jlou

@jlou@mastodon.social

#liberal #anticapitalism

An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.

#liberalism
#coops #cooperatives

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jlou,

Land value tax would solve this when combined with a UBI from the revenue it generates

jlou, (edited )

Some Georgists don't believe in ownership of labor because that inherently implies property rights in people. These Georgists recognize the same labor theory of property, which provides an ethical justification for common ownership of land and natural resources, also provides a critique of capitalist property relations and an argument for an inalienable right to workplace democracy.
See: https://www.ellerman.org/rethinking-common-vs-private-property/

jlou, (edited )

Private ownership of labor implies the ability to alienate and transfer it for present or future benefits. Such a procedure is not possible because labor is de facto non-transferable. People can have private ownership over the products of labor, but they cannot own their labor because labor is inalienably theirs

jlou,

Land value tax is progressive. Due to land's inelastic supply, this tax cannot be passed on to others. People that own lots of land bear the entire burden of the tax. Charging for unimproved land value encourages building denser on more valuable land. This increases housing supply thus making housing more affordable

LVT is 1 policy. It can be combined with other policies. LVT is not an avoidable tax

jlou,

It meets the definition of a progressive tax.

The broader Georgist program involves aggressive taxation of government-granted monopolies like IP, which both Musk and Bezos are indirectly beneficiaries of.

LVT is 1 policy meant to solve 1 problem. It can be combined with other policies that address other problems.

The labor theory of property, a negative application of which provides a moral rationale for LVT, also provides a justification for an inalienable right to worker democracy

jlou,

LVT taxing the empty lot next door at the same rate as a multimillion dollar hotel is exactly what makes it so efficiency enhancing because it give land owners economic incentives to use their land productively rather than just holding it and waiting for it to appreciate in value. With LVT, prices would exclude the value of the land.

LVT can be combined with other policies and taxes. You have to look at the whole package of policies to determine progressivity. LVT+UBI is progressive

jlou,

You can't fully experience liberty unless everyone is free

jlou,

Marx made mistakes though. For example, he assumed that the right of appropriating the whole product of a firm and control rights to direct the workers in the firm were attached to the ownership of capital. In reality, capital can be rented out just as labor can be hired. It is really the employer-employee contract that is at the core of capitalist appropriation. Ownership of capital just increases bargaining power to get favorable contract terms such as the employer contractual role

jlou,

Marx thought that control rights over the firm were attached to ownership of capital rather than being logically separately acquired in the employer-employee relationship.

"It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed property." -- Marx

jlou,

The latter problem could be solved by banning having non-member workers at the legal level and requiring giving workers voting rights in the firm they work in.

Worker coops don't behave exactly like for-profit companies. Anti-capitalism is more than just worker democracy. For example, another aspect is common ownership of land and natural resources with fees for use. This would ensure that worker coops factor in environmental costs

jlou,

The employers' claim extend beyond a cut. They solely appropriate 100% of the whole positive and negative product of the firm while employees as employees have 0% claim on the whole product

jlou,

This point is even stronger if you look at property rights instead of value. The workers in a capitalist firm jointly receive 0% of the property rights to the produced outputs and 0% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs while the employer receives 100% and legally owns the produced outputs and legally owes the liabilities for the used-up inputs. This is a violation of the moral principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match

jlou,

Property's moral basis is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. Capitalism denies the workers this as the employer solely appropriates the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The core of property's moral basis is the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Receiving wages is not sufficient because the workers remain de facto responsible for the whole (positive and negative) product of the enterprise and are entitled to it on that basis

jlou,

Seize the means of production comes from a conceptually separate part of anti-capitalist critique then workers' control/workers' self-management. It is common to conflate these two strands of anti-capitalist thoughts. It is technically possible to have common ownership of the means of production without workers' self-management and workers' self-management without common ownership of the means of production. Universal worker coops only requires abolishing wage labor not private ownership @memes

jlou,

Fair enough

jlou,

Here is a short introduction to an argument for all companies to be controlled by the people that work in them:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-the-case-for-employee-owned-companies

It establishes an inalienable right to workplace democracy and an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of your labor

jlou,

Anti-capitalism is not necessarily socialism or communism. Anti-capitalism does not necessarily imply supporting the USSR's particular policies. The mistake that the USSR and others made was not using market mechanisms when they make sense.
Trump participates in the systematic denial of people's equal claim to land and natural resources with his real estate empire. Land and natural resources should be commonly-owned.
There is no reason innovation can't be rewarded under postcapitalism

jlou,

It is a straw man that democracy means every problem is put to a vote. Workers can jointly decide to delegate decision-making to executives and managers. The difference in worker coops is that these executives and managers are ultimately democratically accountable to the people doing the work

jlou,

The executives can be paid more. In a system where all firms are worker coops, it would be a much more compressed difference between the least paid and most paid worker in a firm than the absurd pay differences we see today.

A manger in a worker coop has the same decision-making rights as in any company. The difference is that they are democratically accountable to the workers instead of being accountable to the employer, an alien legal party. Essentially, workers hold all voting shares

jlou,

It depends on the material conditions what specific action would be required. For example, the legal system could abolish the employer-employee contract that violates workers inalienable rights to democracy and to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Then, the contract could be reversed so that labor jointly hires capital rather than capital hiring labor. Amazon, in particular, has other issues that should be addressed, but we can ignore that for now

jlou,

Like I said, its like workers hold all the voting shares in the company, so these issues would resolved the same way that they are resolve in corporations owned by shareholders.

The rational action would be to adopt the new tech and instead of firing half of the workers, which is socially irrational due to the social costs of unemployment, dividing the remaining work among the existing workers. The extra time that each worker has could be used for producing something else

jlou,

Worker coops are better ethically not just based on opinion. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. By the usual ethical principle that legal responsibility should be assigned to the de facto responsible party, the workers should jointly be legally responsible for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs.

  1. Worker coops can fire people.
  2. Worker coops can charge initial membership fee when a new worker joins.
jlou,

I never said that people couldn't get fired.

The incompetent relative example seems to be a problem with nepotism

jlou,

I never said anything about removing money.

What you are talking about is called social capital accumulation, which is a problem in any system.

A justification for worker coops is the moral principle of assigning legal responsibility to the de facto responsible party. In an employer-employee relationship, the employer receives 100% of the legal responsibility despite the employee being inextricably co-responsible. This violates the aforementioned principle

jlou,

Worker coops are a good thing because unlike employer-employee-based firms they don't violate workers' inalienable rights. The justification is a principled ethical argument.

The workers' voting shares should be inalienable and attached to the functional role of working in the firm. The employer-employee contract would be abolished, so there would be no mechanism within the legal system for having a capitalist firm.

An inalienable right is one that the holder cannot give up even with consent

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