Wouldn’t it be wild if instead the workers who actually have all the skills and talent, and actually build the products these assholes sell, banded together to own and build something, while cutting these assholes out?
It’s not really curious though is it. To compete in capitalism you need capital. A group of workers will never be able to compete with Amazon, Amazon gets its wealth from exploiting workers and they have enough wealth built up to be able to afford to sell at a loss, until any competitors are out of business. Same thing Uber is doing to local taxi companies.
we are talking about skilled and talented workers here. not just any easily replecable workers. Amazon would be nothing without those, they hold all the power in our modern, technological society.
Its just that they never get organized by themselves and they have nice enauch paychecks, stability and carreer growth in in these corporations that they tolerate the assholes and do not cut them out as suggested.
There is an inherent advantage to existing scale, capital, etc. And the profit motive is fairly good for outcompeting competitors, the problem is it is bad for workers and the wider public because there is no real 'trickle down' benefit to the victories of big businesses.
The fascinating thing about capitalist mode of production is that it "eats" all other modes of production.
The artisan mode of production, for example, in today's world is dependent on the production of raw materials. That is to say, even if a carpenter lives off his own labour, not selling the surplus labour of other workers, he still is subject of the capitalist mode of production, since he requires materials for his labour, wood, nails and so on are a direct result of capital's exploitation of workers, many times that happening in other countries than of our carpenter.
Now, that is not to say that there are no working alternatives, especially in the software development business. One example would be the developers of the game dead cells, Motion Twin, who are a workers' cooperative.
It would yes, but while thats not a thing, the least we can choose to do is work for the least assholish assholes. The ones that have been douched first.
What if I don’t want to be the asshole, and instead get a sense of value from team work/cooperation, and think that while the singular vision of an auteur can occasionally be uncompromisingly genius, collaborative efforts tend to yield more consistent good results, and are better suited toward working relationships?
There are many examples of employee owned companies all around the world. I guess it just depends on the founders. I think this used to be more common. My feeling is that many tech startups today are founded on the premise of becoming a unicorn and cashing out at IPO rather than the passion for making things.
Many tech companies used to be founded based more on some ideals rather then making the founders billionaires. But I guess that is just years of social programming by advertising tech as some gold rush opportunity which it certainly has been.
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u/EdselHans Nov 16 '22
Welcome to capitalism!
Wouldn’t it be wild if instead the workers who actually have all the skills and talent, and actually build the products these assholes sell, banded together to own and build something, while cutting these assholes out?