Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
Market forces on their own produce many if not all of the perverse incentives of capitalism. Only a centrally planned economy, built on a foundation of grassroots democracy, can hope to overcome those incentives by doing economic planning with an eye towards future sustainability and quality of life, rather than towards profitability.
Within the context of one person’s career, socialism on its own can do quite a bit to transform people’s relationship to their workplace. No longer would your job be at risk because you’ve all done too well and it’s to “cut labor costs” while profits soar. No longer would you be worried about automating away your job, instead you’d gladly automate your job away and then the whole organization could lower how much work needs to be done as things get more and more automated.
Democracy would massively improve work-life balance.
Of course this comes with problems, all of which exist in capitalism (how do we care for people outside of these organizations who won’t have access to work, for example). But if I had to choose between market socialism and capitalism, the choice is pretty clear, and it’s something much easier for liberals to stomach.
The idea of centrally planned economy ignores the lessons of the past. Bronze Age empires and recent examples all display universal inability to adjust to changes.
It’s the same magical thinking as the blind belief in market forces exhibits.
Priests of “invisible hand of market” ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia, believing that markets will just magically fix everything in time for it to matter.
Preachers of central planning ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia (and yes, there is a market, as long as there is goods and services exchange, however indirect) by believing they will have all the relevant information and the capacity to process it in time for it to matter.
Neither is true. Neither school of thought even attempted to show itself to be true.
I think the better way would be a centrally planned economy for some goods (electricity, “normal” food, health, …) and something more “free” for the rest of the market. Bread has a marked price but a PS5 doesn’t.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
Cool, what is your preferred replacement and does everyone in this thread agree? You have managed to continue criticism but not offer a replacement yet again.
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
Not always, sometimes it’s just an acknowledgement of insurmountable facts. Pointing out the inability of a particular engine to overcome the laws of thermodynamics to output more energy than is input is not useful criticism. Pointing out the mortality of individuals is not useful criticism. Those shortcomings are specific, but unless there’s some alternative that doesn’t have those shortcomings, those aren’t useful observations, they’re pointless complaints.
I, a socialist don’t. I think however they should be tightly regulated. And kept away from basic necessitys.
Markets have proven time and again to only serve oligarchs, or create oligarchs to serve. When left to their own wont. If we can choose to participate or not in the markets. Then there is no issue with markets. When we’re slaves to the markets as we currently are however. No one is free.
Markets have lots of issues; you just named a bunch. Markets are subject to all kinds of hidden information manipulation contrary to prompting non cooperation and solving for individual maximums via exploitation like you literally outlined. Your wish to magically regulate them is just going to be corrupted.
Which is why I specifically mentioned decoupling from necessities. Regardless it seems like we are both blocked from the community LOL. But it’s not like I expected more from the community based around memes
No because I don’t give you a gift only if you give me one. It’s not a transaction. They are gifts.
…but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it’s a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can’t occur then you’re relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you’re expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There’s little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
If worker-owned workplaces still operate within a market, there will still be pressure to compete with other companies. People can still come up with new ideas to compete and change can still happen.
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I’m sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they’d be better elployees
Either that or the reason they purposefully hire meth-addled freaks is because they want desperate people who won’t fight for any of those things.
Source: Friend who works in a warehouse and has coworkers who are obviously there to get a paycheck to afford their fix and then move on. It’s the company culture. They could choose to hire better people, or mentor the people who could grow, they don’t.
Sounds like you’re a duct-taper. That’s also indicative of a procedural issue with the company you work for. Shit sucks. Hyper competent duct taper usually ends up being a pretty thankless job as well. Never getting to actually fix underlying problems. Always putting out fires. And everyone just learns to expect it from you, from above and below. And it sounds like you’ve learned to expect it as well. I know all workplaces have their dysfunction, but I hope you can either come to find this one more tolerable or find a better environment soon.
I didn’t say all I said most. It’s really probably not even most just a large enough portion of them that there’s always some issue going on caused by their negligence.
It’s not just about treating current employees well. It’s also about offering enough at the hiring stage to attract more good workers. Higher starting pay and a better reputation as a place to work means more people applying, means that Methface Matt can’t compete with TypeA Teresa to get hired in the first place.
People lie in their interviews all the time. The amount of conversations I’ve had with my boss regarding people he’s hired that turned out be idiots that have started with “I don’t know what happened with that dude, he seemed totally normal in the hiring process”. We’re also restricted in what questions we can ask during interviews because asking people probing questions is apparently not fair according to our HR dept which makes it pretty easy for them to BS their way in. Then we’re stuck with their dumb asses for months before HR lets us fire them.
That doesn’t really change the overall point. People are stupid. It’s the single biggest sticking point in democracy, socialism, communism, really anything except dictatorship/technocracy/oligarchy/etc. Any system where you cede power to the masses runs the risk of the masses being utterly stupid.
I think it’s worth it, because stupid is better than evil, but it’s still a point worth considering.
if you dont raise your children to be adults, they won’t act like adults when they grow up. A revolution would mean people learning entirely new skills, like making decisions in the workplace. Most workers have no agency, theyre treated like machines, so I dont expect people raised in that society to know how to run a completely different one from scratch. Revolution is a process, it has to be built. Keep shitting on your coworkers tho, im sure its a productive activity
They can’t even learn to do the tasks they are expected to do now. Even with frequent coaching. How the fuck can you expect them to learn to make business decisions?
I used to work for a food type company and the way they decided to import and sell stuff locally was if the board of directors (the CEO who inherited the company from daddy + his siblings) liked the item. They hired someone, my coworker, to actually run the market tests and everything and then promptly ignored any suggestion she had to make about the viability of this product on the local market, instead relegating her to a busser that was in charge of ordering the samples they decided they wanted.
I remember one item nobody liked (they would give us the remaining samples in the break room like some dogs getting the leftovers), but one of the siblings liked it and they got that close to putting it on the market because of it.
I have so many stories from there. At the end of the year they would sell the soon to be expired stock to the employees for like half the price. On paper it was half (you’re just giving money back to your employer so fuck them I stole as much food as I could), but the person who actually took the money was super nice and often gave us further discounts. For them the difference was like a decimal in accounting.
They announced these sales by email with the time and date. And in 2020, the year of covid, when half the workforce was working from home, they made the sale as usual. I learned afterwards that on that morning, the siblings who owned the company went and parked their cars right in front of the warehouse where the sale took place, and filled the trunk with as much stuff as they could. Then 2 hours later the sale happened and there was almost nothing left.
Technically legal but a fucking shitty thing to do lol, your job is to have a blurry monitor and pretend to do Excel sheets and you drive a Porsche, I think you have the means to load up your car at the store like a grown adult if you need to.
same way we expect students in 9th grade to be capable of more complicated tasks once they’re in 12th grade. The nature of labor in capitalist countries is to sort out wheat from chaffe. “Good” workers become managers (although this is theoretical, ive had plenty of shitty managers), leaving the “bad” workers down at the bottom. This how the economy works right now, but it doesnt always have to. For example, unions sometimes have a probation period where you work as a temp, then join the union after a month or two. This gives you time to learn the job, before you have a say in how things are organized.
These days it’s mainly external hires, but it used to be you got promoted to incompetence. You do a job well, you get promoted. You don’t do it well and you don’t get promoted. Thus you get stuck doing something you’re bad at
Sounds like a structural issue. Your coworkers are overworked or underpaid or not informed correctly for the job they’re given. Maybe they know they’re not skilled, but the job is the only one available to them and since they need the money they’re stuck doing something theyre unskilled at. These are but a few systemic problems that might lie to reason.
Ask yourself this: If all your coworkers are bad at their job, are you just an extra special boy, or might there be something wrong going on?
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Your coworkers aren’t incompetent. Your coworkers are just half-assing at work because they correctly realize they’re not going to get paid more if they actually tried.
So they’re just selfish assholes that don’t mind creating more work for everyone else and potentially putting people’s safety at risk? That doesn’t do anything to convince me that they should have a say in how the business is run. If they’re not happy with their pay they can go elsewhere.
Where did I say anything about helping the business? I don’t expect them to go above and beyond, when they don’t do their assigned tasks correctly their coworkers then have to deal with the problems this causes getting bitched at by angry customers and such. On top of that some things if not done properly can create a safety issue. We have safeguards in place for this but again it’s just extra work for someone else to redo it. This attitude is causing far more problems for their coworkers than it is for the business.
They’re on track to get fired so they’re not going to get paid for long. You totally ignored what I said about making all their coworkers suffer for their laziness. I thought all us workers were supposed to be in this together?
Some of the workers may be managerial.
But the managerial workers don’t own a disproportionate amount of the company, and they’re not considered the “superior” of any other workers.
Didn’t say they run it. The person who runs it can be simply another employee. It’s just there are no outside investors and everyone has a vote on the board. You put someone in charge you trust but everyone as a whole has a say in big picture stuff with the person at the top being day to day and being held accountable to employees and not investors.
Capitalism fundamentally changes the relationship between workers and their work. One takes the value they create and gives it to someone else. One doesn’t.
But why would this employee put in that more work than anybody else? Just to get the same amount of compensation as anybody else? I certainly wouldn’t put up with all the complications of leading a bunch of people without being paid extra.
Than I don’t really get the idea. Could you elaborate?
As far as I understood, the company’s shares belong to the employees (“everyone gets a seat on the board”) and those elect a director which in turn organises the work structure, assigns roles etc. Correct?
Can he be replaced at all times?
How is the compensation of the employees determined?
How are employees handled which are not performing their duties?
Can employees be fired?
How can employees join and leave the company?
Do they return their shares on leaving?
Can they buy and sell their shares?
How do new employees get their shares? Are they assigned or bought?
How is capital raised for large long-term investments like a new machine?
If the employees bring up the capital, do they get interest?
What if no capital can be raised? Is the company terminated?
Can some employees put in more capital than others?
Is the financial gain distributed equally between the employees?
Yes I think so, because the people running the company have no interest in listening to the positions of the workers, especially if it makes them less money.
When the people working in the company have a democratic vote, they at least have a choice and don’t have big mistakes dictated from upon high.
At least then, the workers can agree they all made a shitty mistake together. It doesn’t mean workers are infallible. All humans are fallible. All humans make mistakes. The difference is the power dynamic, nothing else.
I think they have education related to the running of a large company whereas most of my coworkers barely made it through their IT certs and have some of the stupidest takes regarding how things should be done I’ve ever heard in my life.
Every single job I’ve had was made worse by management. Not just worse for us, but worse for customers/clients as well. I have zero faith in management, I have complete faith in the people actually working on the floor knowing what would be best to do on the floor.
Now you ask about “not making it fail immediately” which to me gives me an impression of thinking it is still a business that needs to be grown.
I imagine a lot of shop floors would agree their time and resources were better spent elsewhere. No one needs Funko pops, I don’t doubt those workers would find something better to do
Well the main thing is the concentration of capital. Guys like Jeff Bezos aren’t interested in founding cooperatively-owned companies, and they have all of the money. Add in the fact that average people are very strongly atomized and prevented from forming stable social bonds, and the likelihood that you’ll get a cadre of people together who want to start a cooperative business and can also afford to do so is very, very low.
That said, the few coops that manage to exist are often the best places in their industry to work, precisely because the profits are shared more equally than in the more common private or publicly traded corporations.
Yes. And it is deeply unfair in how it rewards entrenched wealth rather than giving everyone equal opportunities. That’s why socialists are opposed to it.
This is ironically a poor sales pitch, unless you believe that networking, marketing, and familial wealth should be what orders society.
And I never said that 250k was all they had, and in fact being able to throw that much money at something is going to be less and less of a concern the more money you have, though I don’t think his family was “poor as hell” to start with. Unfortunately for this point, their finances at the time are not publicized that I can find.
250k is a lot of money. It was more even more money in the 90s. Its an exceptionally large amount of money to recieve for free straight from your parents.
People don’t become billionaires from working. They become billionaires by taking profit from the surplus value of other peoples work.
But you believe in a propagandized version of capitaliam where everyone could equally become a billionaire, its a meritocracy, you’re all jealous and lazy of our deserving overlords
Where do they get the business owner who wants to do that? Can it happen? Sure, it has. But thats not going to happen for most bussiness operation in capitalist countries. Can workers get the money to buy out their owners? Sure. But that’s not super likely in most situations either.
Sure: becoming a member of a corporation costs money. You either have to pay to get it set up or buy a share to get in so those who already paid are made whole.
Unfortunately, the US as an example, our society is structured such that the majority of people here have zero savings with wages decreasing in value every year due to inflation. A person in this situation cannot produce money to buy-in; squeezing water from a stone situation.
All people are essentially born with no assets, and if they want to secure wealth, they must sell their labor to achieve it.
In other words, children of parents who own an outsized number of assets do not have to sell their labor to achieve it, because it is offset by their parents assets. This inherently produces an unequal/unbalanced system where some people simply never have to work this way. This is why extremely in-demand internships at companies in places like New York City are often unpaid, and thus generally end up going to people who already have money, access, and support systems. Because only those kind of people can afford to take on an unpaid internship to move upward in the capitalist system.
This is also the source of generational poverty, because it can be really hard to escape when generation after generation are born to no assets.
This is an area I have said needs to be taxed to hell, there is no good reason we should allow the passing of wealth without heavy penalty. I’m convinced that if we taxed all forms of wealth transfer at something like 80%, we could pretty much get rid of income tax. Income you have earned should be your entitlement, assets passed down to you should be where the taxes cut in.
So, you have to sell off 80% of your dead mother’s mementos unless you’re rich? Careful—your proposal is good in spirit, but has ugly side effects that need to be carefully avoided.
Inflation’s been happening since currency was created. We don’t notice day to day because the effects are stretched over a long period.
Try calculating the value of a 2010 dollar against the current 2023 dollar. You’ll find the cumulative effect of ~5% inflation each year is significant.
In addition, periods exist throughout American history during which inflation has spiked noticably within a year or two - this is nowhere near the first time.
Look at the current environment in America. Look at the absence of worker co-ops besides like Winco. Why aren’t there more? What factors are at play that is seemingly preventinf the natural formation of worker co-ops if they are allowed? Are children taught they can do that? Do people getting MBAs learn this in their classes? There are a lot of questions to ask here. While we do have some examples, for whatever reason they are not common here. I do think it has something to do with the resources the average citizen has available, the current ecosystems within existing markets, and all around education of the average American citizen.
So ah… What’s the issue then? You can have what you want under capitalism. Attacking the system is forcing your own on others. This is unironically what makes socialism unpopular in the context of history.
The western left doesn’t agree on one form of socialism to align around so it is both impossible to criticize with any specificity and serves as a catch-all in opposition to the current system. It breaks down when they suddenly have to align on specific policies.
That’s a good thing; socialism is a fledgling idea. It needs discoure and experimentation. The attack that lack of exact details and perfect cohesion is an empty one.
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
Those lazy commies with their limp wristed excuses like: “The reality of living under a capitalist society”. Why don’t they just eat some bootstrap stew like my pa did and die of preventable illness generating labor value for someone else?
Wait…so these are your examples of people who “did something”
Do you realize that the edge every single one of these companies had over the others is the willingness to do whatever it takes to extract as much value from labor for the least amount of money, right?
You are just making the case for the complete destruction of capitalism. Only soulless psychopaths are rewarded here. Winning is not beating these people at the same psychotic game that they’re playing.
This is the reasoning that leads to “if you think medicines are too expensive, stop buying them” with much the same problem of it not being quite that simple for the majority of humanity, whose “choices” are not as unconstrained as the ones you’re familiar with.
No one cares if you “buy into” anything. It exists whether you believe it or not.
The entire point of keeping unemployment at certain levels is so capitalists can dictate wages and responsibilities. It’s not a secret. Bourgeois media openly panics whenever unemployment levels get too low.
I try to tell myself that most of the people bought into capitalism can be rehabilitated, maybe some just need to spend a few years breaking rocks to get it through their heads that other people fucking exist on this planet.
Reading your comments has made me re-evaluate that
I don’t buy into that lame beta theory of gravity. You go down. If you don’t feel like going down, go up. It’s that simple. That is the beauty of jumping. I can jump as high as I want
Tesla is not close to bigger than GM. They only make consumer vehicles and maybe a model of semi truck but I don’t think that’s being produced yet, while GM has been making consumer cars in addition to commercial and military vehicles for decades. They might be valued as more but that doesn’t really say anything in practical terms.
People will donate a significant portion of their wages to ineffectual radical politicians but won’t bother to consolidate capital to support co-ops. That’s the actual system I see.
Okay I said I was done talking with you but I actually love any excuse to nerd out on this so here:
The state of California has mandated compostable household and business waste be separated out and picked up separately much like recycling is already separated. This is a law that is already in effect; however, they have declined to enforce it so far. They have recently began making statements that they will begin enforcing the law and fining businesses and property owners for not complying.
Many small municipalities (and some big ones) have not even started setting up the infrastructure to do so. They’re way behind.
This means there is a captive market for a company providing those services. A potentially huge market.
Now anyone can set up a waste collection service, it’s pretty standardized, but here’s where my idea is different. A technology called pyrolization.. It mostly requires organic materials, lots of em. In essence, it’s burning without fire. The input is organic material, the output is a stable carbon-rich solid called biochar (similar to charcoal except not as flammable), and something called syngas, which is similar to natural gas. With the right machinery, the process produces energy and is carbon-negative.
The carbon-negative aspect is the selling point. Do you know how many carbon-negative businesses there are? You could probably count them, globally, on both hands. This would play EXTREMELY well in California.
Pyrolysis is not a new technology, but applying it at scale is. Currently it’s mainly in use as a way of processing human waste. There’s a company called BioForceTech in the Bay Area that has a successfully operating pyrolysis machine processing human waste, and they have machines globally that also process feedstock like wood chips and nut shells. Municipal organic waste would require a sorting machine for sure, but other than that it could use their machine just fine. And the sorting machine wouldn’t have to be as complex as those in municipal compost systems: if plastic gets mixed into your compost, that’s bad. If plastic gets mixed into something you’re just going to burn and bury, not a huge deal.
$850,000 is not enough to set something up like this on the municipal level. That would take millions. It’s enough to get buy-in from BioForceTech, ReCology (bay area waste management company that has experience with waste-gas powered trucks, and compost sorting machines), investors, and local and state government (the state has several grant and loan programs for “green” businesses, especially in waste collection).
In my opinion the biggest, most profitable market would be Santa Clara County or Alameda County, both in the bay area and both have limited compost pickup presently. But that’s a big bite to chew and I think beyond the capabilities of a new business. Something like small towns in Mendocino County would be perfect - small enough that they don’t have municipal organics collection aside from maybe yard trimmings, liberal enough that the carbon-negative aspect would play well, rural enough to have plenty of cheap land for a processing facility.
So that’s our market. We get to charge customers for the pickup, and then sell the power generated as “clean energy”. Not to mention the whole thing functions like a peaker plant. When electricity prices are low, you can adjust the output ratio to create more biochar - adding to the carbon-negative selling point (and getting some money from cap and trade). When electricity prices are high, you can get more syngas and burn it as carbon-neutral energy.
The one thing I’m not very familiar on and would need to consult experts on is the regulations involved in the “selling electricity” aspect. The regulatory burden may make that part not feasible, I just don’t know enough about it.
Surprise, when there are obstacles standing in the way of your goals, people may mention those obstacles when asked about progress towards their goals.
What an absolute flaccid take.
The system actively discourages that. It was tried in the 70s. Banks wouldn’t work with coops because they were diffrent. Other companies wouldn’t work with them because they didn’t being as high a ROI. They were more efficient and stable, but under capitalism none of that matters.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
You clearly know nothing of the coffee industry. Don’t speak on a topic if you literally know nothing. Third wave coffee exists because of the inherent abuse of the workers who actually harvest coffee. That you’re so naive to even think that the person behind the counter is the end of who is part of Starbucks is shockingly sad considering how much you’re trying to fight for something that is dependent on you needing a much better understanding of what you’re talking about.
I never said Starbucks owns the slave labor. But to ignore the influence they have is outstandingly naive. Like, do you think at all before replying? Are you in middle school and have any idea how the real world operates?
I think the point the other user was trying to make is that Starbucks already has connections, and they are able to source their coffee from more shady sources if they really want to. Someone starting out new has no such connections and will pay a higher price for their beans than Starbucks, ergo, they have to find something else to compete on other than price (which I think is possible, I live near many local coffee shops, including some worker co-ops). However, you’re still dealing with Starbucks having a larger presence than you, economically, and them being able to source cheaper goods due to economies of scale. I would think you’re already familiar with this. You’re correct in asserting that you’re stuck just having to “believe” your sources don’t use slave labor, because you’re sourcing it from another country. Starbucks at least has the money to check on such things, if they so choose.
The point that I was trying to make was that Starbucks works with more than just the people at the counter, which is how you characterized it. Moving goalposts now isn’t very helpful.
Starbucks doesn’t own the farms. They buy the beans from the people growing them. The exact same thing you would do if you started a coffee chain or you would buy from a wholesaler…
It’s so insanely more complicated than that. Not all farms are equal.
Yeah, and a third party candidate could be voted into every seat and the presidency, but it’s so stacked against it occurring, it’s effectively impossible.
The state of the economy today is what’s stopping a vast majority of people from doing so. You can open a coffee shop and survive, but you could never compete against Starbucks. You would not even dent their bottom line. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars to realistically compete. Capitalism has brought us to a point where a majority of folks need to sell their idea to investors, further separating most workers from the value of their work.
Edit: I’m really tired of the naive and childish defenses most people put up for capitalism. “Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah and “nothing” is stopping a transgender women from becoming our next president by the same definition of “nothing”. Might as well say nothing is stopping you from passing through walls as quantum mechanics says it’s possible.
Dutch brothers by revenue is essentially a drive through energy drink stand, not a coffee company and Peet’s is owned by a holding company that got rich off of Nazi work camp labor.
Peet’s had 4 stores before it started changing hands, Peet’s and Starbucks famously did not compete with each other for years, and Starbucks wasn’t even selling brewed coffee before it was taken over by Shultz and venture capital.
But from my experience in the industry, your confident incorrectness is perfectly in character for a coffee shop owner.
You haven’t owned coffee places. You’ve been entirely wrong on how to source coffee plus your description of what even makes coffee. If you used to own them, you probably ran them into the ground. You’re objectively wrong on coffee production.
You seem to think to compete, you have to grow larger.
You need to at least meet inflation, if not outpace it. Moreover, you’re not competing if you aren’t actually trying to battle. Competition breeds innovation. If you do not compete and do not get better or try to improve, society would degrade and regress. Come on. Before you respond next time, just think about what the consequence of what you’re saying is before.you actually hit the button. It saves us a lot of time.
Even if, hypothetically, 65% of people owned their homes outright, that’s still over a third of the population who can’t even consider getting a loan like you described.
And for those that COULD, they’re betting their entire life on it. People with money can afford to take risks. It’s not an even playing field, at all.
Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Market forces on their own produce many if not all of the perverse incentives of capitalism. Only a centrally planned economy, built on a foundation of grassroots democracy, can hope to overcome those incentives by doing economic planning with an eye towards future sustainability and quality of life, rather than towards profitability.
Within the context of one person’s career, socialism on its own can do quite a bit to transform people’s relationship to their workplace. No longer would your job be at risk because you’ve all done too well and it’s to “cut labor costs” while profits soar. No longer would you be worried about automating away your job, instead you’d gladly automate your job away and then the whole organization could lower how much work needs to be done as things get more and more automated.
Democracy would massively improve work-life balance.
Of course this comes with problems, all of which exist in capitalism (how do we care for people outside of these organizations who won’t have access to work, for example). But if I had to choose between market socialism and capitalism, the choice is pretty clear, and it’s something much easier for liberals to stomach.
Not saying I’m in favor of it, but there’s still market socialism out there as a political stance
The idea of centrally planned economy ignores the lessons of the past. Bronze Age empires and recent examples all display universal inability to adjust to changes.
It’s the same magical thinking as the blind belief in market forces exhibits.
Priests of “invisible hand of market” ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia, believing that markets will just magically fix everything in time for it to matter.
Preachers of central planning ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia (and yes, there is a market, as long as there is goods and services exchange, however indirect) by believing they will have all the relevant information and the capacity to process it in time for it to matter.
Neither is true. Neither school of thought even attempted to show itself to be true.
I think the better way would be a centrally planned economy for some goods (electricity, “normal” food, health, …) and something more “free” for the rest of the market. Bread has a marked price but a PS5 doesn’t.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
Cool, what is your preferred replacement and does everyone in this thread agree? You have managed to continue criticism but not offer a replacement yet again.
The ole can have criticism without perfect solutions response. Cool, how useless and pointless of you.
I’m confused, isn’t criticism without alternatives itself useless and pointless?
No, it broadens and deepens understanding.
Alternatives come from that understanding. Criticism is the fundamental step towards alternatives.
How exactly do you come to that conclusion?
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
“thing has specific shortcomings” is a useful criticism.
Not always, sometimes it’s just an acknowledgement of insurmountable facts. Pointing out the inability of a particular engine to overcome the laws of thermodynamics to output more energy than is input is not useful criticism. Pointing out the mortality of individuals is not useful criticism. Those shortcomings are specific, but unless there’s some alternative that doesn’t have those shortcomings, those aren’t useful observations, they’re pointless complaints.
I, a socialist don’t. I think however they should be tightly regulated. And kept away from basic necessitys.
Markets have proven time and again to only serve oligarchs, or create oligarchs to serve. When left to their own wont. If we can choose to participate or not in the markets. Then there is no issue with markets. When we’re slaves to the markets as we currently are however. No one is free.
Markets have lots of issues; you just named a bunch. Markets are subject to all kinds of hidden information manipulation contrary to prompting non cooperation and solving for individual maximums via exploitation like you literally outlined. Your wish to magically regulate them is just going to be corrupted.
Which is why I specifically mentioned decoupling from necessities. Regardless it seems like we are both blocked from the community LOL. But it’s not like I expected more from the community based around memes
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Yes. Do you not?
So Christmas gifts are a market?
No because I don’t give you a gift only if you give me one. It’s not a transaction. They are gifts.
…but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it’s a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can’t occur then you’re relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you’re expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There’s little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
Hunger is such a poor motivator.
The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact that it has a boss
So every company remodeled after REI, got it.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Or as normal people call it, “money”
deleted by creator
How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
Not a market socialist though, just a socialist.
Are people investing in new automation currently because I’ve been using the same crappy tools for over 10 years now and they keep getting crappier.
Oh yeah we automate creative work now, the one thing that could still be a cheap hobby.
If worker-owned workplaces still operate within a market, there will still be pressure to compete with other companies. People can still come up with new ideas to compete and change can still happen.
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
I trust my average coworker much more than the average CEO.
Highly depends on your coworkers. My current coworkers? Yeah they’re great, we have two electrical engineers on my team, buncha geniuses.
My last job? Oh man I wouldn’t trust those guys as far as I could throw em.
And how did you feel about upper management at that job?
Untrustworthy but at least smart.
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I’m sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they’d be better elployees
Either that or the reason they purposefully hire meth-addled freaks is because they want desperate people who won’t fight for any of those things.
Source: Friend who works in a warehouse and has coworkers who are obviously there to get a paycheck to afford their fix and then move on. It’s the company culture. They could choose to hire better people, or mentor the people who could grow, they don’t.
thats because they want addicts (of any variety, not just drugs) cuz their labor is cheap. its a form of exploitation
No, they’re just idiots. Myself and others have had the same training and responsibilities and do fine. It’s not that difficult of a job.
i shall surely reap the rewards of working at the same level as these irredeemably dumb people. then i will prove my point online or something
I’m several levels up from them. But I have to deal with the problems they cause constantly. I did start at their level though.
thank you for your service i guess
Sounds like you’re a duct-taper. That’s also indicative of a procedural issue with the company you work for. Shit sucks. Hyper competent duct taper usually ends up being a pretty thankless job as well. Never getting to actually fix underlying problems. Always putting out fires. And everyone just learns to expect it from you, from above and below. And it sounds like you’ve learned to expect it as well. I know all workplaces have their dysfunction, but I hope you can either come to find this one more tolerable or find a better environment soon.
Sounds like you’re just an extra special boy. Surely that’s the only explanation to literally all of your coworkers doing their job badly.
I didn’t say all I said most. It’s really probably not even most just a large enough portion of them that there’s always some issue going on caused by their negligence.
Sounds like you’re just a mostly special boy then. Surely that’s the only explanation to literally most of your coworkers doing their job badly.
It’s not just about treating current employees well. It’s also about offering enough at the hiring stage to attract more good workers. Higher starting pay and a better reputation as a place to work means more people applying, means that Methface Matt can’t compete with TypeA Teresa to get hired in the first place.
People lie in their interviews all the time. The amount of conversations I’ve had with my boss regarding people he’s hired that turned out be idiots that have started with “I don’t know what happened with that dude, he seemed totally normal in the hiring process”. We’re also restricted in what questions we can ask during interviews because asking people probing questions is apparently not fair according to our HR dept which makes it pretty easy for them to BS their way in. Then we’re stuck with their dumb asses for months before HR lets us fire them.
I guess you haven’t met many CEOs, then.
You must need a better job. I’ve had plenty of workplaces where I could count on everyone around me.
You know, the hiring manager usually has something to do with the quality of people hired. Maybe you could talk to them instead?
If I made my hiring manager worried more about quality I wouldn’t be hired
That doesn’t really change the overall point. People are stupid. It’s the single biggest sticking point in democracy, socialism, communism, really anything except dictatorship/technocracy/oligarchy/etc. Any system where you cede power to the masses runs the risk of the masses being utterly stupid.
I think it’s worth it, because stupid is better than evil, but it’s still a point worth considering.
if you dont raise your children to be adults, they won’t act like adults when they grow up. A revolution would mean people learning entirely new skills, like making decisions in the workplace. Most workers have no agency, theyre treated like machines, so I dont expect people raised in that society to know how to run a completely different one from scratch. Revolution is a process, it has to be built. Keep shitting on your coworkers tho, im sure its a productive activity
They can’t even learn to do the tasks they are expected to do now. Even with frequent coaching. How the fuck can you expect them to learn to make business decisions?
You’ve clearly never worked close with anyone making business decisions in the real world.
I used to work for a food type company and the way they decided to import and sell stuff locally was if the board of directors (the CEO who inherited the company from daddy + his siblings) liked the item. They hired someone, my coworker, to actually run the market tests and everything and then promptly ignored any suggestion she had to make about the viability of this product on the local market, instead relegating her to a busser that was in charge of ordering the samples they decided they wanted.
I remember one item nobody liked (they would give us the remaining samples in the break room like some dogs getting the leftovers), but one of the siblings liked it and they got that close to putting it on the market because of it.
That all tracks
I have so many stories from there. At the end of the year they would sell the soon to be expired stock to the employees for like half the price. On paper it was half (you’re just giving money back to your employer so fuck them I stole as much food as I could), but the person who actually took the money was super nice and often gave us further discounts. For them the difference was like a decimal in accounting.
They announced these sales by email with the time and date. And in 2020, the year of covid, when half the workforce was working from home, they made the sale as usual. I learned afterwards that on that morning, the siblings who owned the company went and parked their cars right in front of the warehouse where the sale took place, and filled the trunk with as much stuff as they could. Then 2 hours later the sale happened and there was almost nothing left.
Technically legal but a fucking shitty thing to do lol, your job is to have a blurry monitor and pretend to do Excel sheets and you drive a Porsche, I think you have the means to load up your car at the store like a grown adult if you need to.
same way we expect students in 9th grade to be capable of more complicated tasks once they’re in 12th grade. The nature of labor in capitalist countries is to sort out wheat from chaffe. “Good” workers become managers (although this is theoretical, ive had plenty of shitty managers), leaving the “bad” workers down at the bottom. This how the economy works right now, but it doesnt always have to. For example, unions sometimes have a probation period where you work as a temp, then join the union after a month or two. This gives you time to learn the job, before you have a say in how things are organized.
I have more thoughts, but im working rn 😝
These days it’s mainly external hires, but it used to be you got promoted to incompetence. You do a job well, you get promoted. You don’t do it well and you don’t get promoted. Thus you get stuck doing something you’re bad at
Sounds like you’ve just got some shitty coworkers, m8. Or are you talk about your direct reports?
Sounds like a structural issue. Your coworkers are overworked or underpaid or not informed correctly for the job they’re given. Maybe they know they’re not skilled, but the job is the only one available to them and since they need the money they’re stuck doing something theyre unskilled at. These are but a few systemic problems that might lie to reason.
Ask yourself this: If all your coworkers are bad at their job, are you just an extra special boy, or might there be something wrong going on?
Your coworkers aren’t incompetent. Your coworkers are just half-assing at work because they correctly realize they’re not going to get paid more if they actually tried.
So they’re just selfish assholes that don’t mind creating more work for everyone else and potentially putting people’s safety at risk? That doesn’t do anything to convince me that they should have a say in how the business is run. If they’re not happy with their pay they can go elsewhere.
It’s not selfish to not go above and beyond what you need to do to help a business that doesn’t care about you.
Where did I say anything about helping the business? I don’t expect them to go above and beyond, when they don’t do their assigned tasks correctly their coworkers then have to deal with the problems this causes getting bitched at by angry customers and such. On top of that some things if not done properly can create a safety issue. We have safeguards in place for this but again it’s just extra work for someone else to redo it. This attitude is causing far more problems for their coworkers than it is for the business.
Yes you do, they are doing enough to get paid, and you want them to do more.
They’re on track to get fired so they’re not going to get paid for long. You totally ignored what I said about making all their coworkers suffer for their laziness. I thought all us workers were supposed to be in this together?
If most of the workers are on track to get fired, that sounds like a structural problem with management
Some of the workers may be managerial. But the managerial workers don’t own a disproportionate amount of the company, and they’re not considered the “superior” of any other workers.
Didn’t say they run it. The person who runs it can be simply another employee. It’s just there are no outside investors and everyone has a vote on the board. You put someone in charge you trust but everyone as a whole has a say in big picture stuff with the person at the top being day to day and being held accountable to employees and not investors.
Capitalism fundamentally changes the relationship between workers and their work. One takes the value they create and gives it to someone else. One doesn’t.
But why would this employee put in that more work than anybody else? Just to get the same amount of compensation as anybody else? I certainly wouldn’t put up with all the complications of leading a bunch of people without being paid extra.
Who said that’s the case?
Than I don’t really get the idea. Could you elaborate?
ඞ
@lightnsfw @dingus
You really think the people currently running your company are any different from those other coworkers?
Yes I think so, because the people running the company have no interest in listening to the positions of the workers, especially if it makes them less money.
When the people working in the company have a democratic vote, they at least have a choice and don’t have big mistakes dictated from upon high.
At least then, the workers can agree they all made a shitty mistake together. It doesn’t mean workers are infallible. All humans are fallible. All humans make mistakes. The difference is the power dynamic, nothing else.
I think they have education related to the running of a large company whereas most of my coworkers barely made it through their IT certs and have some of the stupidest takes regarding how things should be done I’ve ever heard in my life.
Education related to the exploitation of their workers
Ftfy
You must be a joy to work with.
I’m great to work with. No one has to worry if the task they assign me is going to be done right and on time.
Every single job I’ve had was made worse by management. Not just worse for us, but worse for customers/clients as well. I have zero faith in management, I have complete faith in the people actually working on the floor knowing what would be best to do on the floor.
Now you ask about “not making it fail immediately” which to me gives me an impression of thinking it is still a business that needs to be grown.
I imagine a lot of shop floors would agree their time and resources were better spent elsewhere. No one needs Funko pops, I don’t doubt those workers would find something better to do
deleted by creator
Fully stop? No, not technically. But our society makes it as close to impossible as it can be without being illegal
deleted by creator
Well the main thing is the concentration of capital. Guys like Jeff Bezos aren’t interested in founding cooperatively-owned companies, and they have all of the money. Add in the fact that average people are very strongly atomized and prevented from forming stable social bonds, and the likelihood that you’ll get a cadre of people together who want to start a cooperative business and can also afford to do so is very, very low.
That said, the few coops that manage to exist are often the best places in their industry to work, precisely because the profits are shared more equally than in the more common private or publicly traded corporations.
deleted by creator
Just a small loan of a quarter million dollars from his parents to bail out his failing company, which one would be hard-pressed to imagine he would have even had that much success in founding if not for his wealthy parents supporting his upbringing as they did.
deleted by creator
Yes. And it is deeply unfair in how it rewards entrenched wealth rather than giving everyone equal opportunities. That’s why socialists are opposed to it.
This is ironically a poor sales pitch, unless you believe that networking, marketing, and familial wealth should be what orders society.
And I never said that 250k was all they had, and in fact being able to throw that much money at something is going to be less and less of a concern the more money you have, though I don’t think his family was “poor as hell” to start with. Unfortunately for this point, their finances at the time are not publicized that I can find.
He started out with a small loan of $250,000 from his parents, in 90s $s if memory serves.
You’re just a
aren’t you? Lazy workers could be billionaires if they just tried
deleted by creator
250k is a lot of money. It was more even more money in the 90s. Its an exceptionally large amount of money to recieve for free straight from your parents.
People don’t become billionaires from working. They become billionaires by taking profit from the surplus value of other peoples work.
But you believe in a propagandized version of capitaliam where everyone could equally become a billionaire, its a meritocracy, you’re all jealous and lazy of our deserving overlords
deleted by creator
Where do yhey get the money to buy the business?
deleted by creator
Where do they get the business owner who wants to do that? Can it happen? Sure, it has. But thats not going to happen for most bussiness operation in capitalist countries. Can workers get the money to buy out their owners? Sure. But that’s not super likely in most situations either.
deleted by creator
Cool. Thats several people. Thats not the majority of the capitalist system.
Sure: becoming a member of a corporation costs money. You either have to pay to get it set up or buy a share to get in so those who already paid are made whole.
Unfortunately, the US as an example, our society is structured such that the majority of people here have zero savings with wages decreasing in value every year due to inflation. A person in this situation cannot produce money to buy-in; squeezing water from a stone situation.
All people are essentially born with no assets, and if they want to secure wealth, they must sell their labor to achieve it.
In other words, children of parents who own an outsized number of assets do not have to sell their labor to achieve it, because it is offset by their parents assets. This inherently produces an unequal/unbalanced system where some people simply never have to work this way. This is why extremely in-demand internships at companies in places like New York City are often unpaid, and thus generally end up going to people who already have money, access, and support systems. Because only those kind of people can afford to take on an unpaid internship to move upward in the capitalist system.
This is also the source of generational poverty, because it can be really hard to escape when generation after generation are born to no assets.
False. The children of rich people are born rich. That’s a major part of the problem. It creates dynasties.
This is an area I have said needs to be taxed to hell, there is no good reason we should allow the passing of wealth without heavy penalty. I’m convinced that if we taxed all forms of wealth transfer at something like 80%, we could pretty much get rid of income tax. Income you have earned should be your entitlement, assets passed down to you should be where the taxes cut in.
So, you have to sell off 80% of your dead mother’s mementos unless you’re rich? Careful—your proposal is good in spirit, but has ugly side effects that need to be carefully avoided.
deleted by creator
Inflation’s been happening since currency was created. We don’t notice day to day because the effects are stretched over a long period.
Try calculating the value of a 2010 dollar against the current 2023 dollar. You’ll find the cumulative effect of ~5% inflation each year is significant.
In addition, periods exist throughout American history during which inflation has spiked noticably within a year or two - this is nowhere near the first time.
Look at the current environment in America. Look at the absence of worker co-ops besides like Winco. Why aren’t there more? What factors are at play that is seemingly preventinf the natural formation of worker co-ops if they are allowed? Are children taught they can do that? Do people getting MBAs learn this in their classes? There are a lot of questions to ask here. While we do have some examples, for whatever reason they are not common here. I do think it has something to do with the resources the average citizen has available, the current ecosystems within existing markets, and all around education of the average American citizen.
Law enforcement?
deleted by creator
Did… did I say they couldn’t? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
So ah… What’s the issue then? You can have what you want under capitalism. Attacking the system is forcing your own on others. This is unironically what makes socialism unpopular in the context of history.
Did I attack the system in my comment or did I give a bare bones breakdown of what socialism is?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892938
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892727
Maybe even check my other posts in this thread to get a better idea of my opinion on this instead of jumping to conclusions.
They said it in the first comment
Good luck here lol
The western left doesn’t agree on one form of socialism to align around so it is both impossible to criticize with any specificity and serves as a catch-all in opposition to the current system. It breaks down when they suddenly have to align on specific policies.
That’s a good thing; socialism is a fledgling idea. It needs discoure and experimentation. The attack that lack of exact details and perfect cohesion is an empty one.
Wanting to burn down the system without a coherent and specific approach to replace it only hurts people.
How do you feel about Bernie or AOC, they are the system and aren’t trying to burn it down. They just want to fix the system.
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
deleted by creator
Those lazy commies with their limp wristed excuses like: “The reality of living under a capitalist society”. Why don’t they just eat some bootstrap stew like my pa did and die of preventable illness generating labor value for someone else?
deleted by creator
We were talking about worker-owned companies, none of those are worker-owned companies and therefore don’t actually refute anything.
Massive inefficient redundancies that ended up making rich people money and hurting the poor? Yeah, fuck that.
Wait…so these are your examples of people who “did something”
Do you realize that the edge every single one of these companies had over the others is the willingness to do whatever it takes to extract as much value from labor for the least amount of money, right?
You are just making the case for the complete destruction of capitalism. Only soulless psychopaths are rewarded here. Winning is not beating these people at the same psychotic game that they’re playing.
deleted by creator
This is the reasoning that leads to “if you think medicines are too expensive, stop buying them” with much the same problem of it not being quite that simple for the majority of humanity, whose “choices” are not as unconstrained as the ones you’re familiar with.
Just because you say you enjoy the taste of shoe polish doesn’t mean you’re not a pathetic bootlicker.
No one cares if you “buy into” anything. It exists whether you believe it or not.
The entire point of keeping unemployment at certain levels is so capitalists can dictate wages and responsibilities. It’s not a secret. Bourgeois media openly panics whenever unemployment levels get too low.
I try to tell myself that most of the people bought into capitalism can be rehabilitated, maybe some just need to spend a few years breaking rocks to get it through their heads that other people fucking exist on this planet.
Reading your comments has made me re-evaluate that
I don’t buy into that lame beta theory of gravity. You go down. If you don’t feel like going down, go up. It’s that simple. That is the beauty of jumping. I can jump as high as I want
The problem with notable examples is that they’re pretty much never representative examples.
Tesla is not close to bigger than GM. They only make consumer vehicles and maybe a model of semi truck but I don’t think that’s being produced yet, while GM has been making consumer cars in addition to commercial and military vehicles for decades. They might be valued as more but that doesn’t really say anything in practical terms.
deleted by creator
Bubbles are fun.
You’re asking people with little to no resources to take on people who have all the resources.
You don’t seem like you understand modern capitalism.
People will donate a significant portion of their wages to ineffectual radical politicians but won’t bother to consolidate capital to support co-ops. That’s the actual system I see.
What poor people do you think are donating wages to “radical politicians”? Have you ever met any poor people?
deleted by creator
Wanna loan me $850,000 so I can start my own business? If it works I’ll pay you back in 20 years.
deleted by creator
Okay I said I was done talking with you but I actually love any excuse to nerd out on this so here:
The state of California has mandated compostable household and business waste be separated out and picked up separately much like recycling is already separated. This is a law that is already in effect; however, they have declined to enforce it so far. They have recently began making statements that they will begin enforcing the law and fining businesses and property owners for not complying.
Many small municipalities (and some big ones) have not even started setting up the infrastructure to do so. They’re way behind.
This means there is a captive market for a company providing those services. A potentially huge market.
Now anyone can set up a waste collection service, it’s pretty standardized, but here’s where my idea is different. A technology called pyrolization.. It mostly requires organic materials, lots of em. In essence, it’s burning without fire. The input is organic material, the output is a stable carbon-rich solid called biochar (similar to charcoal except not as flammable), and something called syngas, which is similar to natural gas. With the right machinery, the process produces energy and is carbon-negative.
The carbon-negative aspect is the selling point. Do you know how many carbon-negative businesses there are? You could probably count them, globally, on both hands. This would play EXTREMELY well in California.
Pyrolysis is not a new technology, but applying it at scale is. Currently it’s mainly in use as a way of processing human waste. There’s a company called BioForceTech in the Bay Area that has a successfully operating pyrolysis machine processing human waste, and they have machines globally that also process feedstock like wood chips and nut shells. Municipal organic waste would require a sorting machine for sure, but other than that it could use their machine just fine. And the sorting machine wouldn’t have to be as complex as those in municipal compost systems: if plastic gets mixed into your compost, that’s bad. If plastic gets mixed into something you’re just going to burn and bury, not a huge deal.
$850,000 is not enough to set something up like this on the municipal level. That would take millions. It’s enough to get buy-in from BioForceTech, ReCology (bay area waste management company that has experience with waste-gas powered trucks, and compost sorting machines), investors, and local and state government (the state has several grant and loan programs for “green” businesses, especially in waste collection).
In my opinion the biggest, most profitable market would be Santa Clara County or Alameda County, both in the bay area and both have limited compost pickup presently. But that’s a big bite to chew and I think beyond the capabilities of a new business. Something like small towns in Mendocino County would be perfect - small enough that they don’t have municipal organics collection aside from maybe yard trimmings, liberal enough that the carbon-negative aspect would play well, rural enough to have plenty of cheap land for a processing facility.
So that’s our market. We get to charge customers for the pickup, and then sell the power generated as “clean energy”. Not to mention the whole thing functions like a peaker plant. When electricity prices are low, you can adjust the output ratio to create more biochar - adding to the carbon-negative selling point (and getting some money from cap and trade). When electricity prices are high, you can get more syngas and burn it as carbon-neutral energy.
The one thing I’m not very familiar on and would need to consult experts on is the regulations involved in the “selling electricity” aspect. The regulatory burden may make that part not feasible, I just don’t know enough about it.
You do not.
Surprise, when there are obstacles standing in the way of your goals, people may mention those obstacles when asked about progress towards their goals. What an absolute flaccid take.
The system actively discourages that. It was tried in the 70s. Banks wouldn’t work with coops because they were diffrent. Other companies wouldn’t work with them because they didn’t being as high a ROI. They were more efficient and stable, but under capitalism none of that matters.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
deleted by creator
Ok now I know you’re a troll. And a liar.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
Ergo, troll.
I’m done talking with you.
deleted by creator
Banks frequently do.
deleted by creator
I don’t have access to the same network of third world slaves that Starbucks does.
As someone in the industry, I can say you actually do. It’s scary how easy it is to buy coffee harvested by literal or effectively slaves.
deleted by creator
You clearly know nothing of the coffee industry. Don’t speak on a topic if you literally know nothing. Third wave coffee exists because of the inherent abuse of the workers who actually harvest coffee. That you’re so naive to even think that the person behind the counter is the end of who is part of Starbucks is shockingly sad considering how much you’re trying to fight for something that is dependent on you needing a much better understanding of what you’re talking about.
Literally everything this person has said about how the coffee industry works has been wrong.
deleted by creator
I never said Starbucks owns the slave labor. But to ignore the influence they have is outstandingly naive. Like, do you think at all before replying? Are you in middle school and have any idea how the real world operates?
You do realize that coffee beans grow in the tropics… right?
They aren’t growin em in fuckin Seattle.
deleted by creator
I think the point the other user was trying to make is that Starbucks already has connections, and they are able to source their coffee from more shady sources if they really want to. Someone starting out new has no such connections and will pay a higher price for their beans than Starbucks, ergo, they have to find something else to compete on other than price (which I think is possible, I live near many local coffee shops, including some worker co-ops). However, you’re still dealing with Starbucks having a larger presence than you, economically, and them being able to source cheaper goods due to economies of scale. I would think you’re already familiar with this. You’re correct in asserting that you’re stuck just having to “believe” your sources don’t use slave labor, because you’re sourcing it from another country. Starbucks at least has the money to check on such things, if they so choose.
The point that I was trying to make was that Starbucks works with more than just the people at the counter, which is how you characterized it. Moving goalposts now isn’t very helpful.
It’s so insanely more complicated than that. Not all farms are equal.
What do you think coffee is? Do you think people with colored hair just magically conjure coffee out of the ether?
deleted by creator
You clearly don’t understand what coffee is or how many hands it has to pass through before it even gets to the barista.
Yeah, and a third party candidate could be voted into every seat and the presidency, but it’s so stacked against it occurring, it’s effectively impossible.
The state of the economy today is what’s stopping a vast majority of people from doing so. You can open a coffee shop and survive, but you could never compete against Starbucks. You would not even dent their bottom line. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars to realistically compete. Capitalism has brought us to a point where a majority of folks need to sell their idea to investors, further separating most workers from the value of their work.
Edit: I’m really tired of the naive and childish defenses most people put up for capitalism. “Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah and “nothing” is stopping a transgender women from becoming our next president by the same definition of “nothing”. Might as well say nothing is stopping you from passing through walls as quantum mechanics says it’s possible.
deleted by creator
Dutch brothers by revenue is essentially a drive through energy drink stand, not a coffee company and Peet’s is owned by a holding company that got rich off of Nazi work camp labor.
deleted by creator
Peet’s had 4 stores before it started changing hands, Peet’s and Starbucks famously did not compete with each other for years, and Starbucks wasn’t even selling brewed coffee before it was taken over by Shultz and venture capital.
But from my experience in the industry, your confident incorrectness is perfectly in character for a coffee shop owner.
You haven’t owned coffee places. You’ve been entirely wrong on how to source coffee plus your description of what even makes coffee. If you used to own them, you probably ran them into the ground. You’re objectively wrong on coffee production.
You need to at least meet inflation, if not outpace it. Moreover, you’re not competing if you aren’t actually trying to battle. Competition breeds innovation. If you do not compete and do not get better or try to improve, society would degrade and regress. Come on. Before you respond next time, just think about what the consequence of what you’re saying is before.you actually hit the button. It saves us a lot of time.
deleted by creator
You know the great majority of people don’t have any such collateral, right? Holy privilege, dude
deleted by creator
Own outright? Or have a mortgage?
Even if, hypothetically, 65% of people owned their homes outright, that’s still over a third of the population who can’t even consider getting a loan like you described.
And for those that COULD, they’re betting their entire life on it. People with money can afford to take risks. It’s not an even playing field, at all.