“seize the means of production” as if that’s an easy/good thing to do. then what, the employees own the company? well, not every company turns a profit. what if the company has a bad year? will the employees go hungry? who says that it will turn a profit next year?
Comment on They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 weeks agoIn fact, let’s just screw the whole thing and seize the means of production…
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Saurok@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Then the employees decide what to do themselves those situations. If it fails it fails, but they would be laid off or not be making money even if they didn’t own the company because their boss wouldn’t be able to pay them.
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Bang up idea, when have you ever seen the government run something correctly/efficiently?
krashmo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s tons of examples if you actually care to look. Trash pickup is an easy example. I’ve lived in places where it was managed by the city and places where it was run by private companies. The city always showed up on time and never raised prices without justification.
Guess what the private companies did on a regular basis? And if you want to talk about efficiency let’s consider whether or not it would be better to have four different companies running four sets of trucks on four overlapping routes through the city as opposed to one entity handling the whole thing. The only thing efficient about the private companies running things is the way the money is siphoned off to some rich asshole instead of being managed by accountable local officials.
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If its so efficient why do trash companies exist? I live in a city that has municipal pickup and all my friends that own apartments/restaurants all have private business dumpsters because the city sucks at doing a simple job…
The government needs to stay in its lane and out of business.
krashmo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If private companies are so efficient then why does the government exist?
Do you see why framing the question that way doesn’t help you address the actual problem? I’m guessing you don’t since you seem unwilling to consider the possibility that private ownership is not the ideal solution to every service problem. I don’t think you need more than a cursory glance at the state of the US to throw that idea out the window but things must seem pretty good to you if you’re still stuck in that mindset.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
so i can tell you from an example why private companies exist that do things that are typically done by public companies … here in austria, there’s a railway operator called WestBahn. They provide passenger trains on the route from vienna to innsbruck (roughly). That’s the only route that they service. Why do they do it?
because it’s one of the most provitable routes in all of austria. it has many, reliable passengers. servicing that route turns a profit. servicing many other routes, for example bus lines in some remote village, is still necessary, but obviously doesn’t turn a profit as it has maybe 3 passengers at a time.
so, they pick the 1 route that’s actually very profitable, only service that, and leave every other route to the state-owned alternative. that’s what’s happening.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
The police and most three letter agencies, when you understand their purpose is to protect the wealthy.
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Works for me.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Who said shit about the government?
We should seize the means of production. Us.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
in other words, steal. i’m actually fine with that if it’s for the greater good. the question is: would it work? do you have any idea how to run a company on that scale? there’s a whole lot of companies that have business connections all around the world. what happens to those? can you handle these connections? what if other companies think that you’re not trustworthy anymore and refuse to do business with you? how do you handle these cases?
also what about money? just that the company is now held by workers does not somehow suddenly make it have much more money. especially grocery stores maybe have 3% profit margins, that means, even if no CEO siphons off wealth, the company’s ability to spend money increases by maybe 3%, so wages could go up 3%. just to inform you, about what’s realistic here. it’s not as if you’re suddenly having a 3x wage increase.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Not quite. “Steal” would imply that the people you’re taking it from have a legitimate claim of ownership over it.
Some of us do. And maybe it doesn’t need to be such a large scale in the first place.
Seize them too.
What about money? If we have the labor, the tools, the farms, and the factories … what do we need money for?
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Good luck with that bub.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
The difference is that the government has no shareholders or incentive to turn a profit, unlike companies. However it can sell luxury goods at a high price, to subside other goods like food or housing from the markup.
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
No share holder, we are all share holder in the US government if you pay taxes, are you daft?
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Oh wow, where are my us government shares?
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
train networks, schools, healthcare, heck even social housing, here in central europe
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A lot more frequently than I see private industry run something correctly/efficiently.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
It’s not the government who would control the means of production, it’s the workers. In theory they might use a vanguard party to seize it non-violently and then redistribute it, so in that case it may pass through the government’s hands. But that’s not the only way to seize the means of production. When properly done though, it would end up in the hands of the workers, every laborer owning their own tools and equipment so they can work for themselves instead of some faceless corporation.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
USPS?