this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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Yes.
Yes to taking away wealth or the way to leverage it?
Taking away (extreme) wealth. There's no reason one person should have that much. There's countless better ways to use that money/wealth than for one persons extravagant lifestyle. And even if they don't have an extravagant lifestyle, what are they gonna do with it? Doubt they will build infrastructure out of good will with it.
So take away ownership of a company just because it's too successful? That wealth is mostly in company ownership, so are you really suggesting we steal away legitimate ownership in successful companies?
Yes. Fuck Capitalism.
It's not stealing their legitimate ownership. They don't have legitimate ownership.
How is it not legitimate ownership?
The laws underpinning and protecting their ownership, as well as the institutions enforcing them, are historical holdovers and were never truly legitimised. They also largely go against justice, freedom and the pursuit of happines, which they largely champion as their goals.
At least you could think about it that way.
I'm not seeing how that makes any of it illegitimate. If you make something you own it, right? Why should a business be any different?
At the end of the day because the assumption that it shouldn't be any different for a business is flawed. And specifically because we live in a reality where this assumption is largely taken as truth and as a result laws get written by Musk Bezos Koch Gates ... and / or the companies they use to do their bidding. Which often enough have very bad outcomes, and are obviously bad laws, not only in hindsight.
While they are supposed to be written by the people for the people. Democratically. The Private company in this way wields authoritative Power over it's employees and with this power it often enough opposes or distorts the will of the people because the few owners get outsized control over the actions of many workers customers and so on. As such if there isn't a limit to private ownership of Capital/The means of production/Business there can never be anything more than a hollow democracy, a democracy where the word is used to describe itself but the spirit of the word can never be reached.
We are on lefty Memes here so a bunch of people likely want a less hollow and more true democracy in this sense. Which is why it should be different for a business or at large scale.
So basically what you are saying is the more successful a business is, the more of it we should steal away from the rightful owners?
What does that social contact say, that you must give you everything if you are too successful?
And yes, I have never heard of Ayn Rand, no idea who they are or what they do. I only know now that she is a writer who died before I was born because I just googled it.
You are welcome to prove me wrong instead of making baseless accusations. I'm sorry the truth doesn't fit into your narrative.
Yes the ones that draw the largest benefit from a society should contribute the largest amount back. If there is infinite growth for some and infinite servitude for others the social contract is breaking, in this way it's much more reasonable to actually use taxation instead of just standing by while the society that all this wealth was extracted from takes violent revenge to their oppressors.
Without the rest of us billionaires couldn't exist to begin with, so if their wealth starts breaking our governments, our communities, our collective self determination, which they currently are doing, we naturally should remind them that they are nothing without the rest of us. And yeah the taxhammer is likely the more appropriate tool than the guillotine or the Molotov cocktail.
Their wealth presupposes a largely peaceful society, why should we let them break it. This is for example why GG Art 14 has
written back to back in the same paragraph, the obvious implication being uses of property that go against the public good may be curtailed by the law.
Why don't the workers own it? The ones who actually do the work.
Because they didn't make the business. If you started a business would you be happy to give away that ownership to every new employee you hire? If so, that's your choice, have fun.
Yes I'd be happ to.
Who cares who made it? And it's not the CEO that made it. The workers made it. Ever seen a big corporation with only one employee, its founder? No.
Without the workers a company is nothing. Without it's founder the company couldn't care less.
So it doesn't matter to you that you had to spend millions on startup costs, and that the business probably won't make money for a year or two, you keep that all to yourself, continue to pay employees, and give employees equal ownership?
Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.
Yea I don't care. I would not even start a company like that. Private ownership over companies (see means of production) must be abolished
So you’re saying we should just be communists now?!
Yea, pretty much.
But don't forget about the Anarcho- part!
Ummm... most companies are like that, it's very rare to have no startup costs and profits immediately. I would hate to think the options we would be stuck with if food and drinks were only what the government decided to support.
I mean, why do we have 'too big to fail" companies? Isn't that counterproductive to having a robust society?
That's how you compete in the world. Imagine for a second if the US didn't bail out the automotive companies, I think Ford would have survived, but that's about it, no more American competition for them. If they also failed, then we might not have any US car companies, how bad would that have been for our society?
Or the banks, could you imagine how screwed we would be if the whole baking system collapsed? Even the small banks were in trouble, it's not a solution to just split them all up.
This is why I don’t really ‘get’ the perspective that a lot of Lemmings seem to have. Sure, it’d be nice to live in an ideal society of some sort, but that’s not really possible in a world where money is everything.
Then get rid of money as well.
Great idea genius, next you'll tell me that the solution to get rid of human greed would be to get rid of humans!
So everything is free and we just trust people will put in their fair share?
Along those lines yeah
Yeah, I think we both know that will never work.
I do think it will work under the right circumstances
And what are those right circumstances? What would stop me playing video games and relaxing all day?