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0 pointstomp1y ago0 comments

I think this is just your anti-capitalist bias showing. “Market” is meant in purely game-theoretic terms.

> The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing for worker happiness instead.

All these workers could set up cooperatives and work for / own them instead. The fact that this hasn’t happened suggests that in reality, the for-profit companies are better at optimising workers happiness than cooperatives (maybe they pay better? Maybe they enable more job hopping?)

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6 comments · 4 top-level

consteval1y ago· 2 in thread

This only works if you assume we are in a free market. We are not, and no such market has ever existed.

Setting up a coop versus setting up a company aren't on equal ground. One has clear legal roads, and the other is perceived as communism by 50% of Americans. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

It's a similar argument I hear against unions - "well go work somewhere else!" The problem is that it's just not equal. Companies have infinitely more power and leverage than laborers. The labor market is EXTREMELY skewed in favor of companies.

If we want the labor market to not be skewed like this, we will need to allow (and even force) laborers to unionize. That's just not gonna happen. In practice union busting is not only allowed, its perceived as a good thing.

hellojesus1y ago

> we want the labor market to not be skewed like this, we will need to allow (and even force) laborers to unionize.

We already allow workers to unionize; a practice with which I don't agree. If we were to force workers to unionize, then we take away worker atonomy. I fail to see that as a benefit.

I don't have anything against unions generally and am happy for companies to decide they will exclusively deal with unions to reduce their costs of negotiations, but I absolutely do have a problem with laws saying employees can decide to take away atonomy from their employer and force their employer to negotiate only with a union.

consteval1y ago

As I've said, we don't really because union busting is not only allowed but expected.

The reality is that employers should not have such autonomy. What you're arguing is the right for an employer to necessarily hold more leverage in negotiation as opposed to workers. Which... isn't a right. It's an anti-right. As in, you want less rights for workers.

Unions only work if they're enforced. Just like a right to life implies an anti-right to kill, a right to fair negotiations implies an anti-right for employers to choose not to negotiate with unions.

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Aeolun1y ago

> The fact that this hasn’t happened suggests that in reality, the for-profit companies are better at optimising workers happiness than cooperatives

Or everyone is too exhausted from their daily grind to even consider doing so, which is honestly not very surprising.

bialpio1y ago

> All these workers could set up cooperatives and work for / own them instead.

And some people do that (modulo creating coops), just not middle-class people. No-one without a decent cushion would be able to risk it. Especially with health care being tied to employment.

fileeditview1y ago

I think that's a bad argument. Founding your own cooperative makes you kind of an entrepreneur but joining one doesn't. Most workers are joiners not creators in terms of companies. And I bet more than a few of them would gladly become a partial owner of the company they are working for.

But there are so few cooperatives that the chance of you joining one is very slim anyways.

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