2/5
The empirical evidence I have seen on worker coops and employee-owned companies seems to suggest that worker-run companies are slightly more productive.
I oppose socialism as I think markets are useful. I advocate economic democracy
In an economic democracy, the employer-employee contract is abolished, so workers automatically legally get voting rights over management upon joining a firm.
1/5
Worker coops can have managers. Managers' interests can be aligned with the long term interests of the firm by giving them non-voting preferred shares as part of their compensation. Managers will make sure workers they are managing perform. The difference is that these managers are ultimately accountable to the entire body of workers and are thus their delegates.
Profits/wages don't have to be divided equally among workers.
I'm going to use multiple toots since I'm on Mastodon
Your reforms sound good, but aren't pragmatic. Today's system requires you to have lobbyists to push an agenda through. Who is going to fund the lobbyists to make these reforms happen.
Also, even in an ideal capitalism, there is still an injustice at the heart of the system. The employer-employee contract violates the tenet of legal and de facto responsibility matching. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, but employer is held solely legally responsible.
I have never found a meme that suitably emphasizes the responsibility aspect. Responsibility plays an essential role in the underlying argument due to the peculiarity that responsibility can't be transferred from person to person even with consent. You find memes about workers deserving the entire value of their labor, but none that emphasize responsibility and workers' property rights to the literal produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs rather than just their value
The entire video isn't required to understand the argument. The first 15 minutes are sufficient
This argument probably can be explained in a 4 panel comic.
Probably, something like:
1 side: an employer and employee cooperating to commit a crime, which results in both being held responsible
Other side: an employer and employee cooperating to produce a widget resulting in the employer solely appropriating 100% of the property rights to the widget and liabilities for used-up inputs
A variant of this should replace non-profit tax exemptions and all campaign finance rules.
The way to prevent bribing is secret and anonymous contributions. You could, for example, imagine including these contributions to your favorite media and FOSS organizations as part of your ballot.
This could be implemented by a federation of worker coops to fund local public goods that all the member coops benefit from with the matching pool coming from membership fees and Harberger leases
Any company that receives government subsidies or is bailed out because it's too big too fail or whatever the reason should be mandated to become a worker coop
The founders can hold more or all non-voting preferred stock in the worker coop to represent their larger stake and investment. They can also use a separate corporation, which only the founders own, with no employees to hold their capital and then lease it the worker coop
It would definitely be easier in an economy where this was the only way of doing things.
I am not a lawyer.
Based on the underlying economic theory and ethical arguments for worker coops/employee-owned companies, what you could do in such a situation is make a separate legal entity for the worker coop, and then lease the assets of the current legal entity to the worker coop. You and your partner maintain exclusive ownership of the original legal entity
The statement being false implies that it is true, which is why this statement is contradictory if there are any omniscient beings
Pro-market anti-capitalism
Many on the left conflate markets with capitalism and oppose both. This is a mistake. Markets freed from capitalism where every workers' inalienable right to worker democracy may be useful, and help avoid the calculation problem. That being said, I'm highly sympathetic to those that seek to explore what might be possible without markets as that area is under-explored. Ultimately, we should emphasize worker coops
Here is an non-nuanced meme
3/5
The idea that the employer is production's whole result's just appropriator due to the risk they bear is tautological and circular reasoning. Risk, in this case, refers to bearing the liabilities for used-up inputs, which is production's whole result's negative component. It ignores the joint de facto responsibility of workers in the firm for using up inputs to produce. By the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching, workers should get the whole result of production