jlou

If the employer has the legal right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor, then the workers have legally alienated their right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor to the employer violating their inalienable rights. The workers have to first jointly appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. This appropriation essentially implies a worker co-op mandate

@noncredibledefense

An inalienable right is one that can't be given up or transferred even with consent. This is because the right is tied to the person's de facto personhood. Like political voting rights, workers' right to appropriate the fruits of their labor is inalienable. Workers can't exchange their labor for a paycheck because, at a non-institutional level, labor is de facto non-transferable even with consent. What really happens is that inputs are transferred to workers

@noncredibledefense

A country where worker coops aren't legally mandated is illiberal because it violates workers' inalienable rights. It denies workers' private property rights over the positive and negative fruits of their labor.

The government is already involved in the legal structure of firms, so I don't see how a worker co-op mandate could be considered as more government involvement. It seems to me like different government involvement

@noncredibledefense

Worker co-ops don't necessarily involve the workers owning the means of production as worker cooperatives can lease means of production from third parties. Who owns the means of production doesn't determine which legal party is the firm. The firm is a contractual role determined by the direction of the hiring contracts.

A market economy where all firms are legally mandated to be worker co-ops is not capitalism

@noncredibledefense

Popular, here, isn't meant in an ad and attention grabbing sense.

With quadratic funding, people make voluntary contributions to newsrooms they like. The government matches these contributions using a neutral formula that results in newsrooms that receive small contributions from many people receiving a greater level of funding than those supported by small number of wealthy people. The fear mongering and bias can be avoided by allowing citizens to make negative contributions

@canada

Remember: anti-capitalism ≠ socialism

Democratic worker co-ops are postcapitalist, but are also non-socialist because they are perfectly compatible with markets and private property. I'm suggesting that Sanders is authentically anti-capitalist, but he conflates his anti-capitalism with being socialist in a category error and thus buys into a false dichotomy.

All firms must be legally mandated to be worker coops on classical liberal inalienable rights theory grounds

@noncredibledefense

I agree that giving alienable voting shares to workers isn't anti-capitalist. It becomes anti-capitalist when the voting rights over management and corporate governance are inalienable meaning they are legally recognized as non-transferable even with consent.

Here is a talk by people involved with Bernie Sanders politically about how all companies should be democratically controlled by the workers: https://youtu.be/E8mq9va5_ZE

Sanders supports worker co-op conversions

@noncredibledefense

Instead, we should implement new mechanisms for funding public goods like news such as quadratic finance. Quadratic finance is a non-market mechanism that enables a decentralized ecosystem of self-organizing public goods producers such as newsrooms. It overcomes the collective action problem of donation-based models by considering the number of people contributing as well as the amount of money contributed. Newsrooms with a large base of popular support receive greater funding

@canada

I agree he is not a socialist in the 20th century sense, but he clearly says that workers should have ownership stake in companies, which is not a capitalist sentiment. He advocates for employee ownership of companies. I also am aware of who his economic advisors on these issues are and they are very much anti-capitalist

@noncredibledefense

Bernie Sanders is a proper anti-capitalist not just social democratic capitalist. See: https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/

@noncredibledefense

Counter-example to your claim of non-existence of anti-capitalist liberalism: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Classical-Liberal-JurisprudenceJune2018.pdf

@memes

Software companies usually form as worker coops directly rather than using an ESOP mechanim

Here is a list worker coops: https://www.usworker.coop/directory/

There are some software companies in there under technology

Worker coops can delegate decision-making to managers and executives. This can ensure speedy decision-making. Having workers control the firm doesn't mean that every decision must be made by referendum. There can be delegation and more representative democracy

@politicalmemes