There are ideologies that believe control rights over firms belong to the workers in those firms. In these ideologies, the control rights can’t be given up or transferred even with consent from the workers in the firm i.e. are inalienable. Neoliberalism specifically endorses the alienability control rights over firms. The non-democratic nature of the firm under neoliberal capitalism creates a class used to democratically unaccountable power

What do you mean by work in the statement, “Capitalism can work?”

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am asking what normative criteria you are using to assess the system. There is no non-moral objective notion of a system working without some ethical goal in mind

Capitalism’s defining institutions are

1. The employer-employee contract
2. Private ownership of the means of production
3. Private property in land

The alternative to capitalism I propose, Georgist economic democracy, abolishes 1 and 3. 2 continues formally but there is widespread collective ownership of the means of production. Markets continue to exist to help coordinate production and allocate resources. Many defenders of capitalism incorrectly conflate capitalism with markets @general

What do you mean by capitalism? @general

Whether there is a power imbalance between customer and provider is dependent on how competitive the market is. When providers have market power, consumers can form associations to collectively bargain down providers’ prices.

Is there an enshittification example without IP?
Enshittification usually happens with monopolistic firms not competitive markets.

What would you replace markets with specifically?

Quadratic funding lets public goods be free. I can’t see how it’s extractive @memes

The only way incentives based on outcome work is when people produce directly for their own use. For cases where people produce for others, the profit motive helps coordinate people to produce. Power imbalances can be avoided by collectivizing means of production across multiple coops.

Enshittification requires IP monopolies. Economic democracy shouldn’t have IP monopolies. Instead, it should secure software freedom. Digital public goods should be funded through quadratic funding @memes

Why is the profit motive terrible in your view? What should we replace the profit motive with?

What is the benefit to pro-market anti-capitalists to challenging that particular preconceived notion? It creates an unnecessary roadblock when pro-market anti-capitalists can just describe themselves as radically democratic liberals, who want to extend democracy into the workplace @memes

I want to convince leftists that there is no benefit to pro-market anti-capitalists referring to themselves as socialist. It is an unnecessary association that only comes with downsides @memes

It was a good question. I am limited in response length because I am on Mastodon.

In terms of social dynamics of a stateless society, The Possibility of Cooperation by the game theorist Michael Taylor uses game theory to argue against the Hobbesian case for the state. Radical Markets by E. Glen Weyl covers how to do common ownership with minimal administration @memes

I know how leftists define it, but when communicating with non-leftists, it doesn’t help in understanding the economic democracy position.

1. Central planning with no markets whatsoever is extremely inefficient
2. The existing proposals for central planning are authoritarian and don’t allocate resources properly to new projects.

The strongest critique of a system is that the ideology used to justify it, after mapping out its logical implications, is actually opposed to it @memes

When people think of socialism they think of central planning in an authoritarian government, this has nothing to do with economic democracy and is its opposite.

I prefer the term economic democracy for the system I advocate.

It’s not just optics. The arguments for economic democracy are based on the liberal theory of inalienable rights. These arguments demonstrate that capitalism is illiberal and violates liberal principles @memes

In an economy of worker coops, there is democratic control, but it is decentralized in nature @memes

Anti-capitalism ≠ socialism @memes

I was describing a company to produce buses i.e. the actual vehicle. Not for driving buses. The alternative to what I describe as the problem with capitalism is to structure all firms as worker cooperatives. In a worker cooperative, the basic tenet of justice is satisfied i.e. legal and de facto responsibility match @memes

Based on ideas of Dmytri Kleiner and Glen Weyl. The commune’s members lease all their capital from the commune. This is structured for minimal administration from the commune. Each member coop self-assesses a price for their capital. They pay a recurring fee on that price. The member is required to transfer the capital to anyone that pays the self-assessed price. With the right percentage, the incentives to over-assess and under-assess cancel out. The fee can be used to invest in coops @memes

Capitalism inherently violates a basic tenet of justice. For example, consider a bus vehicle company, the employer owns 100% of the produced buses and owes 100% of liabilities for used-up inputs. The employer is solely legally responsible for the whole result of production. Workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce buses. The basic tenet of justice is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. There is clearly a mismatch here in capitalism @memes

Worker coops are firms that are democratically worker-controlled. Communes are democratic also.

Unemployment would be less worrying due to the UBI. Worker coops are committed to their workers so have incentives to train them. Also, worker coops prefer to reduce pay during downturns rather than employment.

Trade policy between communes would be set by free agreement. Quadratic funding helps resolve collective action problems such as for defense. Power concentration is severely limited @memes

I prefer Georgist economic democracy.

1. All firms are structured as worker coops
2. Land and natural resources are collectively owned with revenue derive from common ownership going out as a UBI
3. Common pools of capital collectivized across multiple worker coops through a system of venture communes.
4. Public goods and mutual aid institutions funded through some variant of quadratic funding

@memes

The path to a solution for journalism is a funding mechanism that is a mixture of quadratic funding by Zoë Hitzig, Glen Weyl and Vitalik Buterin and artistic freedom vouchers that Dean Baker proposed. These are mechanisms where the public directly decides what news sources receive public funding.

Quadratic funding: https://youtu.be/xwY0UAk14Rk

Artistic Freedom Vouchers: https://cepr.net/report/the-artistic-freedom-voucher-internet-age-alternative-to-copyrights/

“Now it is time to state the conditions under which private property and free contract will lead to an optimal allocation of resources… The institution of private property and free contract as we know it is modified to permit individuals to sell or mortgage their persons in return for present and/or future benefits” – Economist Carl Christ in US congressional testimony

“whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would” – Robert Nozick

@socialism