this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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There's no risk to the capital class. They do not risk their livelihoods, they barely risk their next yacht. The only people that share risk are the working class, not the owners.
To the point a small business entrepreneur is risking their life savings, they risk no more than a worker since they can always get a job. The bankruptcy courts will not make them homeless, will not take their last car, and will not starve them. They make it seem like failure is death itself, but no, it's just back to being a worker.
the risk is primarily shifted towards the beginning of the businesses lifetime, later it can only really be hampered by skill issues and aggressive competition forcing you out of business. Think boeing. Or any number of companies that just, no longer exist.
Once you get to a certain size, it's really hard to fail unless the world literally changes, or the government kills you or something silly like that.
I would generally disagree with the statement that the working class is the one sharing the risk. Unless you mean some weird tangential thing, like being let go because the company fails, but that should be an obvious risk, i would think. There are a few exceptions, nortel being the only real prominent one i can think of. And that's mostly because they all got fucked over, not because it was risky, so that shouldn't have even happened.
Failing as an entrepreneur doesnt mean financial ruin, it means you have to get a regular job, just like the rest of the people that work for you.
The working class sharing the risk part is about when the owner class makes decisions that go poorly, the working class is pushed to make up the difference or they are downsized. The owner class doesnt bear the risks of their mistakes in any way other than financially.
failing is more complicated than this though. I've thought a lot about it. For an entirely online business, maybe. But if you have any sort of physical product, clothing as a simple example. Unless you're literally drop shipping/middle-manning this shit you have a significant infrastructure and capital investment/cost.
For one thing you need the capability and knowledge to be able to design and manufacture clothing. You need to be able to market it, you need to be able to test it and refine it, you need to be able to optimze the design so it can be produced easily. You need to spend time making product, packing product, inventorying that product, and eventually, shipping that product.
Sure you can pay other people to do this for you, but that's not how this works. You probably have to rent some sort of commercial space, or lease it. You need to outfit that space to work for your needs, you need to hire people to work for you, and you need those people to operate as an extension of you so they can operate most effectively, which requires both a lot of training and upkeep in terms of informational knowledge. You still need to deal with marketing, inventory, and shipping as well, that never goes away. You might continue doing design, you might do collaborative design now. And i haven't even mentioned tax or regulations and laws around this kind of stuff yet.
and if the business fails, you still have all of these assets, all of which you have to deal with, product being the worst asset, because it's effectively valueless. The assets you own in terms of equipment and materials might have some base value, but it's not much. If you have a lease that's going to be a bit of a nightmare to deal with. Not to mention the time and skill investment made into this business as well.
if you put all of these things together, and some arguably irresponsible financials this could very well spell financial ruin for a company and it's owner. Especially for small businesses, small business owners tend to be some of the most charitable business owners out there.
IDK why you keep saying they just have to go get a job, that's completely irrelevant here, considering that that was literally the risk to begin with. And you're ignoring all of the previously mentioned context as well. Seems like a downplay of the risk present.
sort of? It's not really shared risk, in some senses it is, because you might single-handedly bring down a small business if you really fuck something up, but just dont do that. You might be pushed to work more hours, or do more things, but i'm not sure what the legal basis is for that, and most of that would be done entirely on the working individuals side. Obviously working at a small company there is always the risk that the company goes under, but that's true for every company, and every job. People who work in trades/commission based fields will tell you this. People that do freelance will lament about this fact. It's nothing new.
Also to be clear, it's not explicitly capital investment, capital is the primary risk, but you also risk losing/wasting time, and knowledge as well.
and regardless, this is a different risk. The workers aren't risking their personal capital or investor capital on something. Their investing time and energy into a thing they believe in, in return for money. If that stops, they can "go get another job" as you said. They have quite a bit more flexibility here than the business owner. Since they don't have responsibility for any of these assets.
i would also like to point out, that in the term "capitalism" is the term capital, which means money. How else are they going to bear that? Emotionally?
I didnt mean to imply every business or situation is the same. Businesses are run as differently as there are opinions online, to varying degrees of success. When owners and management share the responsibility of the company with the working class, it can work perfectly fine.
When I say they only bear it financially I mean that literally. Defaulting on a business loan very rarely means losing a home or the means to feed your family. Thats why its accurate to say they just have to go get a job.
There is a difference in how people are treated when they lose their job vs losing their business. Its much harder to argue that losing your job is a good thing but plenty of people accept that business owners will fail before getting it "right".
of course. I just guess i don't agree with your fundamental conceptualization of the original statement fully.
Again, i'm just not sure that this is the case. I could argue that if your house burnt down, that you only lost something of financial value, but a lot of people, you probably included would disagree with me on that. I guess if you're strictly talking money, you would only be losing something financial in that aspect. But outside of finance there is plenty to lose.
I also don't really understand the whole "they just have to go get a job thing" couldn't you say the exact same thing about any working class person? Who is arguably in a better position to just "go get a job?" I might not be fully following the chain of logic here, but it feels like you're devaluing the company, while also devaluing the worker, you can't have a valuable company without a valuable worker, so i'm not really sure how your math works out on this one.
If you're just trying to make the point that they're "not royalty" i would agree with you but i'm not sure what the point of that argument would be.
it would make sense to me that people are treated differently in those different scenarios, i feel like this is the difference between losing a daily commuter, and losing a personal project car, for instance. You probably don't care very much about your daily commuter, but if you lost a project car that would hurt a lot more.
Employees that are also working for the company that goes bust are generally going to feel the same way as well as get a similar treatment. It's really only going to be workers at giga companies like amazon that people don't really care about because of how many people they move through the ranks.
are you arguing that it's good to lose a business now? I don't understand the line of reasoning behind this, i mean sure bad businesses won't survive but there are many good ones, that are just struggling. On the point about failing before getting it right, you can argue the same thing as a worker as well. The cost and learning curve isn't as steep though. That's kind of the entire point of the education system.
as for "losing your job is a good thing" this thread is old, so idk where that came from, but economically, as far as the market does, you need movement through any industry. Infinite growth is unsustainable (obviously) and having a static work force is going to greatly devalue some jobs, while incredibly overvaluing others. This is why some jobs are better than others at different times.
I guess you could argue the same for businesses, but that would apply to both businesses failing to meet market demands, and businesses exceeding market demands as well. So that's not applied in-equally or anything.