I made a post in this community of a moral argument for mandating employee-owned companies. It isn’t based on a gut feeling. It is based on the theory of inalienable rights. Here is a link to that post:
An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.
I made a post in this community of a moral argument for mandating employee-owned companies. It isn’t based on a gut feeling. It is based on the theory of inalienable rights. Here is a link to that post:
Can you give an example in the case where investors hold non-voting preferred shares?
I’m not sure how cross posting works from Mastodon to Lemmy. I thought I had to do that to get boosted by the group
The employer-employee contract
It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.
Inalienable means something that can’t be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor
Why do investors defeat the whole purpose? @general
While many socialists supported worker coops in the interim, an economy of exclusively worker coops comes more so from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.
There are 2 risk reduction strategies commitment-based and diversification based. The diversification-based strategy is the usual spread your eggs across many baskets strategy, but there is also a commitment-based dual strategy where you put your eggs in a few baskets and watch over them carefully.
Workers in coops can share risks with investors with non-voting preferred shares and other financial instruments. They can diversify by investing in other worker coops non-voting shares
There would still be limited liability. Furthermore, they can share risks with investors, and self-insure against risk as well @general
Capitalism’s defining institutions are
The alternative to capitalism I propose, Georgist economic democracy, abolishes 1 and 3. 2 continues formally but there is widespread collective ownership of the means of production. Markets continue to exist to help coordinate production and allocate resources. Many defenders of capitalism incorrectly conflate capitalism with markets @general
What do you mean by capitalism? @general
Perhaps, but there isn’t a good reason to place such a restriction on worker co-ops. Worker co-ops shouldn’t be forced to buy the entire thing when a segment of its services would do.
Liberals as a group tend to support capitalism. Liberalism as a political philosophy can have implications that claimed adherents don’t endorse. After mapping out all the logical implications of liberal principles, it becomes clear that coherent liberalism is anti-capitalist @asklemmy
Worker co-ops don’t necessarily have full worker ownership of the means of production because a worker coop can lease means of production from a third party. It is not socialist. Nor do I mean to suggest it is capitalist. It can’t be capitalism as it has no capitalists as you correctly point out. Since you recognize that it is technically correct to say a worker co-op market economy has private property, you recognize
Capitalism ≠ private property @asklemmy
When I said capitalists there I meant liberal defenders of capitalism.
A market economy of worker coops has private property, so can’t be socialist. Market socialism is a misnomer and unnecessarily associates with a label people already have preconceived notions about @asklemmy
The normative basis of private property, which capitalists claim to adhere to, is people’s inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism routinely violates this principle in the employment contract. Satisfying the principles of private property would require that all firms be worker cooperatives. The principles of liberalism imply anti-capitalism. It is entirely compatible to be a liberal and an anti-capitalist @asklemmy
Many liberals are anti-worker, but the political philosophy of liberalism is not inherently anti-worker. Liberal anti-capitalists like David Ellerman illustrate this using liberal principles of justice to argue for a universal inalienable right to workers’ self-management and abolition of the employer-employee relationship @asklemmy
You’re right that wasn’t very clear.
Capitalism is exploitative due to the employment contract not non-worker capital ownership. The employment contract is bad because it gives the employer 100% of the property right to the produced output (i.e. ownership of new cars in a car firm) and 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs (i.e. factory machine services) while employees get 0%. The workers don’t create the output out of nothing they use input materials @lemmyshitpost
The payment to investors in this case isn’t based on a non-worker solely appropriating the fruits of labor. The payment is satisfaction of the liability workers jointly appropriate as part of the negative product. Paying covers the costs of the negative product. It is compensation to the investors for the capital they supplied and the work they did building up that much capital @lemmyshitpost
"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” – Abraham Lincoln
This quote captures the differing understandings and notions of liberty between these different political groups
@linux