Is second/third home ownership ethical in this economy?
J Lou @ jlou @mastodon.social Posts 57Comments 262Joined 2 yr. ago
J Lou @ jlou @mastodon.social
Posts
57
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262
Joined
2 yr. ago
The tenet that legal and de facto responsibility match, when applied to property theoretic questions, is the tenet that people have an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The latter is the principled basis of property rights. Since employment violates the former principle, it also violates the latter. Employment contracts violate property rights' principled basis.
Labor isn't transferable.
The foundations of capitalism need destroying
Thank you for making my argument for me. Now, what morally relevantly changes when workers cooperate to produce a widget on behalf of the employer instead of committing crimes for the employer? Do they become non-conscious non-responsible robots? No.
Legal responsibility matching de facto responsibility implies that all firms should be mandated to be worker coops, and rules out employer-employee contracts. In worker coops, the workers are jointly legally responsible for the results
Not quite. Voting rights over firm governance are non-transferable/inalienable. The employer-employee contract is abolished, and everyone is always individually or jointly self-employed.
Incorporating social objectives should be done at the level of associations of worker coops
While many socialists supported worker coops in the interim, an economy of exclusively worker coops comes more so from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.
I'm aware of the standard line.
De facto responsibility can't be transferred from the employees solely to the employer to match the legal responsibility assignment in the employer-employee contract. A thought experiment showing this is to consider an employer and employee cooperating to commit a crime. The employee can't argue that they sold their labor, and are not responsible. The law correctly applies the principle of legal and de facto responsibility matching. Both are criminous
An employer, in principle, can hire both labor and capital, so they don't have to own capital. In practice, employers tend to be corporations that own capital due to bargaining power.
Workers consent to employment terms, but they can't fulfill them. The problem is that consent is not a sufficient condition to transfer de facto responsibility.
Abolishing employment doesn't infringe on property rights. Employment contracts infringe on labor's property rights to the fruits of labor
@politics
Workers are de facto responsible for creating the opportunities that employers gate keep. Employers violate workers' inalienable rights. The workers are de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but the employer gets sole legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of production. This violates the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match.
No one is responsible for creating land. Landlords deny everyone's equal claim to land
Intellectually honest people that for whatever reason started out on the center-right can be convinced to support worker coops. The arguments in favor of them are personal responsibility arguments that center-right people tend to favor. I actually posted one such moral argument for worker coops in this community. Here is a link to that post:
I agree that it is not capitalism as it abolishes the employer-employee contract, but it isn't quite socialism either because it is technically compatible with private property.
In terms of expanding the worker coop sector, I actually have some ideas for getting startup funding for worker coops, and creating economic entities that would buy up capitalist firms and convert them into worker coops
There are 2 risk reduction strategies commitment-based and diversification based. The diversification-based strategy is the usual spread your eggs across many baskets strategy, but there is also a commitment-based dual strategy where you put your eggs in a few baskets and watch over them carefully.
Workers in coops can share risks with investors with non-voting preferred shares and other financial instruments. They can diversify by investing in other worker coops non-voting shares
There would still be limited liability. Furthermore, they can share risks with investors, and self-insure against risk as well @general
The ideology is often implicit in how the model is explained. For example, 2 simple facts that go unmentioned.
- Only persons can be responsible for anything. Things, no matter how causally efficacious, can't be responsible for what is done with them
- The employer receives 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs. The workers qua employees get 0% legal claim on that. This fact is obfuscated using the pie metaphor
I would recommend checking out David Ellerman. He shows that workers get 0% the property rights to what they produce positive and negative violating the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match @sciencememes
Marx ≠ anti-capitalism
There are other modern anti-capitalist argument derived from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.
Markets ≠ capitalism
In postcapitalism, we can use markets where appropriate. We have practical examples of non-capitalist firms with worker coops and 100% ESOPs.
There are theoretical mechanisms for collective ownership that can be shown to be efficient like COST.
There are theoretical non-market democratic public goods funding mechanisms
The ancap vision lacks necessities for stable stateless societies besides the dual logics of exit and commitment. By having some rights be non-transferable, it prevents them from accumulating and concentrating maintaining decentralization and preventing collusion to form a state. There is no middle ground, in the ancap vision, between full economic planning of the firm and completely uncoordinated atomized individuals in the market. The groups I describe provide that.
@technology
Economics treats metaphors as deep truths while treating simple facts as superficial. An example of this is in presentations of MP theory where the pie metaphor is emphasized while the actual structure of property rights and liabilities is ignored and obfuscated @sciencememes
Sure, in theory, that is what it should be about. In practice, many economists bias the theories they develop to make sure the conclude in favor of their own ideological biases. Often, metaphors are treated as deep truths while simple facts are treated as superficial and ignored or even obfuscated due to their ideological implications if they were plainly stated @sciencememes
Capitalism is a system of property relations and labor relations. It is conceivable to not have those property relations and labor relations in a firm. However, a corporation doesn't do that as the employer solely appropriates the entire positive and negative result of production i.e. the property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs. In a worker coop, the workers jointly appropriate the fruits of their labor. Capitalist property relations aren't present @memes
Huh, there are worker coops and 100% ESOPs as alternatives to capitalism that can exist within capitalism @memes
100% land value tax would solve this @asklemmy