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

Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact

@196

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

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

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

I wouldn’t say FSF is too ideological. They just don’t have a political strategy for how they will bring about the changes they desire. To really change things towards a new mode of production, you need a way for people in the new mode of production to earn a living. Also, their ideology is wrong in its lack of emphasis on software workers’ rights and the relations of production

If you look at property rights, the contrast is even stronger. The employer owns 100% of the property rights to the produced outputs and owes 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs. Meanwhile, workers qua employee receive 0% of both. This is despite their joint de facto responsibility for producing those results violating the basic principle of justice.

We need to move towards a copyfarleft model that considers the rights of both software users and developers unlike copyleft

Can Land Value Tax Be Passed On To Tenants?

https://gameofrent.com/content/can-lvt-be-passed-on-to-tenants

@socialism

That’s why you use the revenue derived to fund a UBI. Then, there would be a safety net, which could potentially be used to partially cover one’s land value tax obligations. As land becomes more valuable it is important that people use it more productively. Land value tax encourages building denser and reduces urban sprawl.

Many people rent housing. The key advantage of a land value tax is that landlords are unable to pass it on to tenants. They have to take the hit.

@socialism

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

The challenges you mention don’t really refute the main arguments for worker coops, inalienable rights theory, even if they were unsolvable problems that couldn’t be solved no matter what other changes were made. Economic democracy aims for workers to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor in property rights terms not value. This is based on the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Capitalist firms don’t satisfy this basic tenet. They are thus illegitimate @196

Capitalism v. communism is certainly a false dilemma. There are other alternatives such as Georgism as you noted. I would go further and advocate a Georgist economic democracy where all firms are structured as worker coops. Similar to the problem you identify with capitalism in that it fails to treat land and capital differently, the mainstream of Georgist thought fails to differentiate labor from capital in an important respect. Labor can’t factually be transferred unlike capital @196

I would have 100% of voting shares be inalienably attached to all workers in the firm. Non-voting preferred stock can continue to be free floating property rights @canada

Worker-owned companies are certainly rooted in anti-capitalist thought, but they aren’t inherently socialist in the 20th century sense because they are compatible with private property

There are examples of it working with worker coops and some ESOPs that are more democratic.

Workers can jointly delegate to corporate leadership. Worker democracy doesn’t mean that every decision is put to a vote. The decision-makers just have to be accountable to the workers not to some alien legal party.

The workers are de facto responsible for production. By the principle of legal and de facto responsibility matching, the workers should get the whole product

See: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

Another cool Gerogism-inspired policy is common ownership self-assessed tax (COST), which can be used to collectivize the means of production while maintaining decentralized control of it.

In terms of direct action, we should just starting building postcapitalism now with venture communes of worker coops, and implement policies we want in the venture communes. This would even help with reformism because it would bring economic power to the movement, which could be turned into political power