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.
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Market forces on their own produce many if not all of the perverse incentives of capitalism. Only a centrally planned economy, built on a foundation of grassroots democracy, can hope to overcome those incentives by doing economic planning with an eye towards future sustainability and quality of life, rather than towards profitability.
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.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact that it has a boss
So every company remodeled after REI, got it.
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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.
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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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Well the main thing is the concentration of capital. Guys like Jeff Bezos aren’t interested in founding cooperatively-owned companies, and they have all of the money. Add in the fact that average people are very strongly atomized and prevented from forming stable social bonds, and the likelihood that you’ll get a cadre of people together who want to start a cooperative business and can also afford to do so is very, very low.
That said, the few coops that manage to exist are often the best places in their industry to work, precisely because the profits are shared more equally than in the more common private or publicly traded corporations.
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Bezos had to start off somewhere.
Just a small loan of a quarter million dollars from his parents to bail out his failing company, which one would be hard-pressed to imagine he would have even had that much success in founding if not for his wealthy parents supporting his upbringing as they did.
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He started out with a small loan of $250,000 from his parents, in 90s $s if memory serves.
You’re just a
aren’t you? Lazy workers could be billionaires if they just trieddeleted by creator
Where do yhey get the money to buy the business?
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Where do they get the business owner who wants to do that? Can it happen? Sure, it has. But thats not going to happen for most bussiness operation in capitalist countries. Can workers get the money to buy out their owners? Sure. But that’s not super likely in most situations either.
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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.
Look at the current environment in America. Look at the absence of worker co-ops besides like Winco. Why aren’t there more? What factors are at play that is seemingly preventinf the natural formation of worker co-ops if they are allowed? Are children taught they can do that? Do people getting MBAs learn this in their classes? There are a lot of questions to ask here. While we do have some examples, for whatever reason they are not common here. I do think it has something to do with the resources the average citizen has available, the current ecosystems within existing markets, and all around education of the average American citizen.
Law enforcement?
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Did… did I say they couldn’t? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
So ah… What’s the issue then? You can have what you want under capitalism. Attacking the system is forcing your own on others. This is unironically what makes socialism unpopular in the context of history.
Did I attack the system in my comment or did I give a bare bones breakdown of what socialism is?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892938
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892727
Maybe even check my other posts in this thread to get a better idea of my opinion on this instead of jumping to conclusions.
They said it in the first comment
they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market
Good luck here lol
The western left doesn’t agree on one form of socialism to align around so it is both impossible to criticize with any specificity and serves as a catch-all in opposition to the current system. It breaks down when they suddenly have to align on specific policies.
That’s a good thing; socialism is a fledgling idea. It needs discoure and experimentation. The attack that lack of exact details and perfect cohesion is an empty one.
Wanting to burn down the system without a coherent and specific approach to replace it only hurts people.
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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Those lazy commies with their limp wristed excuses like: “The reality of living under a capitalist society”. Why don’t they just eat some bootstrap stew like my pa did and die of preventable illness generating labor value for someone else?
give an example
an example
you people and your excuses
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We were talking about worker-owned companies, none of those are worker-owned companies and therefore don’t actually refute anything.
Massive inefficient redundancies that ended up making rich people money and hurting the poor? Yeah, fuck that.
Wait…so these are your examples of people who “did something”
Do you realize that the edge every single one of these companies had over the others is the willingness to do whatever it takes to extract as much value from labor for the least amount of money, right?
You are just making the case for the complete destruction of capitalism. Only soulless psychopaths are rewarded here. Winning is not beating these people at the same psychotic game that they’re playing.
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The problem with notable examples is that they’re pretty much never representative examples.
Tesla is not close to bigger than GM. They only make consumer vehicles and maybe a model of semi truck but I don’t think that’s being produced yet, while GM has been making consumer cars in addition to commercial and military vehicles for decades. They might be valued as more but that doesn’t really say anything in practical terms.
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You’re asking people with little to no resources to take on people who have all the resources.
You don’t seem like you understand modern capitalism.
People will donate a significant portion of their wages to ineffectual radical politicians but won’t bother to consolidate capital to support co-ops. That’s the actual system I see.
What poor people do you think are donating wages to “radical politicians”? Have you ever met any poor people?
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You do not.
Wanna loan me $850,000 so I can start my own business? If it works I’ll pay you back in 20 years.
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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.
The system actively discourages that. It was tried in the 70s. Banks wouldn’t work with coops because they were diffrent. Other companies wouldn’t work with them because they didn’t being as high a ROI. They were more efficient and stable, but under capitalism none of that matters.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
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Ok now I know you’re a troll. And a liar.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
Ergo, troll.
I’m done talking with you.
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Banks frequently do.
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I don’t have access to the same network of third world slaves that Starbucks does.
As someone in the industry, I can say you actually do. It’s scary how easy it is to buy coffee harvested by literal or effectively slaves.
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You clearly know nothing of the coffee industry. Don’t speak on a topic if you literally know nothing. Third wave coffee exists because of the inherent abuse of the workers who actually harvest coffee. That you’re so naive to even think that the person behind the counter is the end of who is part of Starbucks is shockingly sad considering how much you’re trying to fight for something that is dependent on you needing a much better understanding of what you’re talking about.
Literally everything this person has said about how the coffee industry works has been wrong.
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You do realize that coffee beans grow in the tropics… right?
They aren’t growin em in fuckin Seattle.
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What do you think coffee is? Do you think people with colored hair just magically conjure coffee out of the ether?
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but the workers could do it if they wanted
Yeah, and a third party candidate could be voted into every seat and the presidency, but it’s so stacked against it occurring, it’s effectively impossible.
The state of the economy today is what’s stopping a vast majority of people from doing so. You can open a coffee shop and survive, but you could never compete against Starbucks. You would not even dent their bottom line. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars to realistically compete. Capitalism has brought us to a point where a majority of folks need to sell their idea to investors, further separating most workers from the value of their work.
Edit: I’m really tired of the naive and childish defenses most people put up for capitalism. “Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah and “nothing” is stopping a transgender women from becoming our next president by the same definition of “nothing”. Might as well say nothing is stopping you from passing through walls as quantum mechanics says it’s possible.
