Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact

@196

A moneyless society that scales up to billions of people is unlikely to be possible

Postcapitalist alternatives that use currency to facilitate trade between actors without social ties seem much more plausible
@asklemmy

This would be joint self-employment as in a worker coop

@asklemmy

I would argue that all employment contracts are terrible due to their violation of the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. De facto responsibility is de facto non-transferable, so there is no way for legal and de facto responsibility to match in an employment contract. Instead, workers should always be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop

@asklemmy

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:

https://lemmy.world/post/17963706

@general

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

@asklemmy

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.

@general

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

@general

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

1. The employer-employee contract
2. Private ownership of the means of production
3. Private property in land

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

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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

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No @lemmyshitpost