Here is a short introduction to the core argument against capitalism based on liberal principles: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@socialism

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” – Abraham Lincoln

This quote captures the differing understandings and notions of liberty between these different political groups

@linux

If you emphasize giving workers what they literally produce instead of its value, the contrast is even greater. With value, you are still emphasizing the pie metaphor, which capitalist economists invented to obfuscate the real issues. In terms of property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs, workers qua employees get 0% while employers qua employer get 100%. In the property theoretic terms, workers don’t get the fruits of their labor at all
@humanities

I agree that employment is voluntary in the legal sense. Voluntary transaction occur if both parties perceive that they will benefit from the arrangement. The problem is that responsibility can’t be transferred.

You know that there is no de facto transfer of de facto responsibility happening in the employment contract. If you thought that a transfer of de facto responsibility occurs in employment, you would think that the employer is solely legally responsible for crimes committed

@politics

Employment is a voluntary transaction, but there has to be some corresponding factual transfer to actually fulfill the contract. No such de facto transfer of de facto responsibility occurs to match the assignment of legal responsibility in the employment contract. The contract is not ever fulfilled nor is it, in principle, fulfillable. The only arrangement where legal and de facto responsibility match is a worker coop. Labor is nontransferable at a factual level. You accepted as much

@politics

The tenet that legal and de facto responsibility match, when applied to property theoretic questions, is the tenet that people have an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The latter is the principled basis of property rights. Since employment violates the former principle, it also violates the latter. Employment contracts violate property rights’ principled basis.

Labor isn’t transferable.

The foundations of capitalism need destroying

@politics

Thank you for making my argument for me. Now, what morally relevantly changes when workers cooperate to produce a widget on behalf of the employer instead of committing crimes for the employer? Do they become non-conscious non-responsible robots? No.

Legal responsibility matching de facto responsibility implies that all firms should be mandated to be worker coops, and rules out employer-employee contracts. In worker coops, the workers are jointly legally responsible for the results

@politics

I’m aware of the standard line.

De facto responsibility can’t be transferred from the employees solely to the employer to match the legal responsibility assignment in the employer-employee contract. A thought experiment showing this is to consider an employer and employee cooperating to commit a crime. The employee can’t argue that they sold their labor, and are not responsible. The law correctly applies the principle of legal and de facto responsibility matching. Both are criminous

@politics

An employer, in principle, can hire both labor and capital, so they don’t have to own capital. In practice, employers tend to be corporations that own capital due to bargaining power.

Workers consent to employment terms, but they can’t fulfill them. The problem is that consent is not a sufficient condition to transfer de facto responsibility.

Abolishing employment doesn’t infringe on property rights. Employment contracts infringe on labor’s property rights to the fruits of labor
@politics

Workers are de facto responsible for creating the opportunities that employers gate keep. Employers violate workers’ inalienable rights. The workers are de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but the employer gets sole legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of production. This violates the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match.

No one is responsible for creating land. Landlords deny everyone’s equal claim to land

@politics

Capitalism is a system of property relations and labor relations. It is conceivable to not have those property relations and labor relations in a firm. However, a corporation doesn’t do that as the employer solely appropriates the entire positive and negative result of production i.e. the property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs. In a worker coop, the workers jointly appropriate the fruits of their labor. Capitalist property relations aren’t present @memes

Huh, there are worker coops and 100% ESOPs as alternatives to capitalism that can exist within capitalism @memes

Include, in your politics, actionable steps. The most important step is to create worker coops and supporting institutions, so you aren’t giving the fruits of your labor to capitalists with what you do everyday @memes

The universe might be discrete.

If mental states are finite, then the space of all possible human minds is finite and includes the one that believes they have knowledge of the computation’s result. It is possible for mental states of 2 minds to be different but extensionally behave like the same person. We would exclude human minds whose models don’t map well onto the physics of our universe though. You might not be willing to pick the opposite if we are talking about morality also @askbeehaw

There are finite number of possible humans due to there being a finite number of states a brain can be in.

There is an argument for moral realism that takes advantage of finiteness and computability of mental processes to show that there could be an objective morality

@askbeehaw

Tax exempt status for all worker coops

@politics

Non-profits with workers must also have labor control.

The article’s version doesn’t account for some use cases.

Non-market systems can operate within the commons and we only need to charge at points where value leaves.

Extensions I’ve considered:

- Allow proprietary works as long as the commons is appropriately compensated

- Restrict use for creating proprietary works.

- Require collectivizing property also

Distribute licensing funds to projects using quadratic funding

@socialism

The advantage would be that there would be a clear business model for funding the work and any license enforcement, and with a clear source of revenue, we could use various public goods funding mechanisms like quadratic funding to ensure upstream projects are funded.

I agree that the FSF wouldn’t endorse it. We would have to convince developers that this approach makes sense and they need to adopt it to work towards a free and open world. @socialism

I have a specific theory of rights in mind. This theory of rights proposes worker coops as the only rights respecting way of organizing labor relations based on the inalienability of responsibility. I’m not using rights in a general vague sense to refer to harm.

Worker coops view workers differently than capitalist firms. They see labor as a fixed factor e.g. worker coops cut wages not jobs during economic, downturns.

The theory of rights I have in mind can fit in a license @programming

Far left as in explicit restrictions on capitalist firms using the software without paying for it while still allowing full software freedom for worker coops, which don’t violate workers’ rights.

Copyfarleft should set up a whole family of licenses of varying strengths and its own alternative ideology from the FSF. The first principle is an almost complete rejection of permissive open source licenses as enabling capitalist free riding @programming