J Lou

#liberal #anticapitalism #EconomicDemocrat

An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.

#liberalism
#coops #cooperatives

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Last Notes

2024-08-02 01:13:13

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@npub1trd…ussx Note, Paul Romer supports non-democratic governments:
https://www.ellerman.org/the-charter-cities-debate-and-democratic-theory/

2024-07-17 03:45:11

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@npub1c57…awu5 People are working on it
https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/plural-money-a-new-currency-design/

2024-07-13 06:26:25

Tax the land
One radical idea to solve America’s housing crisis.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22951092/land-tax-housing-crisis
@npub17ck…fpy5

2024-07-12 03:11:11

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@npub17ss…76l0 If we take the pie to be the whole product of a firm, then in fact, 100% of it is reserved for the employing class. Workers receive none of what they produce in terms of property rights

2024-03-17 01:59:30

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@npub15th…6nvx It is not a movement of the goal post. I always had in mind a UBI that provided enough, so that the worker could exit the labor market.
I don't see how denying luxury items to people is coercive in the same sense because there is no threat of death. It doesn't carry the same moral force in that context.
Capitalists retaining control in such a system is a problem, but that is a separate argument. My point is that consent v. coercion misframes the issue of capitalism

2024-03-17 00:59:39

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@npub15th…6nvx That is an interesting point, but I don't think there is evidence to support it.
There has never been a capitalist system where there was a UBI large enough where people could choose not to work, so we don't know what would happen. Such a society is plausible as people could be incentivized to work from the prospect of more expensive goods that would be outside of their budget if they chose to live purely off of the UBI.

2024-03-17 00:48:22

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@npub15th…6nvx I agree. I am an anti-capitalist. My point is that consent vs. coercion is not sufficient because it is possible to imagine variations of capitalism that are not coercive

2024-03-17 00:37:02

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@npub15th…6nvx Like think a UBI large enough where someone could drop out of the labor market and still survive.

2024-03-17 00:34:09

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@npub15th…6nvx I am talking about a UBI that is large enough to survive on. I don't see how there is coercion in such a scenario.
I agree the capitalist, an alien legal party, has formal control rights over their person, and that is a violation of democratic principles, but that is steeping outside the coercion point
Sure, postcapitalism would be better than capitalism with UBI any day. My point is that the consent vs. coercion frame is not sufficient to make the argument for postcapitalism.

2024-03-17 00:12:09

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@npub15th…6nvx There are other reasons a social order could be unjust besides being coercive. Framing things in terms of consent vs. coercion is, in a sense, falling for the way capitalists want to frame the issue.
A large enough UBI + universal healthcare would be enough for workers to survive on, so they would have a reasonable alternative to wage labor and thus not be coerced. This would be non-coercive, but it clear would still be capitalism

2024-03-17 00:11:15

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@npub15th…6nvx I want to focus on the coercion point because that specific argument doesn't work.
Sure, it doesn't address the underlying power dynamics and structural inequities inherent in capitalism. That's a separate argument. Yes, it wouldn't alter the rights violations of workers inherent in capital hiring labor. I agree with both these arguments.
I find the focus on consent vs. coercion dichotomy in arguing against capitalism to be a misframing.

2024-03-16 23:48:02

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@npub15th…6nvx I agree with your conclusion. UBI isn't the end goal. The end goal should be abolishing capitalism and replacing it with a system based on workers' control and common ownership. But, I disagree with your justification for that
I understand the intent.
A UBI would render employment voluntary and non-coercive by any reasonable standard.
Exploitation is a separate argument. It is not an argument against wage slavery. It is just an argument that workers are underpaid

2024-03-16 23:29:19

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@npub15th…6nvx At best, this is an argument for a UBI not against capitalism. At worst, this elevated notion of voluntariness would render practically all contracts involuntary, so it is unusable.
There are stronger arguments that apply to capitalism even when it is fully voluntary such as inalienability of responsible agency

2024-03-10 22:20:07

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@npub15th…6nvx Georgism would solve this

2024-03-10 22:09:32

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@npub15th…6nvx Worker cooperatives abolish the employer-employee relationship not private ownership of the means of production. For example, one worker coop can sell the services of its output to another coop that uses these services as input to production. I'm can't see anything wrong with this.
The correct line of attack against private ownership of the means of production is from a distributive justice angle. Owners' power can be limited through common ownership self-assessed leases

2024-03-10 21:56:36

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@npub15th…6nvx What is your critique of private ownership of the means of production and what would you replace it with specifically?

2024-03-10 02:17:18

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The workers don't get what they produce at all. This mismatch between who produces the whole product and who gets the right to it is a violation of the tenet behind property of people's right to get the fruits of their labor, which is based on the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match
Capitalism is a system of property relations. Criticizing it on property theoretic terms is a more fundamental critique and attacks the idealized logic of the system
See: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/REEM-paper2.pdf

2024-03-10 02:15:22

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@npub15th…6nvx A stronger critique would point out that the workers create what has value, the whole product. It would focus on property rights to the whole product rather than value. The employer owns 100% of produced outputs and owes 100% of liabilities for the used-up inputs. The workers as employees get 0% of the property rights to produced output and owe 0% of the liabilities for used-up inputs. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs

2024-03-08 22:44:30

Property and Contract in #Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy by David Ellerman
This book makes 2 arguments.
1. The employment contract is the core of the #capitalism rather than private property
2. The employment contract is invalid because it violates #WorkersRights to #democracy in the firm. All firms should be structured as worker #coops for economic justice
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Ellerman-Property-and-Contract-Book.pdf
@npub1kt3…5004
#books #philosophy #ethics #anticapitalism #capitalist #anticapitalist #BusinessEthics

2024-03-07 20:39:39

Vague "Anti-Capitalism" is #Capitalist
https://youtu.be/-1ZK2-viyAo
Anti-capitalists need to move beyond vague #anticapitalism by criticizing specific institutions such as the employer-employee relationship and private ownership of land. Anti-capitalists should also mention clear specific alternatives such as worker coops, land value tax and land collectivization
#capitalism #anticapitalist

2024-03-06 07:43:20

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@npub15th…6nvx @npub1gnn…7qgv Personally, I don't think there is much point in fighting over the definition of a word. If people tend to use it to mean the system of the Marxist-Leninist countries of the last century, then fine. I have found that most people don't associate that word with an anarchic stance. Why not just use a different word to refer to your own position?

2023-11-05 04:09:57

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@npub1kpw…xzz4 @npub1tps…9rmt If the employed and employing legal party is the same, it is reasonable to think of that as joint self-employment.
I will use the terminology the way you do.
In an economic democracy, workers' inalienable right to workplace democracy and to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor is recognized. A right is inalienable when it cannot be given up even with consent. In an economic democracy, there is no legal mechanism for creating a non-democratic firm

2023-11-05 03:56:09

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@npub1kpw…xzz4 @npub1tps…9rmt There is a misunderstanding of how the property and contract system works here. Capital ownership does not determine firmhood. The employer gets those rights in the employer-employee contract. Capital only increases bargaining power to get favorable market contracts.
Workplace democracy is actually compatible with private ownership of the means of production. A worker coop can rent capital.
In such an economy, the employment contract is abolished

2023-11-05 03:45:58

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@npub1kpw…xzz4 @npub1tps…9rmt Nah a democratic worker coop is joint self-employment not employer-employee relationship

2023-11-05 03:42:23

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@npub1kpw…xzz4 @npub1tps…9rmt I meant ownership of the means of production.
Employer-employee relationship is definitely a defining element of capitalism. Many critics of capitalism such as the classical laborists centered their criticism on wage labor (employer-employee relationship). Many of the modern critiques of capitalism center on workplace authoritarianism and the distribution of a firm's whole product.
Would you consider an economy where all firms were democratic worker coops capitalism?

2023-11-05 03:30:52

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@npub1kpw…xzz4 @npub167e…6xnc @npub1tps…9rmt
3 defining aspects of capitalism
1. Private ownership
2. Employer-employee relationships
3. Markets
This is just a general definition based on how people use the term informed by historical criticisms.
What is seen as capitalism will still depend on the particular analysis of capitalism. An analysis focused on workplace democracy would not see the Soviet Union as non-capitalist because it did not have universal workers' self-management

2023-07-29 03:25:27

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@npub13fu…st9a @npub1k4q…3lsq The whole defense of #capitalism supposedly based on #economics is based on obfuscating the actual legal structure of property rights under capitalism in favor of a metaphor about division of the product. In terms of that actual structure, the employees of a firm legally own 0% of the positive and negative product of the firm while the employer legally owns 100% of the whole product
#econ #EconTwitter #EconMastodon

2023-07-19 23:06:02

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@npub1k4q…3lsq The funny thing is that personal responsibility does not even support the current system of #capitalism. Under capitalism, the workers in the firm are jointly de facto responsible for production, but the employer is held legally responsible. This violates the basic moral principle of alignment between legal and de facto responsibility