also capture their entire economic output leads to a power imbalance.

twoodfin 1y ago

[flagged]

martin-t 1y ago
I am not from the US but this comment is rude and not constructive.

majormajor 1y ago

If you're a worker with a bad boss you need other options to leave for and go to. Let's have MORE companies, not fewer. Put in strong escalating taxes to incentivize cooperation between small companies instead of bowing to the math that encourages consolidation otherwise. But if there's no private ownership, how would the different companies in the market get created and exist?

martin-t 1y ago
> bad boss It's not (just) about a bad boss. It's about somebody being in a position of power who captures the entire value you produce (sales, IP, patents) and decided what fraction out of it you deserve. > But if there's no private ownership, how would the different companies in the market get created and exist? I don't see the problem. Every company starts with just a few people, maybe some machines, maybe some real estate. The issue starts when these people call themselves "founders" and everybody else becomes an "employee"[0]. Even though they are all doing the same work, employees get paid per unit of work, founders capture the remaining value produced. And then they hire "managers" who should be there to help workers be more productive but instead end up serving their own goals (see the Gervais principle). And yes: 1) the founders took some risk in starting the business. They should get rewarded based on the amount of risk and their investment. Not in perpetuity. 2) some companies need a large up-front investment. Similarly, the investory should get rewarded based on invested amount and risk, not by owning a large chunk of the company in perpetuity. Key point: as time goes on, the amount of work done by regular "working class" people completely outstrips the initial investment. The reward should go to people doing the actual work. [0]: literally meaning "person being used"
- simianwords 1y ago
  >It's not (just) about a bad boss. It's about somebody being in a position of power who captures the entire value you produce (sales, IP, patents) and decided what fraction out of it you deserve. Wrong on many levels. They don't capture your entire value. They don't decide what fraction you deserve - that's what the market decides. >Even though they are all doing the same work, employees get paid per unit of work, founders capture the remaining value produced. And then they hire "managers" who should be there to help workers be more productive but instead end up serving their own goals (see the Gervais principle). False, they don't all do the same work. Some people do more valuable work than others.

ThrowawayR2 1y ago

Anyone is free to create a worker-controlled, worker-owned business anytime they want. There are plenty of examples anytime the question comes up. In light of this, where is the need to abolish privately owned companies?

martin-t 1y ago
Same reason we have laws against slavery and indentured servitude.
- sershe 1y ago
  One is very much not like the other. If I create a piece of software then hire a helper to expand under a defined contract, if anything is at all like slavery, it is taking away my ownership so we could "share"

AngryData 1y ago

I agree, but the problem is that is actually socialism by definition and as soon as people hear the word socialism or communism they freak the fuck out because capital owners has made people believe that socialism or communism is the end-times and all will starve and die under a dictatorship. Yeah it doesn't really make sense that worker owned and/or controlled and straight up dictatorship control are mutually exclusive, but you aren't going to have too great of luck convincing people that they, and likely most of their family and friends, were completely duped for the last 90+ years and completely bought into the lie. All that said, co-op businesses have seen slow but steady growth for decades now.