Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact

@196

@PropaGandalf, what is your take on the article’s argument?

I can’t respond to @minnix’s lemmy account, so I will put my response here to the second half of their post.

The traditional libertarian stories that are claimed to rule out self-sale contracts are addressed in:

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Philmore-1982.scan_.pdf

The theory of inalienable rights is what rules out these contract for all coherent classical liberals. Notably, the set of ruled out contracts includes the employer-employee contract

@libertarianism

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

Liberalism developed the theory of inalienable rights that showed that slave trade, non-democratic constitution, coverture marriage, later capitalist property relations, and later non-democratic firms are invalid. Inalienable rights theory rules out the application of property rights to persons or their actions. Inalienable means consent is not a sufficient condition to transfer or extinguish the right. This is especially important for criticizing voluntary self-sale and employment @politics

Abolishing the employment contract isn’t more constraints than ancap. It is part of legitimate contracts’ non-fraudulent nature.

Groups enable the large-scale cooperation needed for an ordered stateless society.

Groups could have judicial systems. Judicial agreements could exist between groups. Thieves would pay damages to the victim. For serious crimes, there could be expulsion from group(s) and blocklists

For arguments, groups could subsidize agreement across social distance

@technology

1 individual can be a part of many groups. Being a part of zero groups would make people pay steep exit fees for every economic transaction with you and you wouldn’t be able to access any group collective property, group currencies or receive mutual aid that these groups provide. There would be strong economic incentives to participate in these groups. Since all firms would be mandated to be worker coops, these groups would be a new way to provide startup capital to new firms

@technology

The employment contract is such a contract. It involves a legal transfer of legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of production from the employees to the solely the employer. However, there is no corresponding de facto transfer of de facto responsibility. The contract is unfulfillable.

Groups set exit fees for transferring out community value. They can lower the exit fees for mutually-recognized groups, and exclude “groups” with no public goods funding
@technology

So you agree that the employer-employee contract must be abolished due to it violating workers’ inalienable right to workplace democracy?

The way collective property works is that each group member that possesses collective property self-assess and declares the price they would be willing to turn over the possession to another group member. Then, they pay a percentage fee on this self-assessed price to the group. Groups democratically decide what to do with the collective funds @technology

Cooperatives existing doesn’t solve the problem as it doesn’t address the violation of inalienable rights in all non-coop firms. Consent doesn’t transfer responsibility. The solution is to abolish the employment contract and secure universal self-employment as in a worker coop.

Markets have a place, but non-market mechanisms and mutual aid should flourish within groups. Ancaps see the logic of exit, but ignore the dual logic of commitment and voice e.g. democracy and social property
@technology

Capitalism puts de facto persons into a thing’s legal role. Consenting to a contract doesn’t alienate personhood. As labor-sellers, workers are treated as persons. The issue arises with the workers as labor performers. The employees are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but get 0% of property and liabilities for the results of production. Instead, the employer has 100% sole legal responsibility.

Individuals are the basic entity. Groups’ rules vary
@technology

Capitalism is inherently based on dishonesty. It routinely treats people as things in the employer-employee relationship. When the factual and legal situation don’t match, that is morally a fraud.

Postcapitalism would consists of various intersecting and overlapping voluntary democratic associations managing their own collectivized means of production. Within these groups, there would still be a notion of possession of the shared asset.

@technology

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

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

What do you mean by capitalism? @general

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

Dialetheism is the view that some contradictions (i.e. p and not-p) are true. The argument for this is based on the liar’s paradox:

This sentence is false.

If you follow the logic through, you get the conclusion that it is both true and false. It requires some changes to Frege-Russell-style classical logic to be coherent, but it allows one to solve almost all paradoxes in one philosophical move. For example, you can have naive set comprehension principles

Capitalism v. communism is certainly a false dilemma. There are other alternatives such as Georgism as you noted. I would go further and advocate a Georgist economic democracy where all firms are structured as worker coops. Similar to the problem you identify with capitalism in that it fails to treat land and capital differently, the mainstream of Georgist thought fails to differentiate labor from capital in an important respect. Labor can’t factually be transferred unlike capital @196

No @lemmyshitpost

You’re right that wasn’t very clear.

Capitalism is exploitative due to the employment contract not non-worker capital ownership. The employment contract is bad because it gives the employer 100% of the property right to the produced output (i.e. ownership of new cars in a car firm) and 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs (i.e. factory machine services) while employees get 0%. The workers don’t create the output out of nothing they use input materials @lemmyshitpost

The payment to investors in this case isn’t based on a non-worker solely appropriating the fruits of labor. The payment is satisfaction of the liability workers jointly appropriate as part of the negative product. Paying covers the costs of the negative product. It is compensation to the investors for the capital they supplied and the work they did building up that much capital @lemmyshitpost