this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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By entire result, I meant the liabilities for used-up inputs together with the property rights to produced outputs. If workers step outside the employment contract or the law, the law recognizes their responsibility for the results of their actions. That isn't the problem. The problem is the law doesn't recognize their responsibility for the results of their actions in normal production where workers don't jointly get the entire result of production.
A warranty doesn't involve misimputation
So, I believe it's a thing in rail, that workers are explicitly not blamed for things that go wrong. Called a 'no fault' system. Presumably deliberate malice still falls back on them, but for a mistake, it's considered that The System is deficient: that appropriate training/oversight/checks weren't in place. This encourages employees to speak up when something goes wrong and be honest and detailed about what happened to cause it.
I certainly don't think that model should be used everywhere, and perhaps taken to its fullest shouldn't be anywhere. (But, conversely, some of that thinking should be in most places!) But I think it's an example of a legitimate separation of workers and responsibility.
I don't know if you're meaning responsibility in the sense of when there's bad effects (e.g. a worker participates in making a baby milk formula with potential heavy metal contamination) or in the sense of deserving to reap the benefits (i.e. the full profit). Either way I think I still agree there's an imbalance, but not a true separation in the way you mean: where workers receive part (of result and responsibility) and irrelevant non-workers receive part.
Managers, consultants, lenders, advertisers, are all part of the process of making a product and making it useful to people. (Okay, some are superfluous, and some are bad; but so are some physical workers.) Even the person who inspires everyone else to get together and work, is a (valuable) part of the process. And the person who helps them not squabble and not abandon each other. If this were not true, then in a land where workers have legal and physical freedom to work together, communal working groups would be more common, would they not?
The imbalance comes down to greed, a lack of wisdom, and greed. ("You said, 'greed,' twice!" "That's because...") A big tower of greed and unwise choices, of which the largest part appears to me that the people with power/wealth are able to make the decisions so that more of the wealth comes to them. If I 'own' a company, that's a legitimate work I did facilitating a place and entity where workers can come together and produce; but now I can control that I get a larger portion of the collective profits. And I can twist every decision into that favour, by an ever-growing tower of means invented by the rich and powerful, and my ever-growing leverage from my ever-growing wealth.
Once again, you've given me interesting cues to think on. Apologies if my response is over-wordy; I blame it on recovering from 'flu.