And where would be worker-owner money come from? That's right, from the company profit. Without profit, they would have to pocket company assets to fund their needs, which is a certain way to get their workplace bankrupt. Again, there is no difference between the situation of a worker-owner where you claim it is and I'm starting to wonder if you really see any significant distinction, or is it just a way to drag the discussion until I get exhausted.
Because in the worker-owned factory, there is no single person with expertise in capital investment, etc. It comes down to a vote, and the "voters" will change from time to time depending on who retires and who joins the company, so whether they make a good decision on Day 1 is largely irrelevant to whether they make a good decision on Day 250, whereas an entrepreneur who has been doing well on Day 1 will probably continue to do well up to Day 250 (though his methods may become outdated, etc in which case his company's assets will eventually be bought out by someone else to try again). They could vote to "hire" someone for these purposes, but then it just gets more complicated. Does he get an equal share in the factory too now that's managing things and controlling the assets of the factory? What if he wants a bigger share because his decisions have increased success at the factory far more than any other individual? What about R&D, which may vastly increase the factory's profitability but may also create nothing? Can a worker decide that he doesn't want the risk of actually losing money from the factory, and "sell" his ownership in exchange for a set amount of money from another worker? By the end of it all, you've more likely than not recreated a system extremely close to the original capitalist system, except the "capitalists" are just those workers who are willing to take a risk on their money (which, incidentally, would be the way right-libertarians generally advocate privatization). This also raises the problem of how any new factories are supposed to be made, or what happens when they go bust. After all, if workers could compete on equal terms under this system, they wouldn't need to "seize" anything, they could simply save up and make their own factory. Since the capitalists apparently don't contribute anything, they would quickly and immediately drive them out of business.
Also, out of curiosity (and largely unrelated to the main point, by the way), what exactly makes the factory "owned" by the workers? What happens if squatters come in and live there? After all the squatters "use" the factory too by sleeping and living in it, yet they make it harder for the workers to get anything done.
Mind, this is largely semantics in the modern economy. CEOs, middle-upper management, etc are all "workers", while some of the people working on the floor manufacturing parts are "capitalists" with shares in the company. Bill Gates was a "worker" at Microsoft while simultaneously "owning" Microsoft.
You are ignoring what I stated before - that this system doesn't involve merit in any way. Someone created a small amount of means of production which in turn created more and more without needing their owner to even do anything. Even assuming an ideal case where the original owner of the capital honestly earns it, the reward given to each person in the inheritance chain is disproportionately high.
So they created a single machine, which in turn created more and more machines without them working?
No. They need to ensure what they created doesn't become obsolete, that they aren't run out of business by others with different wage rates, that they see economic trends to know when to shift production, etc etc etc
They also need to be able to save considerable amounts to even be able to accumulate capital in the first place, and that has to hold true throughout the entire inheritance chain. If, at some point, the money goes to someone who isn't going to live at least somewhat frugally and use their money carefully, it will be quickly lost. Similarly, if you invest it in something, you're still taking a risk as to whether you'll actually benefit from it or not.
Whether the person at the end gets a lot of money, however, is generally a null point. It isn't that they deserve it, it's that the person who does deserve it (the initial wealth creator and anyone who added to it) decided that they wanted to give the money to them. Similarly, someone along the line could give all the money to charity, or distribute it amongst the workers, or (after withdrawing everything from banks and so on) toss it into a pit and burn it.
You are concerned about workers slacking off, but seem to not mind in the slightest that someone may not work through his entire life and consume much more this worker could.
The person who doesn't work their entire life does so because someone else did so for them. The "lazy worker" could similarly have a benefactor who pays them to loaf about doing nothing (though investing is hardly "doing nothing"), and there would be no direct problem. However, when working in the X factory with hundreds of other workers who co-own it, they not only drain from a person who willingly allowed them to do so, they drain from the other workers who aren't willingly allowing them to do so.
And how does it work out in a standard workplace, where the capitalist owns everything and all the profits from increased productivity go directly to him? Are they not inclined to be lazy, or his job-creator superhuman powers allow him to identify and expel slackers better than the people who work with him and are directly affected by his negligence?
He has managers, etc to keep an eye on productivity. That's the whole point of management. Not to mention, if he wasn't capable of weeding out slackers, he would probably go out of business quickly from accumulated inefficiencies.
Plus, this still doesn't preclude workers from going into business themselves and proving that they can do a better job, as has happened many times in the past, rather than "seizing the means of production" so that they don't have to compete.
Yeah, I do the bare minimum where I work right now, because I see zero reward for doing any more than that. There's a yearly performance review where I'm eligible for a merit raise, but in my 6 years of working there, the potential raise has never even kept up with inflation. By working hard to increase the company's profits, the only thing I would accomplish is to accelerate wealth consolidation. There are more disincentives for me to be productive than there are incentives.
I know for a fact that the company could easily afford to hire twice the people working for twice the pay in half the hours. Happiness and efficiency would increase across the board, more jobs would decrease social tensions, and it would hardly make a dent in their profit margins. The reason they don't is they don't want to create jobs. Unemployment is highly beneficial to the owning class, because it threatens workers in a way that they couldn't do personally. Bargaining power is non-existent for a person who can be easily replaced, which results in absolute compliancy of the workforce.
You could just go into business for yourself, you know. It's not like the companies that offer you jobs literally own you, and you are physically bound to stay with them regardless of conditions.
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Topic: How Would One Reduce Inequality? (Read 31407 times)