• Infynis@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Nothing in America stops the workers from owning the factory or the profits.

    Fully stop? No, not technically. But our society makes it as close to impossible as it can be without being illegal

      • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Well the main thing is the concentration of capital. Guys like Jeff Bezos aren’t interested in founding cooperatively-owned companies, and they have all of the money. Add in the fact that average people are very strongly atomized and prevented from forming stable social bonds, and the likelihood that you’ll get a cadre of people together who want to start a cooperative business and can also afford to do so is very, very low.

        That said, the few coops that manage to exist are often the best places in their industry to work, precisely because the profits are shared more equally than in the more common private or publicly traded corporations.

              • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                That is how capitalism works.

                Yes. And it is deeply unfair in how it rewards entrenched wealth rather than giving everyone equal opportunities. That’s why socialists are opposed to it.

                  • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    I’ve worked hard for what I have too. That doesn’t stop me from looking around, seeing that there are billions of people on this planet who work way harder than I do for way less than I have, and saying “this system should be changed.”

                    idk what communist countries you’ve been to, but if you compare for example the average Cuban’s quality of life to that of the average person on any other Caribbean island, capitalism doesn’t come out looking too hot. Most post Soviet countries are still poorer today than they were in 1989, almost everyone who has been lifted out of poverty in the past generation is Chinese, and there are literally hundreds of capitalist countries that have been doing capitalism for a hundred years or more that have remained the poorest countries in the world regardless.

                    The objective reality is that communism is leaps and bounds better at organizing society than capitalism can ever be, full stop.

              • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                This is ironically a poor sales pitch, unless you believe that networking, marketing, and familial wealth should be what orders society.

                And I never said that 250k was all they had, and in fact being able to throw that much money at something is going to be less and less of a concern the more money you have, though I don’t think his family was “poor as hell” to start with. Unfortunately for this point, their finances at the time are not publicized that I can find.

                  • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s all part of how society works.

                    I said should, not does.

                    But he didn’t steal profits.

                    Back then, he used a considerable amount of money to run at a loss. Nowadays, he does steal a remarkable level of profits in the unpaid wages of the employees who keep winding up in the news for being forced to piss in bottles or drive to work in a hurricane.

          • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            He started out with a small loan of $250,000 from his parents, in 90s $s if memory serves.

            You’re just a bootlicker aren’t you? Lazy workers could be billionaires if they just tried

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Look at the current environment in America. Look at the absence of worker co-ops besides like Winco. Why aren’t there more? What factors are at play that is seemingly preventinf the natural formation of worker co-ops if they are allowed? Are children taught they can do that? Do people getting MBAs learn this in their classes? There are a lot of questions to ask here. While we do have some examples, for whatever reason they are not common here. I do think it has something to do with the resources the average citizen has available, the current ecosystems within existing markets, and all around education of the average American citizen.