I notice I’m confused. Converting an existing corporation to socialist mode would mean buying out ALL the stock (presumably by or at least for the employees), wouldn’t it? As you point out, a mixed-ownership model, where some shareholders think they are owed profits, and some shareholder-workers think they are owed non-profit-benefits is going to anger some or both groups.
No way for the corporation as a unit to partly convert, but presumably workers could buy/spin-off/create SMALLER units out of the corporation. Or, as so often seems to be the assumption in these conversations, since capital has no value or claim to revenue, just walk away from it and start their own.
I also notice that I’ve been mind-killed—I want to steelman and understand the appeal and gears-level workings of this organizational principle, but I’m failing. I apologize, and am bowing out of this conversation. Feel free to rebut anything I’ve written, I’ll read but not respond.
If you get the corporation to dissolve then you could use the share that your shares entitle you to take control of only that part of the whole thing. If some parts are more human-involved then the non-human involved parts might not be desirable in the new organization. Ie have 60% of the stock, force dissolution outcome, keep/buy all the employement relations with your share and try to negotiate for the 40% to run away with the money and steel. If ideological stock remains a minority voice then the profit side can just choose to keep intact. If it is especailly clean it might just result in a “split” (rather than a fusion) of 40% of the operations keeping to the for-profit order and could even keep operations in tact. In super peaceful conditions the 60% could even keep customer relations to the 40% where a total break is not possible.
Corporations typically get distrubed if random parts of them need to be reset so the price to buy out random parts is probably a bit more what it would “objectively” be. Degree of ideological fervor might make it okay for the new establishers to take losses. Keeping your parts dependent means this kind of distruption happens less often. If everybody works to subsistence all the time then this threshold can never be met. And it is typical for the part to be benefitting the whole. There the old order is not ambivalent but a bit against part removal (lost profits are lost profits after all). And like you can’t operate 0.1 of a powerplant there is a coordination problem for enough people to detach at the same time to form a sensible new unit before anybody can leave. Competition proofs often require no barriers to entry, reorganization tends to not be a free action so spontanoues fission is not seen.
A pure hunter-gatherer could try to detach from society by only gathering food for themself. Having job specialization is more efficient per unit of work. But having a specialization and hunter-gatherer capability is wasteful. So we find people that have the specializiation but have lost or never developed the hunter-gatherer capability (and there is a outcompeting version of this argument). Then you are at the mercy of what other people have chosen as their specialization on what your wealth is and don’t have the moving room to be optimizing it. At will and all but if you only can function in the niche but can’t form your niches, it isn’t super relevant. Being free to go starve with your sucking hunter skills doesn’t prove that obligatory group activities would dismantle if they were too bad. If there is enough slack to have 10 minutes a day to learn over a year to be non-starving hunter then niche construction can be exercised by having a significantly worse standard of living. But in a sense this is inventing the wheel again just to avoid being commanded by others. Rather you want to find other people that are also fed up with their niches (which can potentially be very different) and then jump straight to a big group oblicatory activity with more comfortable niches. The deeper your specialization the more you are dependent on a bigger outside social order to be static and can expect it to respond slower to your changing needs. The bigger the changing units the bigger the chaos to move from one order to the next. This even if there was nobody orchestrating it. You could have people deliberately orchestrating it. But there is the danger that people with little room to move are easy to organize and some could organize the relations to the benefit of the organizer or society as a whole instead of the ones being organized. If the organizer is doing a bad job or is doing a too self-serving a job the cogs can only squeal. Like being symphatetic for slaves easily turns to hoping that none was a slave, people should not be myopic about the their role in society and helping the cogs involves making sure that they can do more than “just their job”. And it seems if an agents freedom is predicated on another agent not having freedom the result is going to be constant straife. If your money is predicated on me not having money this is an arrangment that can not withstand prosperity.
I notice I’m confused. Converting an existing corporation to socialist mode would mean buying out ALL the stock (presumably by or at least for the employees), wouldn’t it? As you point out, a mixed-ownership model, where some shareholders think they are owed profits, and some shareholder-workers think they are owed non-profit-benefits is going to anger some or both groups.
No way for the corporation as a unit to partly convert, but presumably workers could buy/spin-off/create SMALLER units out of the corporation. Or, as so often seems to be the assumption in these conversations, since capital has no value or claim to revenue, just walk away from it and start their own.
I also notice that I’ve been mind-killed—I want to steelman and understand the appeal and gears-level workings of this organizational principle, but I’m failing. I apologize, and am bowing out of this conversation. Feel free to rebut anything I’ve written, I’ll read but not respond.
If you get the corporation to dissolve then you could use the share that your shares entitle you to take control of only that part of the whole thing. If some parts are more human-involved then the non-human involved parts might not be desirable in the new organization. Ie have 60% of the stock, force dissolution outcome, keep/buy all the employement relations with your share and try to negotiate for the 40% to run away with the money and steel. If ideological stock remains a minority voice then the profit side can just choose to keep intact. If it is especailly clean it might just result in a “split” (rather than a fusion) of 40% of the operations keeping to the for-profit order and could even keep operations in tact. In super peaceful conditions the 60% could even keep customer relations to the 40% where a total break is not possible.
Corporations typically get distrubed if random parts of them need to be reset so the price to buy out random parts is probably a bit more what it would “objectively” be. Degree of ideological fervor might make it okay for the new establishers to take losses. Keeping your parts dependent means this kind of distruption happens less often. If everybody works to subsistence all the time then this threshold can never be met. And it is typical for the part to be benefitting the whole. There the old order is not ambivalent but a bit against part removal (lost profits are lost profits after all). And like you can’t operate 0.1 of a powerplant there is a coordination problem for enough people to detach at the same time to form a sensible new unit before anybody can leave. Competition proofs often require no barriers to entry, reorganization tends to not be a free action so spontanoues fission is not seen.
A pure hunter-gatherer could try to detach from society by only gathering food for themself. Having job specialization is more efficient per unit of work. But having a specialization and hunter-gatherer capability is wasteful. So we find people that have the specializiation but have lost or never developed the hunter-gatherer capability (and there is a outcompeting version of this argument). Then you are at the mercy of what other people have chosen as their specialization on what your wealth is and don’t have the moving room to be optimizing it. At will and all but if you only can function in the niche but can’t form your niches, it isn’t super relevant. Being free to go starve with your sucking hunter skills doesn’t prove that obligatory group activities would dismantle if they were too bad. If there is enough slack to have 10 minutes a day to learn over a year to be non-starving hunter then niche construction can be exercised by having a significantly worse standard of living. But in a sense this is inventing the wheel again just to avoid being commanded by others. Rather you want to find other people that are also fed up with their niches (which can potentially be very different) and then jump straight to a big group oblicatory activity with more comfortable niches. The deeper your specialization the more you are dependent on a bigger outside social order to be static and can expect it to respond slower to your changing needs. The bigger the changing units the bigger the chaos to move from one order to the next. This even if there was nobody orchestrating it. You could have people deliberately orchestrating it. But there is the danger that people with little room to move are easy to organize and some could organize the relations to the benefit of the organizer or society as a whole instead of the ones being organized. If the organizer is doing a bad job or is doing a too self-serving a job the cogs can only squeal. Like being symphatetic for slaves easily turns to hoping that none was a slave, people should not be myopic about the their role in society and helping the cogs involves making sure that they can do more than “just their job”. And it seems if an agents freedom is predicated on another agent not having freedom the result is going to be constant straife. If your money is predicated on me not having money this is an arrangment that can not withstand prosperity.