jlou

joined 1 year ago
[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 10 hours ago

2/2

If a worker voluntarily commits a crime for their employer, that is still inalienably their decision. Yes, the employer told them to do it, and that gave them a reason to do it, but having a reason doesn't absolve them of guilt or responsibility for their actions

@technology

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 10 hours ago

1/2

A group of people is de facto responsible for a result if it is a purposeful result of their intentional joint actions. The pure application of the norm that legal and de facto responsibility match is to deliberate actions. The workers joint actions that use up inputs to produce outputs are planned and deliberate. They meet the criteria for being premeditated. The workers are not under duress in normal work, and consent to the employer-employee contract.

@technology

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 10 hours ago

I'm not a socialist because I think markets are useful and haven't seen a planned economy proposal that seemed plausible. Worker co-ops and unions aren't socialism in 20th century sense because they are technically compatible with markets and private property.

An economic democracy is a market economy where all firms are worker co-ops, so I was speaking about managers in a worker co-op

@technology

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 181 points 22 hours ago (16 children)

If the Republicans are going to call the Democrats communists and socialist regardless of how moderate a campaign Democrats run, Democrats might as well lean further left on economic policy. Appealing to the right does nothing because the right can appeal to the right better than the center-left can

@leftism

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

5/5

Creating or joining a worker coop is a much more actionable political step that someone could take then completely transforming the government. If the worker coop movement grows big enough, it could acquire the economic power to purchase it own lobbyists to influence the political process to hopefully pass those reforms

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

4/5

It is irrelevant that some workers don't want to be held responsible for the positive and negative results of their actions (the whole result of production). Responsibility can't be transferred even with consent. If an employer-employee cooperate to commit a crime, both are responsible. This argument is establishes an inalienable right i.e. a right that can't be given up or transferred even with consent like political voting rights today

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

3/5
The idea that the employer is production's whole result's just appropriator due to the risk they bear is tautological and circular reasoning. Risk, in this case, refers to bearing the liabilities for used-up inputs, which is production's whole result's negative component. It ignores the joint de facto responsibility of workers in the firm for using up inputs to produce. By the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching, workers should get the whole result of production

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

2/5

The empirical evidence I have seen on worker coops and employee-owned companies seems to suggest that worker-run companies are slightly more productive.

I oppose socialism as I think markets are useful. I advocate economic democracy

In an economic democracy, the employer-employee contract is abolished, so workers automatically legally get voting rights over management upon joining a firm.

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

1/5

Worker coops can have managers. Managers' interests can be aligned with the long term interests of the firm by giving them non-voting preferred shares as part of their compensation. Managers will make sure workers they are managing perform. The difference is that these managers are ultimately accountable to the entire body of workers and are thus their delegates.

Profits/wages don't have to be divided equally among workers.

I'm going to use multiple toots since I'm on Mastodon

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 2 days ago (12 children)

Your reforms sound good, but aren't pragmatic. Today's system requires you to have lobbyists to push an agenda through. Who is going to fund the lobbyists to make these reforms happen.

Also, even in an ideal capitalism, there is still an injustice at the heart of the system. The employer-employee contract violates the tenet of legal and de facto responsibility matching. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, but employer is held solely legally responsible.

@technology

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

A variant of this should replace non-profit tax exemptions and all campaign finance rules.

The way to prevent bribing is secret and anonymous contributions. You could, for example, imagine including these contributions to your favorite media and FOSS organizations as part of your ballot.

This could be implemented by a federation of worker coops to fund local public goods that all the member coops benefit from with the matching pool coming from membership fees and Harberger leases

@socialism

 

TED talk on quadratic funding, a non-market mechanism that a postcapitalist society could use to support a decentralized ecosystem of public goods available to each according to need

"How Quadratic Funding Could Finance Your Dreams | Kevin Owocki | TED"

https://youtu.be/1GRt0j698T4

This mechanism could be used to solve funding issues in public goods such as journalism and FOSS.

Please ignore the reference to crypto. This could be incorporated into today's voting process

@socialism

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 41 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Any company that receives government subsidies or is bailed out because it's too big too fail or whatever the reason should be mandated to become a worker coop

@politics

 

A distraction from the election: The case for employee-owned companies

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

"Ellerman has for years made an argument as startling as it is hard to refute: “the labor theory of property.” It’s that employees should own the firms they work for because of very simple logic: If they’re responsible for the consequences of their actions while on the job — committing a crime, say — how can it be that they’re not responsible for the positive things they do?"

@politics

 

James Robinson, Nobel laureate in Economics: ‘You cannot achieve an inclusive economy with an authoritarian regime’

https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2024-10-22/james-robinson-nobel-laureate-in-economics-you-cannot-achieve-an-inclusive-economy-with-an-authoritarian-regime.html

The economist and political scientist from the University of Chicago rejects the idea that repressive power structures will surpass the success of democratic systems, predicting that the Chinese model will eventually have to change

@politics

 

Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan

https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-genius-math-is-still-catching-up-20241021/

Born poor in colonial India and dead at 32, Ramanujan had fantastical, out-of-nowhere visions that continue to shape the field today

@science

 

John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism

https://josephheath.substack.com/p/john-rawls-and-the-death-of-western

Anti-capitalist theory needs to move beyond Marxism. The theory of inalienable rights and the labor theory of property are significantly more powerful critiques of capitalism than Analytical Marxism, and don't suffer from the problems that Marxist critiques do. The theory is also easy to understand. Marxism, unfortunately, has been more influential then classical laborists such as Proudhon

https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@socialism

 

"Are We Being Robbed?" (by the employing class)

https://substack.com/@join/p-122755017

Andrew Van Wagner interviews David Ellerman about Economic Democracy

@workreform

 

What are your thoughts on liberal anti-capitalism and reclaiming liberalism for the radical left?

Liberal anti-capitalists typically show that capitalism is illiberal through demonstrating how it violates liberal principles. An example would be David Ellerman in:

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf

He argues that capitalist employment violates liberal principles of justice such as the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match implying a theory of inalienable rights

@socialism

 

Why the employer-employee relationship is based on theft and all companies should be worker-controlled - “Neo-Abolitionism: Towards Abolishing the Institution of Renting Persons”

https://youtu.be/c2UCqzH5wAQ

@workreform

 
 

The Problem of Collective Harm: A Threshold Solution

https://ejpe.org/journal/article/view/798

"Many harms are collective: they are due to several individual actions that are as such harmless. At least in some cases, it seems impermissible to contribute to such harms, even if individual agents do not make a difference. The Problem of Collective Harm is the challenge of explaining why. I argue that, if the action is to be [moral], the probability of making a difference to harm must be small enough."

@humanities

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