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Posts
57
Comments
262
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I wouldn't say FSF is too ideological. They just don't have a political strategy for how they will bring about the changes they desire. To really change things towards a new mode of production, you need a way for people in the new mode of production to earn a living. Also, their ideology is wrong in its lack of emphasis on software workers' rights and the relations of production

  • If you look at property rights, the contrast is even stronger. The employer owns 100% of the property rights to the produced outputs and owes 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs. Meanwhile, workers qua employee receive 0% of both. This is despite their joint de facto responsibility for producing those results violating the basic principle of justice.

    We need to move towards a copyfarleft model that considers the rights of both software users and developers unlike copyleft

  • The moral principle is that de jure responsibility should be assigned in accordance with de facto responsibility. Capitalism doesn't satisfy this principle. That is the problem. The reason I mentioned that de facto responsibility isn't transferable is that employer-employee contracts inherently involves a transfer of legal responsibility, but there is no way to transfer de facto responsibility to match. Employer-employee contracts are invalid because of this.

    @whitepeopletwitter

  • Sure, alternatives can exist within capitalism, but the problem is that capitalism allows persons to be legally treated as things as well in the employer-employee relationship.

    I am exclusively talking about deliberate actions, and the de facto responsibility that comes with them i.e. the who-did-it sense of responsibility. De facto responsibility can't be transferred to match the legal responsibility asssignments in the employer-employee contract

    @whitepeopletwitter

  • I'm familiar. What I am saying is that the subjective theory of value is correct, but that doesn't mean some sort of labor theory doesn't hold. The labor theory of property (LTP) holds. Think Proudhon and the classical laborists and less Marx @whitepeopletwitter

  • Because the employing class and their political power won't let us.

    Capitalism denies people their humanity and treats people like things. For example, 1 test for whether a system recognizes people's humanity is whether or not it holds them responsible for the positive and/or negative results of their action. Capitalism fails there because it holds the employer solely legally responsible for workers' joint de facto actions in the workplace.

    Marxism is not the only alternative @politics

  • Workers are responsible for creating the output (positive) and using up the inputs including the services of expensive tools (negative). Sure, labor wouldn't be able to do what they do without invested capital, but this point doesn't support capitalism. The workers could just as easily jointly work for themselves in a non-capitalist setup with investors still being compensated.

    To sell labor, there must be a transfer of responsibility, but such a procedure is impossible @whitepeopletwitter

  • Labor isn't the source of value. Labor is the source of the whole product, which is what has value, of the firm. Labor is de facto responsible for what is created in production. The employing class is quite literally stealing from workers through their appropriation of the property rights to the produced outputs and the liabilities for the used-up inputs, which together make up the whole product . This appropriation implies a mismatch between legal and de facto responsibility @whitepeopletwitter

  • That's why you use the revenue derived to fund a UBI. Then, there would be a safety net, which could potentially be used to partially cover one's land value tax obligations. As land becomes more valuable it is important that people use it more productively. Land value tax encourages building denser and reduces urban sprawl.

    Many people rent housing. The key advantage of a land value tax is that landlords are unable to pass it on to tenants. They have to take the hit.

    @socialism

  • Such a license would allow commercial use by worker cooperatives. I understand that software freedom as it has been defined excludes such licenses, but I would argue that this position is wrong. There is nothing unfree about preventing firms based on workplace autocracy from exploiting the commons and the workers that work on the commons and the workers in their own firms @linux

  • @drwho The difference in my mind is that AGPL doesn't come with a builtin business model to fund the legal fights when they become necessary. Such a copyfarleft license does by charging capitalist firms a licensing fee for using the software. These funds can then be used for paying project developers and funding license enforcement for those that choose to use the software without paying the licensing fee @linux

  • What I am suggesting is using a license that disallows capitalist firms completely from using the software not AGPL, which still allows them to use the software as long as they provide source code. In other words, copyfarleft that only extends use rights to non-capitalist commons-based economic entities-like worker coops. The project can then dual license to capitalist firms charging them for the right to use the software. This would give them a source of funding to fund any legal fights @linux

  • Capitalism's defining institutions are

    1. The employer-employee contract
    2. Private ownership of the means of production
    3. Private property in land

    The alternative to capitalism I propose, Georgist economic democracy, abolishes 1 and 3. 2 continues formally but there is widespread collective ownership of the means of production. Markets continue to exist to help coordinate production and allocate resources. Many defenders of capitalism incorrectly conflate capitalism with markets @general

  • "Now it is time to state the conditions under which private property and free contract will lead to an optimal allocation of resources.... The institution of private property and free contract as we know it is modified to permit individuals to sell or mortgage their persons in return for present and/or future benefits" -- Economist Carl Christ in US congressional testimony

    "whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would" -- Robert Nozick

    @socialism

  • The challenges you mention don't really refute the main arguments for worker coops, inalienable rights theory, even if they were unsolvable problems that couldn't be solved no matter what other changes were made. Economic democracy aims for workers to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor in property rights terms not value. This is based on the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Capitalist firms don't satisfy this basic tenet. They are thus illegitimate @196