You can tell that this audience is primarily American because they still defend capitalism, even after being shafted by it over and over. Careful everyone, big bad socialism is going to take your kids and your wife!
Don't dare dream of something better, instead keep swallowing the propaganda of the state and its controlling elites.
Man socialism keeps sounding better and better they will even take those pesky wife and kids off my hands/s.
But in serious most Americans don't know shit about socialism our capitalism they live under. Dumb fucks look at you with surprise when you mention our highway system would be considered socialist program.
American here and fuck capitalism.
Hey now, that's unfair!
As à Canadian, I can attest that we also blindly defend capitalism.
We are poor and our freedoms are exploited, but at least we're free!
That's right, real freedom is being able to scream into the void without actually having the power to improve your material conditions. :)
Workers should control the beans of production.
Damn, a lot of capitalist bootlickers in this thread
Lol, enshitification of these services are happening because the owners want to extract as much money as possible from the users. Workers would do the same even if they owned it. How many people would turn down millions of dollars because users don't like the change?
Yeah I'm not sure why it's nowadays common to simplify socialism as "workers owning the means of production". It's not exactly wrong, but it is often misunderstood.
A company being owned by it's employees is not necessarily "socialism". In today's global capitalist economy, there are worker-cooperatives as well, but they too exist within the capitalist economy and have to follow its rules, which is above all the profit motive. If you don't orient yourself based on profit, you will be out-competed eventually.
Traditionally, when socialists talk about "workers owning/seizing the means of production", they are not talking about individual workers or individual businesses.
Workers means "the working class", which would be pretty much everyone ("the 99%"). Means of production means industry and the economy overall, not individual factories and businesses.
What makes FOSS special is that the software is not privately owned by anyone, not by the devs, not by a couple of programmers, not by a company. It is commonly owned, anyone can use, copy and alter the code however they want without any artificial barriers. This of course makes it a lot harder to extract money from users.
In publicly-traded corporations, long term wealth extraction isn’t the goal. Getting sales up next quarter is. Employee-owned cooperatives are more likely to think long term. Plus, I’d vastly prefer to trust the average worker to do the right thing in a coop situation vs a manager doing it in a situation where they’re legally required (as standard publicly-traded corporations are) to prioritize the financial gains of shareholders above all other interests. Maybe you’ve lost so much faith in people that you think no one would ever choose to be slightly less rich for any reason. But plenty of people know there’s such a thing as enough, that there are interests as important as next quarter’s profits. They just don’t usually get MBAs.
Ah, yes, we can see it with all the communities running their own Mastodon servers and extracting the maximum of wealth from their users. /s
You must think that humans are inherently greedy and/or are projecting what you would do in a scenario where you're part of a worker co-op. Most workplaces aren't worth millions. Most folks who round themselves in a worker co-op would most likely try to better the operation for everyone.
Yah, if workers own a tiny portion of the means of production, as they do now in various co-ops around the globe, they will be either (1) required to operate on the basis of profit in order to outcompete entities that are not worker-owned, or (2) cease to exist because they get outcompeted by those who operate on the basis of profit.
This forces all existing co-ops to behave in line with capitalism as a whole. The point is to overcome that system of socio-economic relations: When calls are made for workers to own and operate production, as in this meme, they mean that the class constituted by workers — the proletariat — should be in control of all productive means. Not just that some workers should start co-ops, for this primary reason.
The idea that owners would sacrifice their profits if their business were merely a co-op is, I agree, not necessarily true. (Though workers in co-ops who are directly connected to the point of value production would definitely be more willing to sacrifice profits for decisions that enhance social value.) The point, however, is to move beyond an economy owned and operated for profit and forge a society in which profit is not the basis for operation in the first place. If, for example, workers' needs were guaranteed, the impetus for profit-seeking would evaporate, though will not be absent, at least while the artifacts of capitalist society persist in us and our institutions.
Commie memes on my front page? This place is cool AF
Amazing how many people will step in to defend the ownership of everything to a small minority. They will not reward bootlicking yet yall continue.
Look, they're just temporary inconvenienced billionaires.
What I learned from observation is that they tend to believe that, one day, they will be part of the "small minority". The American Dream!!!1
“It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it”
Attention, people of Bikini Bottom! You have been cheated and lied to! The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of Mr. Krabs! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We'll saw the foundation of big business in half, even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people's will crashing through Mr. Krabs' HOUSE OF SERVITUDE!
KRUSTY KRAB IS UNFAIR!
MR. KRABS IS IN THERE!
STANDING AT THE CONCESSION!
PLOTTING HIS OPPRESSION!
Goes without saying. Look at the profits of the companies providing essential resources like energy. They most certainly didn't let a good crisis go to waste.
As if workers give a shit about customers.
That would be an improvement actually, because the customers of these companies are not users, they are other companies looking to advertise or buy users personal data. The users of for profit social media are in fact the product, not the customers.
Workers don’t give a shit about customers because that’s how the incentive system is set up. Give workers the profits, you give them a good reason to give a shit about how clients feel.
I'm reminded by that guy on TikTok
"You just lost a customer"
"Good"
You skipped over the part where he says "You think I own this business? You think I own IKEA?" implying he would care if he actually had any skin in the game which he would if his job operated as a worker co-op.
Yes, or at a bare minimum, CEO-proof everything and put more power in the hands of users of monolithic infrastructural utility products like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit
Capitalism generally allows for a range of ownership structures, including traditional privately owned businesses, publicly traded corporations, and worker-owned enterprises.
I guess an argument would be that privately owned companies are already too wealthy to allow for fair market competition, but in worker owned companies nothing is stopping them from becoming large corporations that can also do everything a private lobbyist company does. If you don't believe me, just look at your democratically elected capitalist government. Just because something is democratic doesn't mean it will be ethical or fair internally or externally.
Alienation isn't limited to the workplace anymore. It has found it's way into the platforms we spend our free time on.
Or at least have them be publicly owned common good, owned by multiple countries with editorial independence from the get go and funded through taxation. That would be a start.