An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.
Who defines permitted contracts in a free market? Some right libertarians suggest that “free” markets include the “freedom” to sell labor by the lifetime or sell voting rights in the state.
“The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would.” – Robert Nozick
The theory that invalidates such contracts is the theory of inalienable rights. It has recently been shown to apply to capitalist employment
"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” – Abraham Lincoln
This quote captures the differing understandings and notions of liberty between these different political groups
A moneyless society that scales up to billions of people is unlikely to be possible
Postcapitalist alternatives that use currency to facilitate trade between actors without social ties seem much more plausible
@asklemmy
This would be joint self-employment as in a worker coop
I would argue that all employment contracts are terrible due to their violation of the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. De facto responsibility is de facto non-transferable, so there is no way for legal and de facto responsibility to match in an employment contract. Instead, workers should always be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop
I made a post in this community of a moral argument for mandating employee-owned companies. It isn’t based on a gut feeling. It is based on the theory of inalienable rights. Here is a link to that post:
Can you give an example in the case where investors hold non-voting preferred shares?
I’m not sure how cross posting works from Mastodon to Lemmy. I thought I had to do that to get boosted by the group
The employer-employee contract
It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.
Inalienable means something that can’t be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor
Why do investors defeat the whole purpose? @general
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.
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 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
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
Include, in your politics, actionable steps. The most important step is to create worker coops and supporting institutions, so you aren’t giving the fruits of your labor to capitalists with what you do everyday @memes
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
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
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
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