Asklemmy

If workers own the means of production, wouldn't the rich fat cats cease to exist as they've functionally been replaced?

I'm not against a fair taxation system, but the obscene wealth of CEOs is literally one of the many things that socialism addresses because you can vote on executive compensation as well as worker compensation. The people at the bottom have unique access via their voting power to prevent those at the top from achieving obscene wealth at the expense of the average worker (see: Bob Iger, who makes 400x his average employee).

Yes, a better taxation rate is needed for the wealthy, but a lot of that wealth would get punched in the dick and be out of a job when voted out by their workers. They ain't gonna be John Galting it and build a gleaming city on the hill because none of those rich twerps know how to do actual labor, so they would be out of work.

Like seriously I can't imagine someone like Elon Musk or Steve Huffman surviving a workers vote on the boss. If they can't legally put their finger on the scale by using their wealth as a cudgel, fuck nobody would vote for these fuckers to be in charge.

I always tell people when they step out on the streets, they walk in a democracy. Yet when they step into the office, they walk into a dictatorship.

Are you contending that if people knew it was an option they would form worker collectives?

The fact that they don’t, while having the freedom to do so, indicates that the typical arrangement of wage labor is consensual.

It's actually that most people simply don't have the capital to do so while entrenched capitalist interests do. But I guess maybe you're conveniently ignoring that wildly imbalanced scale to be able to say it's consenual. Most people are only born with their labor to sell while the capitalist class hands off their wealth to their progeny, who can live without labor, and thus do things like start a business without fear of failure. More than half of new businesses fail within 10 years. For someone without oodles of capital to fall back on, that kind of failure can be financially devastating, which makes them less likely to choose to run their own business, because the risk is far higher. The risk to the nepo-baby is negligible, because they have capital to fall back on, so they are more likely to start their own business. This is obviously an unbalanced situation so calling it "consensual" is frankly bullshit. Also it ignores the coercive nature of the risk of homelessness if your business fails badly, once again something the capital-having nepo-baby doesn't have to fear or risk.

Like, it's generally considered at this point that Monica Lewinsky didn't have consensual sex with Bill Clinton simply because the power relations were wildly off. He was the President of the United States of America at it's absolute zenith in history, while she was a random 20-something intern with no connections or power in the situation.

Nice try, tho.

How do you get a loan to start a business if you don’t have enough capital to begin with? It’s not that simple, it’s not on the interest of banks to invest on small businesses, because it’s comparable higher risk and they are profit driven.

As someone who started and still works in a co-op, it's because it's hard. Banks don't understand worker coops and won't lend money to you without a real person to attach the risk to, which means founders have to take an enormous risk which it can be hard to compensate them for. The legal structure isn't common so you are limited in the lawyers who can set one up for you. Others have mentioned the cost problems - I started a software dev coop so we didn't have a large capital outlay but it did cost nearly 10k just in setup costs.

It took a lot of work to get to where we are, with little supporting resources. In contrast, I started an LLC in half an hour and $150 registration fee to the government. So no, it not just "what people choose".