1470
Listen here, kulak... (i.ibb.co)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 8 points 3 years ago (30 children)

Listen, I’m a worker who saved money through my labour. Why should I not get to use my saved labour by deploying it into an investment?

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (10 children)

    People accuse leftists of idealist thinking but in what fantasy world are you thinking your personal savings from selling your labor is ever going to come close to what would be considered "capital" in the sense being discussed here?

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  • [–] -5 points 3 years ago* (9 children)

    It’s directly deployed in stocks and real estate, what do you mean?

    Most capital is “collectively owned” through public corporations, pension funds, etc.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    Not most, in the US around 400 individuals own over 50% of wealth. Similar situation in Russia.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (7 children)

    You’re right that wealth is concentrated, but I was saying that the assets are collectively owned. For example I am a shareholder of Amazon, a publicly-traded company that Jeff Bezos owns a large stake in. So Amazon is “collectively owned” but each share gets one vote instead of one person.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago* (5 children)

    Shares only give you voting power if you have a massive amount of them. In the vast majority of cases shares function as either a place to store wealth to protect it from inflation or as speculative gambling, the majority of use cases is not to signify ownership. I would not classify that as collective ownership, maybe only in theory if you don't look into it too much but real world application of shares is definitely not collective ownership.

    I'm very much in favour of businesses being actually collectively owned through a coop business model though.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Owning public stock is legally indistinguishable from directly owning a joint business venture.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Plenty of things are legally indistinguishable but real world applications are often quite different.

    Though I would also challage that claim since owning a joint business gives you legal deciding power while owning 1 stock does not, you get zero votes from that.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Where do you think the value for your return on investment comes from? It's extracted from the labor of workers.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    It’s not extracted it’s combined with labour to produce higher output than labour or capital on their own.

    For example a worker with a shovel could only dig a small hole a day, but with the injection of capital (ie a backhoe) they can dig many more holes. The worker can increase their pay compared to what they would’ve made with just a shovel and the person that provided the backhoe can also generate a healthy return for their capital contribution.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    healthy return

    How is it healthy that some rich investor gets to play golf all day because he can afford to buy backhoes and hire people to use them? How is it healthy that he earns more money if he pays them less, or that he alone is in charge of resources that a whole community worked to produce? What is healthy about any of this?

    What you are describing is the entire fucking premise of socialism: workers cannot afford the means of production, so production ends up controlled by a handful of wealthy capitalists with perverse incentives and no loyalty to the rest of the human race. An entire tradition of thought is dedicated to how unhealthy that is.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Again, capital is extracted from labor. Who do you think built the back hoe? It didn't fall off the back hoe tree. Workers built it, workers designed it. If some capitalist pig didn't own it, then the laborers could just use it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Even a labourer who has saved up can buy a back-ho. The backho could have been produced by a communist country or work co-op. Who produced the back-ho is not important.

    The important thing is that value is stored, invested and combined with labour to make everyone better off. This is why wages are higher in countries with more capital such as the USA.

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  • [+] 6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    You keep saying “doing nothing” but I earned that money and now I am risking it in investments with uncertain returns.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Why are you hoarding wealth?

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  • [+] -6 points 3 years ago* (3 children)

    How dare you make fiscally responsible investments and expect some return in exchange for the risk you're taking on by letting others use your stuff. How. Dare. You. /s

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Risk is an idiot's justification. Anyone who owns a business knows the whole point of a limited liability corporation is it removes any risk in case of failure.

    If Walmart went tits up today the Walton's would still be rich. It's the workers who bear all the risk.

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