How do y'all cope with this
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Collapse
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What have I said that makes you think I don't support cooperatives?
I'm not going to lose any sleep about people putting the fear of god into a class of people that has amassed am unreasonable level of wealth at the expense of society, and use that power to exercise massive, anti-democratic political power - almost exclusively to protect their own interests which are directly challenged by socialist principles. If we have fewer billionaires, we have fewer obstacles to creating a better, fairer society.
I want to maximise happiness for all sapient creatures. I think the best path to this is to maximise peoples' positive freedoms, which in turn are best enabled through stronger democracy politically and in the workplace, through more equitable wealth distribution (e.g. worker ownership of the means of production, banning political donations, strong social safety net), and strong social services to maximise social mobility and the ability to live the way they want free from the fear that they'll die hungry and homeless if they don't optimise for profit.
If billionaires are threatened with death, they are incentiviced to keep democratic coordination to a minimum. As cooperatives are deeply democratic, they will require the understanding that blanket billionaire killings are no option to establish them broadly in all industries or billionaires cannot allow to lose their influence.
A side argument about social mobility. If only class losers are workers, not many people are left who can effectively represent workers.
Billionaires are already incentivised to keep democratic coordination to a minimum - see their consistent, often violent union busting efforts.
When workers rather than the bourgeois own the means of production, why would workers be class losers? With fairer taxation used to fund better opportunity for all, the power of the wealthy evaporates as the power of the workers grows.
Union busting is a business decision, preserving one's life should have higher priorities. Violence will be higher if lives are defended.
Workers would become class losers in a second step when a new elite can gain control by disenfranchising workers again.
I wish to eliminate the "elites" one way or another - I'm not sure the response will change (though the pretext they have for retaliation may).
Without an elite class, there's noone with the resources, power or motivation to disenfranchise the workers again.
To me the problem is that the elite are more a symptom like hunger that cannot be destroyed. The workers have to be fed with education to bring equality. But who wants to be forced into school?
The massive inequity of wealth distribution isn't necessary or unaddressable - we already tax them... We could just do that far more.
The workers don't need to be forced into education, only given the opportunity to participate if they choose (without today's frequently insurmountable obstacles of cost and time). We still need workers for "unskilled" jobs - we just need to ensure that their labour is adequately rewarded, which can come at the expense of the do-nothing shareholder leeches.