Proposed California "ethnic studies" curriculum to teach that capitalism is oppressive ...

[ruby sparks]

Workers buying out companies is a fairly common succession plan. We've explored it. The government could make ESOP transactions easier and encourage them more. The truth here is that many workers have no desire to become owners. It's actually far more work and long hours than what you think. Most workers that I've met prefer security, shorter hours, less stress and higher pay vs becoming equity partners.

That's bullshit and you know it. From the perspective of most shareholders, the "work" involved in it is receiving dividends, elections for the board, and sending a proxy to the meeting... Or selling out the shares again.

But I think you are equating capitalism, or at least business, with shareholding. It's true that already having money provides good opportunities to create more money (albeit by taking risks of the sort that workers generally don't) but it's far from the only way. Most businesses don't have shareholders, they have owners. Often these owners are entrepreneurs, many of whom started with very little and who stand to lose it all if things go pear-shaped. Starting and running a successful business is generally incredibly hard work and involves making sacrifices and taking big financial risks. If the result of this is profits, its arguably fair and reasonable, as it's a reward for endeavour.

So I don't agree that workers in a capitalist system are inherently exploited, though they can be, depending on circumstances, and the system can go out of kilter and result in extreme and growing inequalities. But equally some of the inequality (between owners and workers) is fair and reasonable. Ditto for someone working their way up through the ranks to earn more profit for their work via an increased salary, because this will generally involve making more sacrifices and taking on more responsibility.

In that sense, capitalism is not of itself inherently unfair or oppressive. It can be, and often is, when the 'bargains struck' between the parties are unfair, or discriminatory, or exploitative. Equally, there is nothing inherently wrong with the profit motive, but chicken factory workers having to wear diapers because they aren’t given reasonable options for using the bathroom might be a general example of taking things too far. Business owners not paying their taxes is another way the 'business contract' can be broken by employers.

 

[James Madison]

Yes. My best science and math teachers in high school were a priest and a nun, both creationists.

It is about an institutional bias, you know that. A history and poly sci department that teaches an ideology promoting one view.

CNN and MSNBC are biased. They refuse to broach the idea that part of the border problem is due to the idea south of the border that once you get here you are home free. As I am sure you know how question are asked can create a biased or skewed re4sponse biased to a specific conclusion. CNN does it all the time. Now when I watch I know how the questions will be asked and what the responses will be.

No different in college. How the teacher presents with tone and expression matters.

The extreme progressives are anti free market capitalism. We never hear the system has given us this, and it also has some serious problems.

Shit, I'm pretty much on the "extreme progressive" side of things, and not even I am anti-capitalist. I am merely also pro-labor and pro-regulation. A regulated market is not a free market; only the most extreme of the regressives are, in fact, free-market capitalists.

My vision for the future is one wherein companies are regulated in a specific way: where, following incorporation, as a cost of limiting liability and extracting profits, the workers at a particular company, as individuals, gain ownership stake over the companies they work for.

Essentially nothing changes except for the fact that power and profits eventually start to go to the people who are actually doing the work.

There's a problem when the only thing you need to make more money is to simply have a lot of money.

The workers are paid a wage for their labor. Why mandate companies give the workers a cut of the profits and partial ownership?


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[Jarhyn]

Yes. My best science and math teachers in high school were a priest and a nun, both creationists.

It is about an institutional bias, you know that. A history and poly sci department that teaches an ideology promoting one view.

CNN and MSNBC are biased. They refuse to broach the idea that part of the border problem is due to the idea south of the border that once you get here you are home free. As I am sure you know how question are asked can create a biased or skewed re4sponse biased to a specific conclusion. CNN does it all the time. Now when I watch I know how the questions will be asked and what the responses will be.

No different in college. How the teacher presents with tone and expression matters.

The extreme progressives are anti free market capitalism. We never hear the system has given us this, and it also has some serious problems.

Shit, I'm pretty much on the "extreme progressive" side of things, and not even I am anti-capitalist. I am merely also pro-labor and pro-regulation. A regulated market is not a free market; only the most extreme of the regressives are, in fact, free-market capitalists.

My vision for the future is one wherein companies are regulated in a specific way: where, following incorporation, as a cost of limiting liability and extracting profits, the workers at a particular company, as individuals, gain ownership stake over the companies they work for.

Essentially nothing changes except for the fact that power and profits eventually start to go to the people who are actually doing the work.

There's a problem when the only thing you need to make more money is to simply have a lot of money.

The workers are paid a wage for their labor. Why mandate companies give the workers a cut of the profits and partial ownership?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because the workers create all the profits. The workers, in every real measure are the company.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor?

 

[Harry Bosch]

The workers are paid a wage for their labor. Why mandate companies give the workers a cut of the profits and partial ownership?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because the workers create all the profits. The workers, in every real measure are the company.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor?

First off, I think that profit sharing with workers is a very wise move. But you are incorrect. What creates profits is creating a new product that attracts demand, developing a cohesive team that makes good decisions, setting up and maintaining the supply chain, developing good partners who you trust and who trust you, keeping investors happy, hiring the right people, motivating the team, keeping ahead of the curve, listening to customers and workers, being willing to change and adapt, learning, and etc. What really drives businesses is those at the top making the correct decisions. When investors (banks, angels, VCs, and etc) evaluate a company, they evaluate a company's ability to make the correct decisions.

 

[Jarhyn]

The workers are paid a wage for their labor. Why mandate companies give the workers a cut of the profits and partial ownership?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because the workers create all the profits. The workers, in every real measure are the company.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor?

First off, I think that profit sharing with workers is a very wise move. But you are incorrect. What creates profits is creating a new product that attracts demand, developing a cohesive team that makes good decisions, setting up and maintaining the supply chain, developing good partners who you trust and who trust you, keeping investors happy, hiring the right people, motivating the team, keeping ahead of the curve, listening to customers and workers, being willing to change and adapt, learning, and etc. What really drives businesses is those at the top making the correct decisions. When investors (banks, angels, VCs, and etc) evaluate a company, they evaluate a company's ability to make the correct decisions.

No, creating a product that has demand creates a product that has demand. At that point, the people who make the product are already the only ones creating profit.

All of those activities are activities that are work done by some fraction of the labor of a company. Every last part.

And in the establishment of an initial direction, there is some argument that the executive leadership needs to be well picked, but that is still just another form of specialized labor, still just another job, and still entitled to only a small fraction of the fruits of that labor.

I don't argue against the idea that initially, the folks who take the time to set up the machine have some entitlement to be paid for this work, and see returns on the risks they make that are good risks. However...

As a function of extracting that value, with a failure to continue meaningfully contributing to the continued function of the system, they can go fuck off.

 

[PyramidHead]

First off, I think that profit sharing with workers is a very wise move. But you are incorrect. What creates profits is creating a new product that attracts demand, developing a cohesive team that makes good decisions, setting up and maintaining the supply chain, developing good partners who you trust and who trust you, keeping investors happy, hiring the right people, motivating the team, keeping ahead of the curve, listening to customers and workers, being willing to change and adapt, learning, and etc. What really drives businesses is those at the top making the correct decisions. When investors (banks, angels, VCs, and etc) evaluate a company, they evaluate a company's ability to make the correct decisions.

No, creating a product that has demand creates a product that has demand. At that point, the people who make the product are already the only ones creating profit.

All of those activities are activities that are work done by some fraction of the labor of a company. Every last part.

And in the establishment of an initial direction, there is some argument that the executive leadership needs to be well picked, but that is still just another form of specialized labor, still just another job, and still entitled to only a small fraction of the fruits of that labor.

I don't argue against the idea that initially, the folks who take the time to set up the machine have some entitlement to be paid for this work, and see returns on the risks they make that are good risks. However...

As a function of extracting that value, with a failure to continue meaningfully contributing to the continued function of the system, they can go fuck off.

You will both talk past each other trying to justify the value extraction or frame it as unfair, but it's actually a requirement for capitalism. If workers were paid the full value of their labor, there would be no surplus left to reproduce the cycle of production. Assuming there is a surplus leftover after the cycle has been reproduced, some of it would need to go towards taxes, interest on loans, expansion, and other necessary aspects of capitalist production (industrial or otherwise). So, it was never even a possibility for workers not to be exploited under capitalism; you (Jarhyn) recently said you're not anti-capitalist, but you can't have it both ways. No capitalist economy can possibly survive without exploiting the working class, and regulations to limit the scope of exploitation will never eliminate it entirely (and will almost always be reversed or not enforced), since it exists by definition and not because of greed--though greed certainly can exacerbate it. As long as commodities are produced by workers who do not own what they produce or the means of producing it, wages will always fall short of the value embodied in their labor output. Whether you think this is alright as long as they still have a reasonable standard of living, or you think it's an unacceptable and arbitrary constraint on the fabric of society, is a more pressing question than the matter of how high or low wages should be.

 

[Jarhyn]

First off, I think that profit sharing with workers is a very wise move. But you are incorrect. What creates profits is creating a new product that attracts demand, developing a cohesive team that makes good decisions, setting up and maintaining the supply chain, developing good partners who you trust and who trust you, keeping investors happy, hiring the right people, motivating the team, keeping ahead of the curve, listening to customers and workers, being willing to change and adapt, learning, and etc. What really drives businesses is those at the top making the correct decisions. When investors (banks, angels, VCs, and etc) evaluate a company, they evaluate a company's ability to make the correct decisions.

No, creating a product that has demand creates a product that has demand. At that point, the people who make the product are already the only ones creating profit.

All of those activities are activities that are work done by some fraction of the labor of a company. Every last part.

And in the establishment of an initial direction, there is some argument that the executive leadership needs to be well picked, but that is still just another form of specialized labor, still just another job, and still entitled to only a small fraction of the fruits of that labor.

I don't argue against the idea that initially, the folks who take the time to set up the machine have some entitlement to be paid for this work, and see returns on the risks they make that are good risks. However...

As a function of extracting that value, with a failure to continue meaningfully contributing to the continued function of the system, they can go fuck off.

You will both talk past each other trying to justify the value extraction or frame it as unfair, but it's actually a requirement for capitalism. If workers were paid the full value of their labor, there would be no surplus left to reproduce the cycle of production. Assuming there is a surplus leftover after the cycle has been reproduced, some of it would need to go towards taxes, interest on loans, expansion, and other necessary aspects of capitalist production (industrial or otherwise). So, it was never even a possibility for workers not to be exploited under capitalism; you (Jarhyn) recently said you're not anti-capitalist, but you can't have it both ways. No capitalist economy can possibly survive without exploiting the working class, and regulations to limit the scope of exploitation will never eliminate it entirely (and will almost always be reversed or not enforced), since it exists by definition and not because of greed--though greed certainly can exacerbate it. As long as commodities are produced by workers who do not own what they produce or the means of producing it, wages will always fall short of the value embodied in their labor output. Whether you think this is alright as long as they still have a reasonable standard of living, or you think it's an unacceptable and arbitrary constraint on the fabric of society, is a more pressing question than the matter of how high or low wages should be.

Which is a straw-man of my position, and you should know better about me by now. I don't discount that need or value. I merely present a mechanism for fulfilling that need that is not "unending": that when investment is called due by investors in the form of dividends, some fraction of that ownership is lost to labor as a function of net profits extracted: that the extraction of surplus of labor that drives continued investment is limited by regulation by an equitable society.

 

[PyramidHead]

You will both talk past each other trying to justify the value extraction or frame it as unfair, but it's actually a requirement for capitalism. If workers were paid the full value of their labor, there would be no surplus left to reproduce the cycle of production. Assuming there is a surplus leftover after the cycle has been reproduced, some of it would need to go towards taxes, interest on loans, expansion, and other necessary aspects of capitalist production (industrial or otherwise). So, it was never even a possibility for workers not to be exploited under capitalism; you (Jarhyn) recently said you're not anti-capitalist, but you can't have it both ways. No capitalist economy can possibly survive without exploiting the working class, and regulations to limit the scope of exploitation will never eliminate it entirely (and will almost always be reversed or not enforced), since it exists by definition and not because of greed--though greed certainly can exacerbate it. As long as commodities are produced by workers who do not own what they produce or the means of producing it, wages will always fall short of the value embodied in their labor output. Whether you think this is alright as long as they still have a reasonable standard of living, or you think it's an unacceptable and arbitrary constraint on the fabric of society, is a more pressing question than the matter of how high or low wages should be.

Which is a straw-man of my position, and you should know better about me by now. I don't discount that need or value. I merely present a mechanism for fulfilling that need that is not "unending": that when investment is called due by investors in the form of dividends, some fraction of that ownership is lost to labor as a function of net profits extracted: that the extraction of surplus of labor that drives continued investment is limited by regulation by an equitable society.

Better regulated than not, sure. But if you want equitable, then that has to be part of a larger struggle to eliminate the need for investors in the first place; their existence as a requirement of the system is the main barrier to an equitable society, not how much or how little they give back to labor.

 

[Jarhyn]

You will both talk past each other trying to justify the value extraction or frame it as unfair, but it's actually a requirement for capitalism. If workers were paid the full value of their labor, there would be no surplus left to reproduce the cycle of production. Assuming there is a surplus leftover after the cycle has been reproduced, some of it would need to go towards taxes, interest on loans, expansion, and other necessary aspects of capitalist production (industrial or otherwise). So, it was never even a possibility for workers not to be exploited under capitalism; you (Jarhyn) recently said you're not anti-capitalist, but you can't have it both ways. No capitalist economy can possibly survive without exploiting the working class, and regulations to limit the scope of exploitation will never eliminate it entirely (and will almost always be reversed or not enforced), since it exists by definition and not because of greed--though greed certainly can exacerbate it. As long as commodities are produced by workers who do not own what they produce or the means of producing it, wages will always fall short of the value embodied in their labor output. Whether you think this is alright as long as they still have a reasonable standard of living, or you think it's an unacceptable and arbitrary constraint on the fabric of society, is a more pressing question than the matter of how high or low wages should be.

Which is a straw-man of my position, and you should know better about me by now. I don't discount that need or value. I merely present a mechanism for fulfilling that need that is not "unending": that when investment is called due by investors in the form of dividends, some fraction of that ownership is lost to labor as a function of net profits extracted: that the extraction of surplus of labor that drives continued investment is limited by regulation by an equitable society.

Better regulated than not, sure. But if you want equitable, then that has to be part of a larger struggle to eliminate the need for investors in the first place; their existence as a requirement of the system is the main barrier to an equitable society, not how much or how little they give back to labor.

There will always be a need in society to have a mechanism which decides upon which ideas justify risks, as defined by an allocation of our natural resources and infrastructural semaphores. This is a gatekeeping operation for which a gatekeeper is necessary, and it is not well served by direct democratic process nor by unthi king lottery. It needs some kind of predictive executive process and that means an "investor" of some sort whose output sees reward as a function of success. You can't get away from that.

 

[PyramidHead]

Better regulated than not, sure. But if you want equitable, then that has to be part of a larger struggle to eliminate the need for investors in the first place; their existence as a requirement of the system is the main barrier to an equitable society, not how much or how little they give back to labor.

There will always be a need in society to have a mechanism which decides upon which ideas justify risks, as defined by an allocation of our natural resources and infrastructural semaphores. This is a gatekeeping operation for which a gatekeeper is necessary, and it is not well served by direct democratic process nor by unthi king lottery. It needs some kind of predictive executive process and that means an "investor" of some sort whose output sees reward as a function of success. You can't get away from that.

Agree to disagree. The need you're talking about is far older than investors. On top of which, the notion that the people who decide which ideas justify which risks should be those whose risk/reward calculus is at bottom financial is part of the problem. The form that is taken by concepts such as risk, reward, justification, and success are all inherent to the mode of production itself. Capitalism is the cycle M-C-M', where money enters as capital, is converted into commodities, and yields more money as a result of being sold. There is no getting around the need for M' to be larger than M, and as long as that's true, investors will always strategize around this requirement. Success in a capitalist economy is M' being much larger than M, period. That doesn't relate in any sensible way to society's need to decide what to produce, how much to produce, how to make it, and who gets it. If you're just saying that decision should be made by somebody, like the village elder or a priest, that's stretching the meaning of 'investor' beyond the utility of the term.

 

[Jarhyn]

Better regulated than not, sure. But if you want equitable, then that has to be part of a larger struggle to eliminate the need for investors in the first place; their existence as a requirement of the system is the main barrier to an equitable society, not how much or how little they give back to labor.

There will always be a need in society to have a mechanism which decides upon which ideas justify risks, as defined by an allocation of our natural resources and infrastructural semaphores. This is a gatekeeping operation for which a gatekeeper is necessary, and it is not well served by direct democratic process nor by unthi king lottery. It needs some kind of predictive executive process and that means an "investor" of some sort whose output sees reward as a function of success. You can't get away from that.

Agree to disagree. The need you're talking about is far older than investors. On top of which, the notion that the people who decide which ideas justify which risks should be those whose risk/reward calculus is at bottom financial is part of the problem. The form that is taken by concepts such as risk, reward, justification, and success are all inherent to the mode of production itself. Capitalism is the cycle M-C-M', where money enters as capital, is converted into commodities, and yields more money as a result of being sold. There is no getting around the need for M' to be larger than M, and as long as that's true, investors will always strategize around this requirement. Success in a capitalist economy is M' being much larger than M, period. That doesn't relate in any sensible way to society's need to decide what to produce, how much to produce, how to make it, and who gets it. If you're just saying that decision should be made by somebody, like the village elder or a priest, that's stretching the meaning of 'investor' beyond the utility of the term.

When it comes to the economy, I don't claim to know the game theoretic best strategy for allotment of gatekeeping power, and honestly, o don't know if such a mechanism exists. When it comes to the edification of the labor system and distribution of decisionmaking power of what defines "what is successful" and "who shall be served by the system", I merely know that my proposal to make ownership "leaky" towards labor interests serves as an improvement over the current paradigm.

I assume you know by now that I am, when feasible, an advocate of going directly to what we know is right, when we know what right is: defining personhood as a function of social participation rather than race, gender, species, or metabolic mechanism. That said, I see that this particular problem is unsolved, and one still open to an incremental change paradigm. This is an increment in a direction that hasn't been attempted and stands to be.

 

[James Madison]

The workers are paid a wage for their labor. Why mandate companies give the workers a cut of the profits and partial ownership?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because the workers create all the profits. The workers, in every real measure are the company.

I can understand why a business owner retains the profit, AKA in Marxian circles, surplus value. Without the resources needed, machinery, tools, raw materials, etcetera, provided at times by the business owner, no amount of labor can create a profit. To be sure, machinery, tools, raw materials, cannot be utilized without labor to make a profit. So, business owner takes a cut for supplying the tools, machinery, and resources needed to make a product that can be sold. The laborer is compensated, or can be compensated with, inter alia, wages.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor.

They do not have their “entitlement” with wages?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jarhyn]

I can understand why a business owner retains the profit, AKA in Marxian circles, surplus value. Without the resources needed, machinery, tools, raw materials, etcetera, provided at times by the business owner, no amount of labor can create a profit. To be sure, machinery, tools, raw materials, cannot be utilized without labor to make a profit. So, business owner takes a cut for supplying the tools, machinery, and resources needed to make a product that can be sold. The laborer is compensated, or can be compensated with, inter alia, wages.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor.

They do not have their “entitlement” with wages?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No. They don't have an entitlement with "wages". "Wages" are the literal worst compromise available to compensate someone for work, and the acceptance of it will naturally extract all self-determination and comfort from labor in the most efficient way possible.

Ok, not QUITE the worst. Slavery is still a slight bit worse, but in reality, the endpoint of wages, given perpetual lack of ownership over the means, end up in the same place anyway.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Workers buying out companies is a fairly common succession plan. We've explored it. The government could make ESOP transactions easier and encourage them more. The truth here is that many workers have no desire to become owners. It's actually far more work and long hours than what you think. Most workers that I've met prefer security, shorter hours, less stress and higher pay vs becoming equity partners.

That's bullshit and you know it. From the perspective of most shareholders, the "work" involved in it is receiving dividends, elections for the board, and sending a proxy to the meeting... Or selling out the shares again.

You're mixing up shareholders with the people who actually run the company. The former is obviously easy, the latter is not.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The workers are paid a wage for their labor. Why mandate companies give the workers a cut of the profits and partial ownership?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because the workers create all the profits. The workers, in every real measure are the company.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor?

The workers aren't going to create much of anything without the capital provided by the owners. They aren't going to contribute it and take a major risk (I know someone about to sell their house in order to raise money to start a business) without a hope of good rewards.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Better regulated than not, sure. But if you want equitable, then that has to be part of a larger struggle to eliminate the need for investors in the first place; their existence as a requirement of the system is the main barrier to an equitable society, not how much or how little they give back to labor.

The judgments as to where money is allocated have to be made by somebody. Experience has shown that the more skin the allocators have in the game the better job they do.

 

[James Madison]

Proposed California "ethnic studies" curriculum to teach that capitalism is oppressive ...

I can understand why a business owner retains the profit, AKA in Marxian circles, surplus value. Without the resources needed, machinery, tools, raw materials, etcetera, provided at times by the business owner, no amount of labor can create a profit. To be sure, machinery, tools, raw materials, cannot be utilized without labor to make a profit. So, business owner takes a cut for supplying the tools, machinery, and resources needed to make a product that can be sold. The laborer is compensated, or can be compensated with, inter alia, wages.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor.

They do not have their “entitlement” with wages?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No. They don't have an entitlement with "wages". "Wages" are the literal worst compromise available to compensate someone for work, and the acceptance of it will naturally extract all self-determination and comfort from labor in the most efficient way possible.

Ok, not QUITE the worst. Slavery is still a slight bit worse, but in reality, the endpoint of wages, given perpetual lack of ownership over the means, end up in the same place anyway.

How do you, me, or anyone else know that “wages are the literal worst compromise available to compensate someone for work”? What is the test, or rule, uh, what are you relying upon to believe such a statement is true?

Of course, I want to relate any answer to the my question back to the question which inspired our dialogue. Why should employees get a cut of the profits? Phrased another way, why should the government, as part of regulating a business, compel the business to share its profits with its employees?


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[Harry Bosch]

I can understand why a business owner retains the profit, AKA in Marxian circles, surplus value. Without the resources needed, machinery, tools, raw materials, etcetera, provided at times by the business owner, no amount of labor can create a profit. To be sure, machinery, tools, raw materials, cannot be utilized without labor to make a profit. So, business owner takes a cut for supplying the tools, machinery, and resources needed to make a product that can be sold. The laborer is compensated, or can be compensated with, inter alia, wages.

Why shouldn't people have an entitlement to the fruit of their labor.

They do not have their “entitlement” with wages?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No. They don't have an entitlement with "wages". "Wages" are the literal worst compromise available to compensate someone for work, and the acceptance of it will naturally extract all self-determination and comfort from labor in the most efficient way possible.

Ok, not QUITE the worst. Slavery is still a slight bit worse, but in reality, the endpoint of wages, given perpetual lack of ownership over the means, end up in the same place anyway.

There are pros and cons of wages. The pros: wages are paid out before profit. Wages tend to be much more consistent and dependable that distributions. Distributions are generally only paid out if net profit is positive. Salaried workers have the freedom to rapidly move if they wanted.

Secondly, regarding your second comment: the vast majority of companies are started by salaried workers who save excess wages to use as capital to start new companies.

 

[Harry Bosch]

First off, I think that profit sharing with workers is a very wise move. But you are incorrect. What creates profits is creating a new product that attracts demand, developing a cohesive team that makes good decisions, setting up and maintaining the supply chain, developing good partners who you trust and who trust you, keeping investors happy, hiring the right people, motivating the team, keeping ahead of the curve, listening to customers and workers, being willing to change and adapt, learning, and etc. What really drives businesses is those at the top making the correct decisions. When investors (banks, angels, VCs, and etc) evaluate a company, they evaluate a company's ability to make the correct decisions.

No, creating a product that has demand creates a product that has demand. At that point, the people who make the product are already the only ones creating profit.

All of those activities are activities that are work done by some fraction of the labor of a company. Every last part.

And in the establishment of an initial direction, there is some argument that the executive leadership needs to be well picked, but that is still just another form of specialized labor, still just another job, and still entitled to only a small fraction of the fruits of that labor.

I don't argue against the idea that initially, the folks who take the time to set up the machine have some entitlement to be paid for this work, and see returns on the risks they make that are good risks. However...

As a function of extracting that value, with a failure to continue meaningfully contributing to the continued function of the system, they can go fuck off.

Then your beef is with passive owners? Is it your opinion that people with excess cash should invest in companies but should not be paid for it?

 

[Harry Bosch]

You will both talk past each other trying to justify the value extraction or frame it as unfair, but it's actually a requirement for capitalism. If workers were paid the full value of their labor, there would be no surplus left to reproduce the cycle of production. Assuming there is a surplus leftover after the cycle has been reproduced, some of it would need to go towards taxes, interest on loans, expansion, and other necessary aspects of capitalist production (industrial or otherwise). So, it was never even a possibility for workers not to be exploited under capitalism; you (Jarhyn) recently said you're not anti-capitalist, but you can't have it both ways. No capitalist economy can possibly survive without exploiting the working class, and regulations to limit the scope of exploitation will never eliminate it entirely (and will almost always be reversed or not enforced), since it exists by definition and not because of greed--though greed certainly can exacerbate it. As long as commodities are produced by workers who do not own what they produce or the means of producing it, wages will always fall short of the value embodied in their labor output. Whether you think this is alright as long as they still have a reasonable standard of living, or you think it's an unacceptable and arbitrary constraint on the fabric of society, is a more pressing question than the matter of how high or low wages should be.

Which is a straw-man of my position, and you should know better about me by now. I don't discount that need or value. I merely present a mechanism for fulfilling that need that is not "unending": that when investment is called due by investors in the form of dividends, some fraction of that ownership is lost to labor as a function of net profits extracted: that the extraction of surplus of labor that drives continued investment is limited by regulation by an equitable society.

I understand your motivation. I actually think that it's commendable. You want to help people. I think that ultimately a far more effective way to help people is to increase their safety net, lower the barriers to success. This requires taxes. Actually, most owners used to be workers. If your goal is to increase ownership for workers, a simpler more effective plan would be to lower barriers to ownership. IOW, make startup capital easier to get, increase access to education, lower costs to education, lower regulation/costs to start ESOPs, increase funding to SBA/SBLC's, and etc.

Not all workers are equipped and/or want to be owners. Being an owner often means pledging all your personal assets as collateral. It generally means very long hours, stress, weekends at work. I work 24 hours a day. But again, I support making it easier for more workers to become owners if they have that desire.