Harry Bosch
Contributor
"The" stealing? What stealing? Who says there's any stealing going on? What, you think employees are paid whatever the buyer decides is fair, just like you "buying out" HB's company without his permission for "I say a fair price to buy you out is the margin you extract from labor once you quit actively working." or whatever else you declare to be fair? That's not how employment works -- if HB won't pay what the sellers decide is fair, he can't make them sell. This is in sharp contrast to a socialist who decides getting HB's company can be accomplished largely by passing laws that gradually transfer ownership of some asset to whomever he defines to be using said assets."Think critically": (verb) To come to the same conclusion as me
There's a word for buying at a price which it's up to the buyer and not the seller to decide is fair: "steal".
Ask the employees if they think that they deserve to get paid more for the work they do. If it's up to the seller, and it very much is the worker selling their labor, and they don't think they are being paid fairly, then who is doing the stealing here?
But I shouldn't need to explain this -- Jimmy Stewart explained it better in Shenandoah...
Tinkham: This here is Mr. Carroll, and a few of his friends. They're federal purchasing agents, buying horses for the cavalry.
Carroll: That's right Mr. Anderson, and although there's a set price we pay, I'm willing to hear how much you think your animals are worth.
A Son: Our horses are not for sale.
Anderson: What my son tells you is the gospel truth, gentlemen, and you can carve his words in stone for posterity, if you're a mind to. The horses are not for sale.
Carroll: That may be, but I think you should know we're authorized to confiscate anything we can't buy.
Another Son: What does "confiscate" mean, Pa?
Anderson: Steal.
Exactly, who says there's any stealing going on? If a condition of doing commercial trade in the country is that what you invest in a company comes to be owned by the workers who work that company as a function of your extraction of value, that is what you consent to in doing trade *as a capitalist*.
See how that works, imposing an asymmetry on an argument and claiming it is ethically justified? I like my version where the persons who control the dialogue are labor.
Cry foul all you like, but you justify your paradigm wherein labor gets shafted over the fact that labor cannot object lest they die in a gutter. But there are more of us, and *we do most of the fucking work*. And we get as much of a right to get together and decide how these paradigms work and what constitutes stealing and what doesn't as much as "capital". What about this don't you understand. You have said "oh, that's *stealing*!" Without justifying the asymmetry in who is deciding on what is "ownership".
You are perfectly free to set up a company that operates how you want. You can set up a company where all workers are owners and vice-versa. There are companies in the US that fit this definition exactly. But why force your system on everyone? This is what bothers me most about socialists is that they want to force their system on everyone.