this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

more than a hero, a union man

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Who is the author of this poster?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I want a high-quality print of this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I've seen a sticker of this IRL, I miss whoever kept putting up pro union star trek stickers on the lamp posts, I haven't seen any new ones in about a year.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I know this is a meme community and probably not the right place to ask. But the meme prompted my question and I promise this is a good faith question.

If labor is entitled to all it creates (i agree! In principle), who determines what that is? For example - someone operating an injection molding machine might "create" a million doodads in a year. But the machine and the material and the electricity and the QA of those doodads are all created/done by someone else. How is that divvied up?

Personally I am leaning toward UBI funded by a capital tax, along with a functional labor market, as kind of a solution here. But I'd appreciate any easy-to-digest references.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Labor is entitled to all it creates, but that doesn't necessarily mean each laborer should receive the full value of what that individual laborer creates. It means that the laboring class should receive the full value of what the laboring class creates. Following that logic all the way through, it necessitates that labor be the only class, and thus a classless system. There are... A few different ideas on what that system should look like, with various and myriad different levels of complexity (and authoritarianism), but the basic idea is that ownership of the tools by which we ensure our survival (ie, the means of production, the productive materials) should not be held by an elite few who profit wildly off the labor of the vast majority of us. They should instead be held in common (again, different models ranging from a worker co-op to a fully planned economy with the state standing in as a sort of proxy for the worker), and thus the value created by the laborers who are working those productive machines is more equitably distributed.

Basically, if Tim Apple wasn't around and Apple could be run as a worker co-op, each employee could be making a ridiculous amount of money. Or, more realistically, each employee could make a living wage, and the excess could be funnelled back into the business for innovation, expansion, whatever. If you extend that out and apply the model to an entire national economy, you could use those excess funds for healthcare, infrastructure, UBI, food assistance, bombing brown kids. All the stuff that nation states like to do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The problem with the laborer making all that they make, is that it isn't always equal. Self regulation is a more difficult mark than most realize. Customers have different demands and laborers all think they have the highest skill set. But that simply isn't factual. There are many gades in between and managing it takes a third party when the employee threshold is over 5.

That leaves out all the hours they get paid. Their benefits. The customer contracts. And so many other factors. Mid management is a necessity in many businesses. They are paid for mitigating all the paperwork involved as well as all the problems that the laborers don't ever see.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And depending on the situation, those are also laborers. Management has a role to play in any decently sized firm, regardless of it's structure or ideology. The argument here has little to nothing to do with management, it has to do with ownership. Should the employees collectively own their workplace, or should a single entity or group of shareholders own the workplace?

Hell, even the IWW let me sign up as a manager, though they technically have a "no bosses" rule.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think self ownership would be awesome. However not everyone saves or invests. And so we are here. Someone had a great idea and traded it for equity and many have done it since.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Not everyone would need to save or invest. Each individual employee would not be collecting the full value of what they produce. They would all be collectively collecting the full value of what they produce via the business. Management still exists, money still goes back into business. This isn't some fantasy scenario, it actually exists successfully in the real world. Mondragon is the most cited example. Just because the enterprise is collectively owned by the workers doesn't mean that each worker is in full control. It means the firm is run democratically, collectively.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The thing last trips me up is the idea that there's no value added by the employer so it's all theft. Sure, the value added is definitely less than what the employer keeps, but there is some value added even if it's only in the sense of an agent getting "buyers" for your labour.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I was playing a little life sim game (Kynseed. It's not bad)

I bought the town general store, and money just started rolling in. I didn't really have to do anything. The staff I hired dealt with customers and stocked the shelves, but I was keeping all the profits. I actually felt kind of guilty about how brazenly but also thoughtlessly capitalist it is.

I felt less bad when I started bringing in rarer stuff to sell (because people need to buy monster parts and fish, I guess), but the default is just "I own this so I get money without work"

Anyway. It's just a video game but it made me think

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The thinking, I believe, is not that managerial work isn't work, but that ownership is not a reason to take a cut of the profits. Think of it more like - in a big corporation, lower and middle management does something useful (theoretically), as does the sales department, and even some of the corporate brass at the top. They still do some form of useful labor, even if primarily social and mental labor rather than physical.

But what do the shareholders do, other than make decisions whose only purpose is to maximize their own payout regardless of its effects on the health of the firm?

The managerial class may be over-compensated in our current system, but they still deserve compensation. But the investor class is parasitic, in this thinking.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

The main thrust, I think, is "Fellow gets 90% of the profit just for owning the capital" is cut out of the equation more than the exact calculus of which laborers get what percentage. The answer to that question probably varies wildly depending on what kind of socialism or post-capitalist system one prefers.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

That’s why I poop on company time

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (3 children)

What about the dominion war?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I know, but we’ll get him next time!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Dominion war was about the Founders trying to eliminate any threat to their status as the ruling class.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Oh please, it was to stop Federation expansionism.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

And Robot Wars?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Why is Miles being played by one of the characters from La Planète Sauvage?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)