this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Antiwork
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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It's all the revenue leeched away from workers to shareholders - that's the majority of the entire global economy. What are you talking about?
I'm not proposing we make it voluntary.
Companies aren't welfare schemes - they run as lean as possible today. I'm proposing the workers be the owners.
Workers own the company, workers get paid fairly, workers decide how the company is run. Shareholders no longer exist, and must live off the welfare state or get a real goddamn job.
What I like about this solution is that it does to some extent directly address the problem of negotiating power. I am skeptical about the practicality and sustainability though. For example there was a worker owned brewery I was aware of, which had an employment scheme in which accumulated time in the company translated into shares of ownership. The brewery became successful, and the now somewhat wealthy workers preferred to keep their wealth rather than continuing to distribute it to new employees, and so they voted to sell and accept a payout. I'm not sure this is an easily solved issue; it seems that any financial endeavor will have winners and losers, and the winners will do what they can to retain their position.
This is because co-ops these days still have to compete in a capitalist market, and need to be ruthless to remain competitive. I'm not saying this is good. Just that it's not a problem inherent to worker management - it's a problem with the system they have to work under.
If this worker management extended to the whole economy - i.e. socialism - then these incentives would no longer exist. The economy would no longer be a competition requiring ruthless tactics.
Isn't this solved if you can't sell your shares?
I don't think it would be. What happens when someone leaves the company or is pushed out? Automatically lose their shares? Who determines what proportion of shares or pay you get for which roles or level of seniority? What about nepotism? Ownership implies control, control gets used to advance your own interests.
This is far enough down the line with enough positive progress to be had in the meantime (e.g. German-style employee representation in boards, greater share grants to employees, etc.) that I'm comfortable figuring that one out later.
My gut feel would be that you share profits while you work for the company and lose the shares when you leave. There would be a fairly equitable allocation of shares irrespective of roles with employees to vote for greater allocations if needs dictate. Nepotism would be dramatically reduced compared to today with a more democratic workplace. Much like I like my countries democratic, I like my workplaces democratic - the interests of the workers are the interests of the nation.
In that case there's an issue with long term decision making and hiring; if you are planning to leave soon and will have no stake in the future of the company, there isn't much incentive to take it into account when voting on decisions. Likewise there is reason to be much more reluctant to hire unknown people for this reason - why let an unaccountable person have influence over crucial decisions? In the case of a worker owned company that has become very successful (say to the point where everyone is paid $150 an hour), those grandfathered-in workers are in a situation where the value of their employment contract greatly exceeds the market value of their labor itself. Even if they are prevented from selling that directly, they still have control over revenue so long as they retain their position. The natural response there I think is to want to heavily favor new hires that you are personally connected to; where you already have an interest in their enrichment, and who have external reasons to be invested in your interests and the interests of the company, which is why I mention nepotism and think it would be a bigger problem. Removing the possibility of selling something doesn't remove the ability or incentive to use that thing to enrich yourself, the pressure is all still there.
Why would they be? My gut feel is that for this sort of thing to work without problems cannot be done with a single simple change or rule, because that one change isn't going to be able to convince people to favor the nation above the wealth and status of themselves and their families, or remove all the conflicts of interest that exist between those. Especially not people used to the current system. I think it would be more effective to redistribute wealth independently from employment to keep things simple and let markets keep working without too much unexpected distortion. With a higher baseline and less desperation it would be more feasible to form worker collectives to begin with, without a need for state mandates enforcing them to be operated in a particular way.
You're comparing that unfavorably to today, where 1 person who may be leaving is making that decision compared to a group of people who are far less likely to all be leaving. My proposal is an improvement on the current state.
They're accountable to the workers that voted then in to that position and can vote them out. This is compared to what accountability today?
With decision making being democratised across employees who have a vested interest in the success of the company, this would be a smaller problem than today where one unaccountable manager can make a unilateral decision.
Because the vast majority of the population works for a living. Handing the wealth and reins of power to unproductive owners as we do today is massively detrimental to the economy. People would be democratically acting in their own self-interest.
In a more equitable society, there would be less motivation to collectivise, but whatever gets the job done. To reach that point, we'd need to engage in some pretty fundamental restructuring of the economy though - I'm not sure why we wouldn't just keep on trucking toward better outcomes rather than stopping half way.
The Mondragon Corporation is an interesting example of a cooperative scaling up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
Shareholders at least the ones beating the market have a different skill set to workers. Replacing them with other workers might have issues with long term success.
I think you'd be better off changing laws that suppress workers wages and laws that unnecessary increase their expenses particularly rent
Owning things isn't a skill, my dude. This is evident in the fact that almost the entire human race owns something.
Agreed on owning things I was talking about those getting an above market return.
Of what value is that to society? If there's no value and massive downsides, why should we ~~protect~~ reward them?
Yeah the premise of the system is that society is benefiting. In practice I would agree that's not always and maybe majorly not the case. In Australia there was a Henry tax review report that details a lot of changes to improve this situation unfortunately many have not been implemented. I'm sure the situation is similar worldwide.
This is kinda my point - I'm not interested in the empty arguments and spin - I'm interested in what's best.
Unfortunately, the Australian government has a habit of commissioning studies rather than taking action (we've risen to power under the status quo - why would we change it?) - The Henry review was probably taken less seriously than the Gonski report.
When the market is shaped by austerity politics, corporate welfare, and wage depression, then "getting an above market return" depends on austerity politics, corporate welfare, and wage depression (which still is not the same as the "skill set" of owning shares).
Your objection sidesteps the broader observations, of how the masses of workers are oppressed by the greed of the very few, who sustain a self-serving narrative.
That skillset would no longer be relevant; their jobs would be made redundant. Companies in this scenario no longer need to seek growth and increasing profit margins. They only need to earn enough to pay their own salaries. And, because the workers are the ones who collectively manage the company, they can democratically make strategic plans for future production, and logistical changes to increase efficiency and reduce the amount of work necessary and improve their working conditions.
In abstract sense, when you make profit, it means that you've made a sufficiently good path to some end for other people. Like in electrical engineering.
The more your "path-shortening" effect, the bigger your profit.
It's a system leading to optimization (in abstract).
While this isn't.
I'd be happy to see any idea aimed at improving human life conditions, general happiness and so on succeed. Just with leftist conversations it always looks like "the brakes and safety measures are making the car too expensive, let's get rid of them".
In an abstract sense, sure. But in reality, profit does not require you to do any good. If it's more expensive to dispose of waste ethically, for example, then waste will be disposed of unethically.
Yes, I can't argue that jobs exist that help other people.
Not necessarily. Insurance is one example.
In the abstract, I agree. But left to play out, monopoly and bureaucracy inevitably emerge.
Why not?
Okay. Me, too.
I really don't mean to be snide, but you have this backwards. Under capitalism, it requires the state to intervene to regulate it in order to, for example, add safety measures to cars. Socialist economies are, as I mentioned, democratic. The people need safety measures, and the people are in control of production, so safety measures will be in place.
It requires you to do something, and scale may make production cheaper, for example.
How so? Insurance is one of the most ingenious things I can think about which market economy allows. Leveraging probabilities to protect each separate participant from some event which would be too expensive without it.
That happens in planned economies just as well and worse.
Because with private\public companies there is some criterion by which a company is being optimized, it's profit (in general, though with public companies things already work more complex, which is how Apple\MS\etc look so weird).
With what you describe, first, the response is going to be slow, as it's democratic planning, second, every worker is going to vote in his own perceived interest. At best it's going to be just like public companies, at worst most of such companies are not going to be able to support themselves existing.
I mean, okay, it's going to have an element of optimization too (cause it's still going to be capitalist in essence), just possibly less efficient in general. But may bypass some of the traps for public companies.
Only to make them mandatory for everyone. And then see the following.
Not necessarily. But they are all bureaucratic.
What one needs, what one thinks one needs, and what one can choose from are three different stages, and then there's another stage of what one receives in response.
And these are managed by bureaucracies. Point being, with markets you at least don't have to build a bureaucracy for market operations per se.
You think a socialist economy is "not necessarily" democratic..? It is democratic by definition.
Actually every known one IRL is not.
If it's not democratic, it makes no sense to call it socialist.
I agree. As a major shareholder and successful business owner, I’m far better at relaxing on a beach in Bali than the lazy poors are. Our skill sets are not comparable.