posted in Asklemmy
Why is it such a crazy idea that the public should own the means of production?
We have lost all sense of self preservation. Almost like we the gipity. Which came first the gipity or the ape? I swear chain smoking monkeys driving cars.
This is a nice sounding sentiment but in practice you get the same system anyway.
Who is the “public”? It might start with councils, co ops, group discussions, but eventually it always gets consolidated by the most cunning people, doesn’t matter the system, it’s a long standing historical cycle.
Democracy with peaceful transfer of power is new, America was always considered an experiment, and it seems like that it might be failing because the forces of accumulation, power, and control are too pathologically overwhelming.
The cycle always ends with bloody revolution, new government, the new government is usually an autocracy wrapped in a flag of something populist sounding, things get marginally better for people for a time then the accumulation cycle kicks in again because a new set of cunning people enter that can take action on a freshly born populace and around and around we go.
The only thing that has a prayer of keeping anything in check is a citizenry that stays aware, mistrusts whatever the government is, understands the cycle, and continuously fights for rights by making it a credible threat that the people WILL revolt unless the leaders do the right thing.
Modern day leaders have incredible tools available to passify and stupefy at scale, I’m not sure how this can be fought back against now.
Bottom line though is socialism, democracy, capitalism, communism, monarchy, despotism they are all just systems run by people. It’s up to people to hold people accountable no matter what you’re running. If people aren’t willing to keep fighting for justice and they stay complacent ALL systems trend towards corruption.
I’m so sick of this patronizing head-pat “everything else is just as bad, we tried” response.
The fact of the matter is that the easiest way to do this under our system is making companies employee owned.
I worked for one for several years, and yes it was subject to many of the same administrative issues as every other company, but every single employee earned stock every month that kept increasing in value. A guy who had worked there for about 30 years as a worker -not a manager- was retiring with a stock portfolio worth millions. They also had the normal crappy 401k and social security they could have earned anywhere else, but because it was employee owned, they had all that company stock too.
So we have shown it can work to have the workers own the means of production. Is convenient to present government ownership as the same thing so it can be easily criticized, but it isn’t really.
Hey employee owned companies I agree with. I agree with trying something new for sure, my main point isn’t to patronize it’s to highlight that we need a system that keeps everyone engaged and educated.
Elites will always try to tell people not to worry, to sell their shares to them, the trust them. This needs to be prevented and discouraged structurally and culturally.
Let’s try, it’s worth trying always, I’m not saying to give up, I’m saying the cycle will cause another revolution, what we do with that new chance is important to understand what is turning the wheel.
How does that work for the next generation of employees, the ones that weren’t there from the beginning? Doesn’t it mean privatisation as people retire and sell off their shares? And doesn’t it mean dilution of value for new employees as their shares represent an ever smaller portion of the company?
How do they approach those issues?
You don’t get to take the stock when you go, you get cash value in a retirement account and the company reclaims the stock for future accrual by employees.
What determines cash value in that case?
The company has it’s value reassessed each year by an accounting firm that specializes in these evaluations. That determines stock price.
Thanks for that. I was always curious how they were able to survive staff change