this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Primary accumulation says you have to work for someone else. You never got to be there when all the free land was handed out.
"Everyone works for someone" is a going line in modern business. But this ignores the folks that are legacies of the fortunes of prior generations. The British Royal Family gets to fuck around however they please. The Vanderbilts and Hiltons and Kennedys and Bushs have no economic obligations, just enormous trust funds fueled by the labors of their peers.
The primitive hunter gatherer worked 3-5 hours a day with the rest reserved for leisure. What this amounted to over time was the explosion of art, language, and culture that formed the foundation of the modern scientific movement.
For millennia, the information primitive people accumulated - understanding of seasonal cycles, crop cultivation strategies, navigational techniques, linguistic techniques, the development of simple tools - was passed down and matured, until we could enjoy a life better than any other species on the planet. That absolutely included health care. Greek and Chinese physicians were doing surgeries 4000 years ago. Egyptians and Persians were mastering anatomy. We've got evidence of dentists dating back to 10,000 BCE.
What we've developed in the modern era is an accumulation of historical knowledge that's accelerated thanks to a boom in population and a period of relative global peace. But we wouldn't have been in the position to capitalize on a population boom / peace dividend if we'd never had the leisure time to make those original scientific discoveries.
It does not. It forces one (large) group of people to surrender their surplus gains to another (significantly smaller) set. It prevents people from working for themselves and saps them of resources to trade with one another.
Every stage is exploitive. The Late Stage of Capitalism just happens to be the one where the folks closest to the imperial core begin to suffer a fraction of what folks on the periphery endured.
You have raised a number of points here, and unfortunately I don't have the time to debate all of them.
The key takeaway i have from your comments is that your only focus is on those who succeed. You've ignored all of those who took the same risks and didn't make it. You see the success, but you don't see the time and history they (originally) put in to make it happen.
The company I currently own started off with the equivalent of about 8 hours minimum wage in assets, and one contract for 1 hour a week - I technically now no longer need to work and can sit on my ass and take minimum wage. What you, and my staff didn't see was the number of sleepless nights I had, how many weekends and public holidays I missed, how many times I worked a 10 hour day, then got up again at midnight because more work came up. You don't see the extra 20 hours a week I take on unpaid to build or invest for the next thing. I am considering passing on a contract for 15% annual growth not because I am too tired, but because there is physically not enough hours to do everything between 5pm and 8am when our work needs to be finished by, and that's before I start the next days work.
If you want to be upset about those who are at the top, who get trust funds, literally put your money and body where your mouth is. I can tell you right now that you won't benefit from it, you will suffer immensely, and it could be all for nothing, but your kids might have it easier.
My guy, you're not the only one who has ever had a sleepless night. You don't think I've pulled all-nighters for my assorted employers? You don't think I've driven overnight in the rain to an office in a different city to fix a machine that went down in the storm, so my boss could keep collecting on a contract? You don't think I pulled all-nighters preparing for job interviews in anticipation of proving myself to assholes like you?
Idfk if you cut yourself in the bathtub between meetings with investors. That's not something I think anyone should have to do, but I'm not the one running JP Morgan Chase likes its my own piggy bank. I'd just like equity in what I got my hands dirty building. And that's one thing no employer seems to want to offer.
My boss and I can be side-by-side in the trenches, trying to keep the lights on. But at the end of the day, he's the owner and I'm an "at-will" employee. My work goes into his pocket first and he pays me back a fraction of what I earned.
What do you think every employee does every fucking day?
You blew right past his final point.
Im at the point where I wonder both "what is the world coming to" and "am I turning into a boomer"?
In what reality does an employee turn up to work in a building they didn't lease, use equipment they didn't pay for, inputs they didn't buy, logistics they didn't develop, to fill contracts they didn't aquire, done through loans they aren't responsible for and a business plan they didn't back, and expect the lions share of the profit from utalising this, ironically being paid by someone they didn't hire and with money they didn't collect?
The negative product isn't the employees' problem. That is part of the problem. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs. By the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should jointly appropriate the negative product and be the party that makes the contracts with the input suppliers. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for producing the output, so should jointly own 100% of the output. Workers have a right to the fruits of their labor
So, if im reading this right - I make this, therefore I should get all the profit from it? So then who buys the equipment you used to make it?
Should every banker receive all the interest from money, that is not theirs, that they loan out?
Likewise, the employee isn't responsible for the output, the business is. Does the employee bear the cost of warranty repairs, refunds, products recalls and complaints? Does them employee pay the fine if it doesn't preform as advertised, or legally responsible if it injured someone? If i make a burger at a restaurant and the order is wrong, do i now have to pay for the burger myself? If the customer refuses to pay, do I then have to foot the bill?
Not necessarily that you should get all the profit. You should get the whole (positive and negative) product. The workers would have to jointly buy or lease the equipment as they're responsible for using up its services in production.
Banks should be structured as democratic worker coops.
The workers are jointly de facto responsible, the "who did the deed" sense of responsibility, for the output. The pure application of the tenet I mentioned is to purposeful results of deliberate actions
Ah, so in order to have a job you have to buy a place in the company and partial ownership along with all the risks that entails. It would be fairer once you are employed, but can you see the issues that would result is? Do employees get to vet new employees as their investment would also be at risk, what you you get when you leave the company, especially if its value is rising or falling rapidly, what if some want to invest in a core piece of equipment and others don't, how much does each role require you to buy and how do skills increase or decrease this amount? What happens if you get fired?
On banks, co-op and joint ownership banks do exist.
Vetting new workers can occur during the interview process.
It would depend on the particulars of your membership contract. The law would mandate loss of voting rights for fired and leaving workers.
Each worker coop would have a system of internal capital accounts giving each worker a recoupable claim on their investments into the firm. Workers can invest different amounts.
1 worker 1 vote is the principle. Non-voting preferred stock can be free floating property rights as is the case today
Then stop arguing with internet strangers and go out and do it yourself. I can't make this any clearer - if you think its unfair, that they take a disproportionate amount, that you work soo much harder, quit bitching and quit. Because I can guarantee you won't - the job security, less responsibility and ability to let someone else worry if you have work or not is far too comfortable. At will works both ways.
~95% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. Have fun.
You are right about some people being too comfortable (or not knowledgeable on how) to start their own business, but that's not the whole story.
A business will always fail if it doesn't have the quality employees to run it. A business cannot function without employees.
Just because one side has more risk upfront doesn't mean they should keep the vast majority of the profits for themselves, forever. Long-term it's still a team effort.
There's nothing wrong with sharing the wealth that's produced from the effort which is done by all.