From: Ross A. Finlayson (extropy@apexinternetsoftware.com)
Date: Sun Nov 03 2002 - 05:13:20 MST
On Saturday, November 2, 2002, at 06:46 PM, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> --- Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 12:22:42PM -0500, Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> "Worker control of the means of production" means, basically, that
>> when
>> the enterprise makes a profit, the workers share in it. Nothing more,
>> nothing less. If you worked for a dot com and had stock options, you
>> were participating in a socialist scheme.
>>
>> (With me so far?)
>
> No, because ONLY a dot com where ALL stock is owned ONLY by employees,
> and their ownership is entirely in proportion to their contribution to
> the company, minus salary and benefits used for living expenses or
> otherwise taken out of the enterprise.
>
Dot.coms ain't shit, paid out bust to mo-fos, or as you say, investors.
> The percent of employee stock ownership among most dot coms, outside of
> generally a handful of founders in each case (or less), tends toward
> the single digits.
>
That one percent is good or bad.
> Of course, we could assume that you are making a statement of fact that
> is accepted in the socialist community. In which case, I would point
> out that a majority of Microsoft is owned by its employees (if you
> count Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and other founding management as
> employees). In which case I find it strangely odd that those on the
> left, especially those tending toward socialistic policies, also tend
> to be those who are the most vehemently hateful of Microsoft. Shouldn't
> we blame the evils of Microsoft on socialism?
>
Microsoft ain't socialism, blank. They're partially socialist only
because they have to play to the lowest common denominating purchasing
and sales guy, a least user. Yet, China don't play them. I tell China
to democratize, Taiwan is an independent god-damn democratic state.
>>
>> The headache of socialism is that the term has been used to cover a
>> wide range of sins -- including the communist program, which went far
>> beyond
>> worker participation in ownership, and including a number of failed,
>> dictatorial attempts to enforce joint ownership by effectively
>> ensuring that nobody had a stake in anything.
>
> That is the essential character of communal ownership. That which is
> owned by all is owned by none. The ills of the tragedy of the commons
> strikes any attempt at socialist solutions or alternatives to pure free
> markets.
>
If everybody gets it, it's socialized. If everybody pays for it, it's
public property.
>>
>> It's extremely noteworthy that all the failures of socialism have
>> involved
>> attempts to impose it from the top down, by government fiat. The
>> successes are all bottom up.
>
> And they remain successes only so long as the partners are aware that
> they can't vote themselves into wealth. When they forget this, they
> generally vote for whoever promises it to them, resulting then in top
> down fiat government. This is the essential instability of socialism,
> and has been proven to be a far worse instability than any ascribed to
> libertarianism of the anarcho-capitalist variety.
>
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>
Bullshit, your suck face zoomie bitch.
Ross
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