Comment on Thomas Edison was the Elon musk of his era
ceenote@lemmy.world 5 months agoI think this post is more about denigrating Elon than celebrating these two.
Comment on Thomas Edison was the Elon musk of his era
ceenote@lemmy.world 5 months agoI think this post is more about denigrating Elon than celebrating these two.
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
yeah fair enough. that still implies that there’s something great about founding Tesla. Which could be great, if the founders had sold the company to its employees and made it a co-op!
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Ok. Show me how we collectively invest in R&D without IP and build a car company without profits.
Aaaaannnnd go!
daltotron@lemmy.world 5 months ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_power
Oh look! Government investment!
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No government can exist without surpluses generated by the population. There have never been surpluses, except maybe in a few golden areas of abundant rain, without some form of trade and profit i.e. capitalism
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
investment into worker owned companies is possible. Buying stocks is not the only way to invest and make profit.
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If nobody has profits, what is there to invest?
zaph@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
So perform magic? Do you know how the company transferred ownership?
PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
yeah turns out I was misinformed. my bad. But point still stands, they made a private company designed to exploit workers, and some asshole took it over.
Octavio@kbin.social 5 months ago
I’ve been trying to figure out how to get the worker-owned cooperative model to take over for the capitalist model for a long time. It just seems to be a better outcome for everyone. You can’t squeeze the worker to extract wealth for the shareholders if the only shareholders are the workers. No need to squeeze the customers if there’s no hedge fund bros expecting a 20% return on their capital. But how often are workers going to have the money lying around to buy their company?
The workers may not have been interested in buying and as much as we may hate exploitation by capitalist pigs, it’s unrealistic to expect entrepreneurs to just give it all away. I think we’re still a ways off from the appetite for revolution is large enough to just take it from them. And I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do anyway. We do need people with the skill set to organize businesses and envision products and services. We just don’t need to keep treating such people as demigods. That would be enough revolution for me and they could still be the rich people, just not so grotesquely wealthy while people who make it all possible are struggling.
What I’m thinking of is like an investment fund that provides low-cost financing for groups of employees who are looking to buy their boss’s business, or for start-ups that are looking to organize their business as a worker-owned cooperative. Of course by definition this fund would earn less than market rates. Providing low cost financing is just providing low return investment opportunity from the other side. So investing in it would be more of a charitable contribution than an investment. But I don’t think the system is in place to facilitate financing of worker-owned cooperatives at present. I think a better use of our energies would be to figure out how to make such a framework than just screaming at capitalists. Just my take.
daltotron@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That doesn’t really describe capitalists, though. The point about the ownership class is that they’re not really skilled in doing any of this, which is why the economy is organized in the eclectic and idiotic way that it is. I also don’t understand what “envisions products and services” is, as a skill. I think we can all do that, it doesn’t really make it a good or valuable service. Owning class dipshits envision services all the time, are awful at it, and they never end up getting made or doing anything useful.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
People often imagine things they don’t do can’t be that hard. Marketing is important because no one will be interested in your product if no one knows about it. Being able to envision products that the average person will want is another one that good business leaders often do.
Steve Jobs, for example, was very good at envisioning what people would be interested in. From the Apple to Macs to the iPod to the iPhone, he hit a lot of winners. This isn’t an endorsement for him owning the company, or even as a person, but he undeniably had a skillet that others around him often lacked.
Octavio@kbin.social 5 months ago
It may not describe financiers. I’d say it’s a fair description of entrepreneurs. Just because some people do it poorly doesn’t mean it’s not a skill. Kind of argues that it is, actually. I wholeheartedly agree that having the most money is a horrible qualification for the job. But I maintain that it does need to be done. Myself I would prefer more of the decision making to be collectivized but I don’t think the concept of having business leaders is entirely outmoded.