Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Yes. Do you not?
So Christmas gifts are a market?
No because I don’t give you a gift only if you give me one. It’s not a transaction. They are gifts.
…but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it’s a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can’t occur then you’re relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you’re expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There’s little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
Hunger is such a poor motivator.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Some of the workers may be managerial. But the managerial workers don’t own a disproportionate amount of the company, and they’re not considered the “superior” of any other workers.
You must need a better job. I’ve had plenty of workplaces where I could count on everyone around me.
You know, the hiring manager usually has something to do with the quality of people hired. Maybe you could talk to them instead?
If I made my hiring manager worried more about quality I wouldn’t be hired
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I’m sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they’d be better elployees
Either that or the reason they purposefully hire meth-addled freaks is because they want desperate people who won’t fight for any of those things.
Source: Friend who works in a warehouse and has coworkers who are obviously there to get a paycheck to afford their fix and then move on. It’s the company culture. They could choose to hire better people, or mentor the people who could grow, they don’t.
No, they’re just idiots. Myself and others have had the same training and responsibilities and do fine. It’s not that difficult of a job.
It’s not just about treating current employees well. It’s also about offering enough at the hiring stage to attract more good workers. Higher starting pay and a better reputation as a place to work means more people applying, means that Methface Matt can’t compete with TypeA Teresa to get hired in the first place.
People lie in their interviews all the time. The amount of conversations I’ve had with my boss regarding people he’s hired that turned out be idiots that have started with “I don’t know what happened with that dude, he seemed totally normal in the hiring process”. We’re also restricted in what questions we can ask during interviews because asking people probing questions is apparently not fair according to our HR dept which makes it pretty easy for them to BS their way in. Then we’re stuck with their dumb asses for months before HR lets us fire them.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks
I guess you haven’t met many CEOs, then.
Didn’t say they run it. The person who runs it can be simply another employee. It’s just there are no outside investors and everyone has a vote on the board. You put someone in charge you trust but everyone as a whole has a say in big picture stuff with the person at the top being day to day and being held accountable to employees and not investors.
Capitalism fundamentally changes the relationship between workers and their work. One takes the value they create and gives it to someone else. One doesn’t.
But why would this employee put in that more work than anybody else? Just to get the same amount of compensation as anybody else? I certainly wouldn’t put up with all the complications of leading a bunch of people without being paid extra.
But why would this employee put in that more work than anybody else? Just to get the same amount of compensation as anybody else?
Who said that’s the case?
Than I don’t really get the idea. Could you elaborate?
- As far as I understood, the company’s shares belong to the employees (“everyone gets a seat on the board”) and those elect a director which in turn organises the work structure, assigns roles etc. Correct?
- Can he be replaced at all times?
- How is the compensation of the employees determined?
- How are employees handled which are not performing their duties?
- Can employees be fired?
- How can employees join and leave the company?
- Do they return their shares on leaving?
- Can they buy and sell their shares?
- How do new employees get their shares? Are they assigned or bought?
- How is capital raised for large long-term investments like a new machine?
- If the employees bring up the capital, do they get interest?
- What if no capital can be raised? Is the company terminated?
- Can some employees put in more capital than others?
- Is the financial gain distributed equally between the employees?
@lightnsfw @dingus
You really think the people currently running your company are any different from those other coworkers?Yes I think so, because the people running the company have no interest in listening to the positions of the workers, especially if it makes them less money.
When the people working in the company have a democratic vote, they at least have a choice and don’t have big mistakes dictated from upon high.
At least then, the workers can agree they all made a shitty mistake together. It doesn’t mean workers are infallible. All humans are fallible. All humans make mistakes. The difference is the power dynamic, nothing else.
I think they have education related to the running of a large company whereas most of my coworkers barely made it through their IT certs and have some of the stupidest takes regarding how things should be done I’ve ever heard in my life.
Education related to the exploitation of their workers
Ftfy
You must be a joy to work with.
I’m great to work with. No one has to worry if the task they assign me is going to be done right and on time.
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Did… did I say they couldn’t? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
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Surprise, when there are obstacles standing in the way of your goals, people may mention those obstacles when asked about progress towards their goals. What an absolute flaccid take.
Nothing in America stops the workers from owning the factory or the profits.
Fully stop? No, not technically. But our society makes it as close to impossible as it can be without being illegal
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Sure: becoming a member of a corporation costs money. You either have to pay to get it set up or buy a share to get in so those who already paid are made whole.
Unfortunately, the US as an example, our society is structured such that the majority of people here have zero savings with wages decreasing in value every year due to inflation. A person in this situation cannot produce money to buy-in; squeezing water from a stone situation.
All people are essentially born with no assets, and if they want to secure wealth, they must sell their labor to achieve it.
In other words, children of parents who own an outsized number of assets do not have to sell their labor to achieve it, because it is offset by their parents assets. This inherently produces an unequal/unbalanced system where some people simply never have to work this way. This is why extremely in-demand internships at companies in places like New York City are often unpaid, and thus generally end up going to people who already have money, access, and support systems. Because only those kind of people can afford to take on an unpaid internship to move upward in the capitalist system.
This is also the source of generational poverty, because it can be really hard to escape when generation after generation are born to no assets.
All people are essentially born with no assets
False. The children of rich people are born rich. That’s a major part of the problem. It creates dynasties.
This is an area I have said needs to be taxed to hell, there is no good reason we should allow the passing of wealth without heavy penalty. I’m convinced that if we taxed all forms of wealth transfer at something like 80%, we could pretty much get rid of income tax. Income you have earned should be your entitlement, assets passed down to you should be where the taxes cut in.
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Inflation’s been happening since currency was created. We don’t notice day to day because the effects are stretched over a long period.
Try calculating the value of a 2010 dollar against the current 2023 dollar. You’ll find the cumulative effect of ~5% inflation each year is significant.
In addition, periods exist throughout American history during which inflation has spiked noticably within a year or two - this is nowhere near the first time.
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How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
If worker-owned workplaces still operate within a market, there will still be pressure to compete with other companies. People can still come up with new ideas to compete and change can still happen.
Wtf is an uncorrupt government?
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
Never older than like 12 hours
Bold assumption that it’d take that long
Exactly. We could also eliminate carbon emissions by moving everything via unicorns and fairy dust.
“Military Intelligence”
Two words combined that can’t make sense 🎵
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I think you will find any place thats well moderated and cracks down on bigotry and hatespeech will skew left.
Weird how that is, huh?
Well spoken, dubious fart.
Most would agree with your point - right up until you suggest that having an “uncorrupt government” is remotely possible.
Pretty much the same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
There, now I’ve pissed off everyone lol
Edit: Except, I guess for the hardcore capitalists, but I assume those guys are all too dumb to read, so no point, really 🤷
Luckily an entirely uncorrupt government is not necessary, since that is indeed quite unlikely to ever happen. It is enough to have low corruption, which is much more achievable.
Honestly at this point, even a low corruption government seems harder than balancing a boulder on a toothpick for the super powers of the world
Maybe so, but… That might be because China and America have too much international power. Power attracts the corrupt and global power attracts the most corrupt on the globe.
There’s a book about why power seems to attract this sort of people - can’t remember the name right now, might update later.
In short, it’s not power on its own, but rather the systems we built around and for power, making it unattractive for people we want to end up in power, while the people who we don’t want to end up in power pursue it regardless because they want power for the sake of it.
What I’m trying to say is, this is another issue that we can actually tackle and solve to a large degree. There’s hope!
Except me, your friendly neighborhood anarcho-communist
Came here to post this. Sure seems like states are the problem here…
Sup, Comrade Spood (⌐■‿■)
No, you’re right. Anarchism is the way (:
Why do you want a middle class? So you have a class to aspire to and a class to denigrate? Why do you want classes?!
Profoundly internalized hierarchy all over this thread.
Classes will always exist if there are limited resources. Which there currently is and always will be for the foreseeable future. The gaps, size, number of, and mobility between them can vary though. But scarcity will always create at least two classes.
Did you know we throw away more food than it would take to feed the hungry? That there are more empty homes than homeless people? Capitalism incentivizes scarcity, so it is artificially created. The only thing stopping us from achieving post scarcity immediately is working out the logistics, but those in power don’t want that to happen, as they are currently high up in society.
As an extension to this comment, digital media is a perfect example of pure artificial scarcity. You can at least imagine a world where food or homes are scarce, it’s not our world, but it can be imagined. The same is not true of distributing digital media, and yet it’s still artificially scarce.
Without scarcity in capitalism things lack value. That is extremely problematic.
I mean, basic necessities? Sure. But the logistics on homes is far from just “we need to work it out.” On top of that, beyond food and shelter, there are a ton of other things that are indeed scarce. Even land is scarce and I don’t mean to just own. Like there are plots of land that are more desirable than others and people want those places. There’s no logistics that will solve “everyone will live where they want.” And let’s even just look at computer chips. They’re literally scarce. There’s so much more than just feeding people enough to survive (cause I’m doubting everyone wants to be vegan cause that’s the kind of food we have more than enough of, and not even for a well balanced diet, just to not starve to death).
So no, some things are “manufactured” scarcity. But there is plenty beyond just that shallow level of thinking that is actually scarce.
“post-scarcity” in this context doesn’t mean “everyone gets everything they want whenever they want it”. Maybe I want to own a planet, but there aren’t enough planets to go around, and nobody actually believes in a future where everyone can get their own planet.
When talking about these things, it’s best not to assume the most ridiculous interpretation of what the other person is saying. e.g instead of reading “post-scarcity” to mean “everyone gets everything all the time no matter what”, read it to mean “everyone gets what they need”.
also for what it’s worth, I’ve been an ethical vegan for several years after being a die-hard meat eater and literally convincing people close to me to move away from veganism/vegetarianism exactly for health reasons (I had the same misconception you did about veganism). After actually going vegan, doing absolutely no meal planning, no exercise, no calorie counting, still eating mostly frozen food and pickup, my blood pressure as a lean 6’1 mid 20s male has gone from pre-hypertension to normal levels. I get my blood checked regularly and I’m far healthier than I was when I was downing popeyes, jersey mikes, and five guys several times a week. And I’m not just eating salads or whatever, I’m usually having vegan buffalo “chicken” or beyond burgers.
I don’t advocate veganism based on health benefits (veganism is an ethical philosophy), but vegan diets are baseline much healthier than the baseline for non-vegan diets. You can’t go as wrong with them as the vast majority of Americans do with their diets.
People are always going to have vision problems, so it’s wrong to wear glasses.
What? You’ll need to take me through the process of how to interpret that as a response to what I said.
My experience has been the opposite. I’ve found that the majority of users tend to lean towards neoliberal and center-right ideologies. I guess most of them are probably American, so their warped worldview has them considering these ideologies as ‘left-wing’ instead 🙃
Same!
Honestly, I think capitalism wouldn’t be so bad if it was limited to what it’s good at. Fashion, tech, entertainment, snacks, ect.
But essential food, housing, water, healthcare, even electricity and internet access, the idea that these things that will always have infinite demand is haphazardly controlled through profit motive is disgusting.
Infrastructures should be government controlled and free. Essential resources should have some sort of universal basic “food stamps” system. Then actual money just becomes the luxury “fun bucks” that you don’t lose out on if you don’t have a lot. For example pet owners would be given a credits for pet food and free vet care, but a silly pet costume would use money.
Disclaimer: This is just a personal idea I’ve been mulling over, I’m sure there’s a million holes in it.
…capitalism wouldn’t be so bad if it was limited to what it’s good at. Fashion, tech, entertainment, snacks, ect.
I feel like we see the worst outcomes of those areas under capitalism. If you are poor you often can afford only unhealthy food, fashion is an ecological nightmare and tech produces unbelivable amounts of e-waste. And entertainment is basically only there to serve you ads and stimulate consumption.
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Capitalism may be good with fashion but actually seeing that art into production is fucking horrible and filled with rampant human rights and environmental abuse.
That’s not to say it can’t work decently. We just need a level playing field in the form of international regulation.
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“uncorrupt government”
😂😂😂
Totally a thing!! /s
Markets don’t “create wealth”. People’s work creates wealth. Banks don’t create wealth, they create debt and allow more money to go into circulation than actually exists.
Regulation isn’t only desired, it’s crucial for any market economy to work, lest they devolve into corrupt, abusive monopolies and oligopolies. Granted, bad regulation can be equally abusive and real cases are plentiful.
Just as important as regulation is taxing who has more money, because generating wealth won’t automagically distribute it in any ideal manner. The worst problem nowadays is just how easy it is for rich assholes to legally evade taxes no matter which country they’re from.
Markets don’t “create wealth”. People’s work creates wealth. Banks don’t create wealth, they create debt and allow more money to go into circulation than actually exists.
I think the world would make a giant leap forward if we could all agree on this. Sad thing is that finance basically exist to muddy the waters of what value is. (EDITED, incorrect formating)
Boot-flavored capitalist Kool-Aid must be so refreshing during such a torrid summer
I agree! Let me know when you find an uncorrupt government or uncorrupt corporation.
I thought left also meant protection against unregulated markets? Without regulations it is just going to be capitalismplusplus.
capitalismplusplus
Ah yes, my favourite programming language!
C++ checks out
“Uncorrupt government”
This is as delusional as anyone can get.
A wise man said it all once: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
That is why we throw them out every couple of years and choose someone different.
I do the same with my underpants.
Right… you do understand that most politicians in western countries are career politicians that have been there for decades, right?
A good example is Biden himself. He’s been there in politics for like 50 years. It’s a geriatric club at this point it’s become a common joke.
Same delusion as the poster of the meme. People believe in the same ideals that created the problem without looking at what it has become. Not everything that sounds good is good. Life is more complex than the simple model that simple people keep believing in. People will always find a way to abuse a system for their own benefit. That’s the result of “power corrupts”.
I don’t care about your US politics. It is a shitshow no matter how you look at it, with your undemocratic gerrymandering and 2 party oligarchy.
With voting it is at least possible to change the government. The same can not be said about corporations.
would be nice, but doesn’t seem to really happen, (incumbancy advantage). Also the bigger problem that isn’t solved by voting them out or even term limits. Access to money is important to win an election. Same people have money, those people pick candidates that are loyal and see to it that they win. When one old corrupt politician dies we’ll get a new one pushed by the corporate media.
My underpants are also corrupt
So you bought then back in June 1933 and didn’t have the heart to throw them out?
I’ve seen this sentiment being repeated in the replies, yet this also applies to private companies that are run by absolutely powerful people. It’s true that Lord Acton wrote this about the monarchy, but some execs in multinational corporations today are just as powerful as old-timey monarchs.
I don’t disagree with you. My contention is that the assumption of “uncorrupt power” is just naive and short term, at best.
A leftie who tells you the government can be “uncorrupt” deserves all the laughter you can aim at them.
Uncorrupt is impossible, maybe it is better to advocate for low levrls of corruption. Less corruption --> less damage.
cliches are lame
The statement in the image is just loaded with terminology that comes with a lot of baggae. It’s no surprise people tear into it. Can’t speak to whether that makes them leftist or just poly sci students.
“Uncorrupt” misunderstands the nature of corruption. How do you envision resolving the interests of the forces that give validity to said government while still keeping a capitalist structure?
“Generate wealth” presupposes a specific kind of wealth created by the government and given validity by the capitalist structure. You win at the rules of the game you made up. “Middle class” has a similar problem. “Prosperity” to a nation starving under the global capitalist regime might look quite different. Why use one benchmark over the other? Because of the game you want to choose.
