I’ll write one. The talk argues that employment contract is invalid due to inalienable rights. Inalienable means can’t be given up even with consent. Workers’ inalienable rights are rooted in their joint de facto responsibility in the firm for using up inputs to produce outputs. By the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, workers should get the corresponding legal responsibility, but in employment, workers as employees get 0% while employer gets 100% of results of production

You called centrists framing the debate about capitalism as one of consent vs. coercion a strawman then accepted the framing. Democratic theory requires consent. It just also requires consent to delegate ruling out consent to alienate management/governenance rights justified by inalienable rights.

Stable employee-owned firms:
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

A country that lets people sell voting rights wouldn’t be democratic for long. Does democracy not work? Is it undesirable?

@progressivepolitics

David Ellerman’s modernization of the classical laborists’ argument against capitalism is significantly more powerful than modern Marxism.

Marx’s claim that private property is the root of capitalist appropriation has been disproven in modern theories of capitalism’s property rights structure. Private property plays a role in giving bargain power to get favorable terms, but the ultimate legal basis of capitalist appropriation is the employer-employee contract

@politicalmemes

Postcapitalist systems can use market prices and, in principle, be Pareto optimal on non-institutionally described states of affair

@politicalmemes

Not a strawman. There are tons of examples of framing the capitalism issue in terms of consent vs coercion. Nozick talks about capitalist acts between consenting adults etc.

Many worker coops and majority employee-owned ESOPs exist today. It works.

Democratic theory argues that contracts based on consent to alienate are inherently invalid. Since the employment system is on the “wrong” side, the original theory invalidating these contracts is ignored and forgotten

@progressivepolitics

Alienist vs inalienist refers to whether voting/control rights are transferable (alienable).

Better to say institutions based on consent to alienate vs delegate

Voting rights’ transferability with alienist systems implies inequality, but the core point is consent to alienate vs. delegate.

The employment contract is inherently an alienation contract. The workers give up and transfer the management rights to the employer and the employer manages in their own name

@progressivepolitics

Alienist refers to alienation of rights.

Alienist = completely give up and transfer control rights with the recipient ruling in their own name and not in the name of the people governed

Inalienist = revocable delegation where the people retain control rights with the delegates governing in the name of the people governed

Democratic theory draws a distinction between these 2 types of contracts, and invalidates the former

The diagram should say alienation vs. delegation

@progressivepolitics

You just mention the community in the post

@politicalmemes

What would be a more appropriate community?

@politicalmemes

The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes

Rhetorically, it doesn’t matter how I define the term. It matters how people use it.

The way I would define it is either the systems of historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes

Most people think

Socialism = state central planning

@leftymemes

A worker coop is an example of joint self-employment. The workers are not employees, and the employer-employee relationship is abolished in worker coops

@leftymemes

I’m not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.

Some postcapitalist policies include

- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI

@leftymemes

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

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

@memes

All definitions are made up.

This definition captures the underlying notion.that
consensual democracy = self-government

Here is A. Chayes making a similar point:

“The shareholders were the electorate, the directors the legislature, enacting general policies and committing them to the officers for execution. Shareholder democracy, so-called, is misconceived because the shareholders are not the governed of the corporation whose consent must be sought.”

Robert Dahl had a similar understanding

"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

@linux

Capitalism isn’t democratic. Democracy is the mode of governance where control rights over an organization are assigned to those governed by or in it. In the capitalist firm, the workers are the ones governed by management, yet control rights lie with the employer

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