That's a great way to look at it.
inb4 someone full of shit again tries to explain the difference between ownership and possession and why "you only need possession!11".
image.png
@tripu So... what do you think of the proposal that anything that is a business must be owned by those employed by it?
Not ending capitalism as in ending money as an exchange medium, but ending personal posession where other people are a part of what is posessed?
Kind of like... a real end to slavery?
My first reaction is: that is allowed now. There are worker cooperatives. No need to change anything.
Then, if that kind of company were superior in some way (more competitive, more stable), market forces (both consumer decisions and workers voting with their feet) would make them rise to the top, and the model would spread. Why doesn't it?
And, breaking news, slavery ended (in liberal democracies). I have been working for almost two decades, and was never slaved nor owned by anybody. I don't even know what you're talking about.
@tripu It is allowed, but not encouraged.
The problem, like so often, is the metric.
What is successful under current conditions in most countries is what makes a lot of money. Money, distributed unevenly, however, does not mean that the quality of life of most people is in any way relevant.
We are relatively privileged, living in the EU, where the conditions are relatively good - but capitalism has long gone worldwide. With companies operating worldwide, it would not be a complete picture to just look at our own countries.
So what would "superior" mean to you? Are humans relevant, or just that the economy produces a lot of stuff?
So i would say while there is nothing that can be called slavery right here, the textile workers without reasonable alternatives which would starve if giving up their jobs in the third world might beg to differ.
I disagree fundamentally:
Money is not “successful under current conditions in most countries”. Money is the name we give to our better units of value, in general. Even in a Utopian egalitarian society, as long as there are ways to communicate and transfer value, there would be “money” (_that_ would be money), and that “money” would be “successful”.
> So what would “superior” mean to you?
I care about (minimising) suffering above anything else. Well-being is a good proxy for that. And economic output is a good proxy for well-being.
I'm not saying economic growth is all that matters. But GDP per capita is at least concrete and measurable.
Alternative metrics should be well-defined and measurable, too. Otherwise they're not better than economic metrics.
“Textile workers” who are able to “give up their jobs” are, by your own definition, not slaves. The fact that they would do even worse if they decided to resign is unfortunate, but poverty is the natural state of things, and even so it has been declining.
See it this way: would they be better off if that textile industry didn't exist in the first place?
@tripu I would say that you make one proxy step too much for reliability.
Minimizing sufferung -> Well-being -> GDP breaks down in the last step. The first one i agree, but GDP is an average, so it looks good even if all people but one would not be able to afford food. Where exactly on the scale from all equal to maximum inequality we are is a complex topic. But maximum inequality is not forbidden!
And the textile workers i took as an example here are not those in some very few businesses that produce in Europe - i mean those in developing countries.
This brings me to why i used this example: seeing things globally with globally acting companies needs to consider if trade deals are fair. And from what i heard, trade deals between developed and developing countries are rarely fair.
I assume a lot of my relative wealth is not founded on capitalism, but because of a burden poor people in developing countries carry.
So they would be better off if we had never meddled in their affairs, that's what i think.
Ah, and the GDP of developing nations is not great - so even by your measure, we (as humans) messed up there.
@tripu by own stuff, you imply owning other people's means of subsistance. And this has been opposed since the day it has been implemented, just like feudalism. 'C'ommunism is state capitalism, in that state owns and manages other people's means of subsistance. It's official name is either Scientific Socialism or Marxist-Leninism. It has little to do with communism.
Is everything that you own the means of subsistence of someone else? I don't understand that.
@tripu No, what capitalists own i order to invest their capital is someone elses mean of subsistance (factories, work places, mortgages etc.).
I think you guys keep on drawing arbitrary lines and making up definitions.
What's a capitalist? I own (pieces of) many private companies. Am I a capitalist, then? What about people who rent a room? If so, the vast majority of us are capitalists.
And what's wrong with that?
@tripu Yes, indeed you are a capitalist. I rent where i live, so there is a very clear and objective line between us.
There is nothing wrong with me, if you wanna know lol.
@tripu “Capital” is, for the most part, just another word for “savings”.
Whoever is against capital is also against savings, knowingly or not. And people unable to accumulate capital/savings are forever wage slaves.
Even a UBI will keep people as dependent on the UBI forever unless they save and accumulate capital.
You can't free yourself without capital accumulation.