this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Work Reform
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The rational left (i.e. not the authoritarians) only want the "government" to own everything insomuch as the "government" is a profoundly democratic representative body, in an administrative capacity.
Don't confuse "private property" (industrial machines and other means of production held privately by an investor class in order to extract profit via the arbitrage between the productive value of employees and their flat wages) with "personal property" (your house, car, clothes, dishes, toothbrush, etc.). There aren't many leftists who think there shouldn't be personal property.
Private property that isn't personal is someone elses property, and if I want to have my own property it makes sense for others to also have it
I don't want the govt owning my home, or having to rent from a govt, and I dont want to drink water from govt owned companies because at that point it truly is authoritarian simply because the govt has way too much power over your life
I've been on .ml before and theres more than a few people than think NK and Stalin are/were good, and are anti-private property
edit: I honestly kinda think some of you are downvoting this because other people have downvoted this. these aren't unpopular or insane ideas, and anyway I only used water as an example of govt ownership because that's the first thing that came to my mind. a better example would be that I wouldn't want my food to be grown by the govt
I'm getting the feeling that you're from the US based on your distrust of the government, which in your case, I guess is fair.
But I think the person you're replying to probably has in mind a situation that is much better than the current one in the US before we even start seriously considering buying up private property for the commons. The obvious first candidate would be utilities like water/power/internet. Without a profit motive or investors to pay off, they will offers the best service at the lowest price. Not to say private alternative wouldn't exist, but that you would always have the cheaper public option to fall back on, and also keep the private alternatives from jacking up prices only the make a profit.
Public housing could work in a similar way, where you have the option out there on the housing marketing, in addition to banks and private sellers. For instance, in my city, we have public housing that is $8/mo. I lived in one of these public cooperatives with my folks until my teens, and it was great. Really gave us a leg up when we needed it.
PS. I recommend turning off visible vote counts. Downvotes were getting under my skin too, but now all I see are comments.
I'm pretty sure private for-profit water is absolutely worse than government run water. Everyone can at least nominally vote to change the government. A private org is beholden to no one except shareholders (if they have any), and maybe laws (if they exist, are relevant, and are enforced).
We already had a gilded age where we learned how low for-profit entities will go. We had saw dust in bread, chalk in milk, and worse.
For profit food production is giving us price gouging and a water crisis. Would government do better? Well, given the current administration maybe not.
i edited my comment before your reply to note that I simply used water as an example because it came first to my mind and there are better ones
As I wrote in my edited comment (that was changed before you replied) there are better examples of my point that I don't want too much govt control, for example I wouldn't want all the farms in my country controlled by the govt
And their consumers. An orange juice company tries to make their product sold, and at the end of the day they rely on you to buy it. If enough people don't, they will increase the quality of their juice or decrease the price to increase sales.
You should realize that companies need to compete with each other, and because of that they cant visibly increase the price of a good too much or lower its quality because they will lose sales. Anywhere where this doesn't happen laws can be written to force them
Meanwhile, we have "shrinkflation" and consolidation into fewer and fewer companies.
For vital services, what are you going to do? Not get health care? Not buy fruit anymore?
The natural end state of private ownership is monopoly/cartel. We've done all of this before and it sucked. Being "beholden to customers" doesn't matter much if they're a captive market, or there's really only one seller with no vote
Maybe if we actually enforced laws about competition it would be better, but good luck getting people to learn from history.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Everyone is entitled to personal property, the things they have for personal use (e.g. your house or toothbrush). Private property is not someone else's personal property, it's the things for group use which generate value to the group (e.g. the industrial equipment necessary to create your house or toothbrush) which under capitalism are owned and controlled by investors.
The leftist position is that those "means of production" being owned and controlled by investors leads to the investors paying their staff as little as possible while charging as much as possible, so that they can thrive on the difference between prices and wages.
The leftist solution is for those "means of production" to be owned collectively by the people who actually use them to produce things. There's a whole spectrum of exactly what that looks like.
On one side are those who think the government should own everything. The argument being that, assuming you can trust the administrators to not be corrupt, that is the best way to coordinate resources. This is logically sound, since the resources which would be wasted on marketing, and redundant R&D in competing companies, and other capitalist inefficiencies, could be directed productively. The flaw is in the "assuming you can trust the administrators to not be corrupt" part. That's a big reason why the USSR failed.
On the other side, there are those who think that the basic concepts of market economics are sound, the problem is simply the capitalist-worker relationship. The argument being, capitalism can be subverted while retaining the benefits of market economies through co-ops: instead of revenue being paid in part to wages with the remaining profit being divided along shareholders, the revenue after costs is divided totally among the employees, who are themselves the only shareholders. This preserves the competitive innovation of the market, while excising the parasitic capital class.
Only the most extreme zealots in the Soviet camp ever push for abolishing personal property. That's a fringe position even for the left.
after you say this
you say they are this
that stuff is the investors personal property (or the corporations but that is a technicality) and them selling it to me is fine as long as there is meaningful competition and no monopolies and govt regulations stopping them from putting toxins in it or something. I dont think the best solution to high prices and wealth inequality is taking the personal property away from these investors and handing it to their employees (who lets be honest probably don't know much about economics) who aren't motivated to take risks with the company and aren't motivated to lower their wages when the company needs to save money or isn't production much money. This lowers the competitiveness of the company, but having a CEO to manage all this while being kept in check with a union is a fine solution to this.
If there is a wealth gap higher taxes on the wealthy is all that is really needed to even it out
Without capital new factories wont be built btw, unless you have a bank or investor financing them. And I don't think bank tellers should get a say in what the bank invests in (if its run by the workers this would happen, as the bank teller is a worker at the bank), because they very probably don't know about the finances and economics of the industry the bank is investing in and wouldn't have an educated opinion on the matter. I would rather have investors (who may have more money than others, but if its too much taxes can fix that, not funky ownership stuff needed) picking small companies, giving them money and later getting back their money as the small companies grow.
edit: I'm an honestly convinced most of the downvotes here are from people that see a large number and are inheritily inclined to increase it. I really don't believe 9 people read this and honestly disagreed. And if you did disagree, reply and say why, because this is just iritating
Been drinking tap water straight from government-owned companies for decades. Taste is okay (a bit hard for geological reasons), but it couldn't be healthier.
Still, though, you're right that the question of the state not owning everything is a very serious one that needs to be addressed.
What are your thoughts on cooperatives, libertarian socialism, or anarchist communism?
My government owned power utility is selling me the cheapest electricity of all the OECD, and still turning a profit that's returned in the government's coffers to invest in research and social services. It's awful!
What I don't like isn't the fact that the profits of the service aren't going to shareholders, but because it gives the govt more power over you. This is fine if you trust the govt, but at some point there is an extreme of trusting the govt with too much. like I wouldn't want the chinese govt controlling my finances
edit: why tf am I being downvoted? if you disagree with me then reply.
Yeah you're right, the shareholders really have my best interests at heart!
Thankfully in this case I AM THE SHAREHOLDER.
what is a shareholder
no ur not 🤦
your government is
how about you tell me right now what a shareholder is because it really seems like you don't know
the shareholders only care about themselves, but the system that they collectively create through mutual competition and distrust for each other provides (ideally) cheap and (ideally) high quality products for the costumer. Why isn't this the case irl? Not enough competition, which the govt can safely encourage with antitrust laws.
Price - Cost = Profit
Shareholders take their cut from the Profit side. Under the capitalistic owner-worker relationship, workers take their cut from the Cost portion. Customers want to minimize the price.
The shareholders and the workers are directly in conflict, and the shareholders are the only ones who get to appoint the board of directors. Shareholders want to maximize Profit, which means they want Price to be as high as the market can bear, and Cost (including workers wages) to be as low as the market can bear.
This directly, mathematically, incentivizes shareholders make things worse for workers and customers, and then roll those profits into the next business venture. Clever lawyers can justify their Cost by saving bigger Costs, as can lobbyists. Heck, if you're clever enough you can get legislation drafted to specifically target your competitors. Every antitrust law just invents a new fun little puzzle for clever lawyers.
The difference between a government and a company, is that I can vote out the greedy people in my government. I can't vote out greedy shareholders. Both will eventually become corrupt, but only one is built with countermeasures.
you do it by boycotting them
then make better laws
No? Have you looked at the news in the last few months??? Voting doesn't work as nicely as you would like it think it does
No, you don't. "Vote with your dollars" does not count. So long as some people have more money than others, that gives some people more vote.
Then better lawyers, repeat ad infinitum. There's no such thing as a perfect law, there's always some loopholes. If you can't lobby your way around it, that is.
Certainly. But it's even worse when it comes to private companies. As weak as the countermeasures baked into government are, they're ironclad compared to the countermeasures in capitalism.
No system is perfect. The goal is to find one that's least bad.
its a weighted vote based on how much money you are willing to spend. If you want a larger impact orginize a boycott
Then if they get better lawyers you make better law. There are several examples of an eternal cat and mouse chase in the modern world
I want to own my own things and I want to own whatever factories I spent money constructing. My personal property. And to stop me from abusing my workers or whatever there can be laws that stop me
Correct, which means capitalists with orders of magnitude more money has more influence than a boycott. A company with lots of money can weather a boycott longer than people stay committed. A company with massive market share cannot be effectively boycotted. Look at Nestle, constantly being boycotted but they're rich enough and diversified enough to ignore the boycotts. This isn't a lack of conviction of the consumer, it's a fundamental property of the system.
You keep trying to put bandaids on a gushing wound. We've shown beyond any doubt that the bandaids are incapable of keeping up.
I want my own things and don't want anyone to siphon enough money from the value created by others to afford constructing a factory. No one earns that much money. Those fortunes come from being a parasite.
I think a major problem with decentralizing too much is that basic goods that the modern world needs, like artificial fertilizers and computer chips cant be produced or if they can be produced they cant be made in large quantities. What I understand anarchist communism to be is many small communities of people that collectively grow their own food and make their own medicines, without much large scale trade. With libertarian socialism and cooperatives there's still the issues that if the workers own the factories they aren't going to be incentivized to take risks with the company, the average worker has no idea about macro-economics and how to run the business, and they also wont want to lower their wages if its necessary (like if the company is doing poorly or if there needs to be additional financial motivation for low preforming workers - obviously that can get out of hand but some of it makes sense). To somewhat even out the wealth gap I think higher taxes on the wealthy and more rights for unions is pretty much all that is needed.
I'm sure if we asked the billionaires and their paid-for politicians nicely, they'll start writing and enforcing laws that'll tax them more and give more rights to unions.
Hard /s
.ml folks aren't far left, they're full on authoritarian dictatorship apologists. They're no more leftist than China is communist
I think that depends on what you call far left. If you ask me thats exactly what it is, other than the exception of more libertarian- or even (another exreme) anarchic- communism
I guess I wouldn't call them right wing either. The authoritarian side of the political compass kinda looks the same on every side, when it boils down to the actual policies they want
You're a liberal then, pro-market with regulation, maybe a social democrat using Nordic countries as an example? With the overton window changing so much you're not really a leftist anymore
I kinda dislike all these terms like left, socalist, communism, ect because everyone has different understandings of them.
If you ask a right-leaning libertarian about the differences between socialism and communism, I imagine that they would say that their the same thing, and point to China or the USSR calling themselves socialist, while being communist (china not so much nowadays though)
I try not to categorize myself too much because of that
edit: if people are gonna downvote me, say why 🤦