But then you're often still perpetuating the system by then employing people who work making you rich.
Start a cooperative, forget about being rich and seek the fulfillment of all its members.
I'm not sure if I'm describing a cooperative, I just know that most normal companies do the exact opposite of this: they force you to live in a high cost area where you spend a large proportion of your salary on housing and other living costs.
I know there are plenty of good reasons why humans have decided to live in cities, but I can't help thinking there's a better way.
The fallacy is in believing you can't have both a reasonable cost of living and the benefits of a city. There are plenty of such places, globally. As more and more people realize that it's unnecessary to assemble in specific places I think we'll see a sea change. Programmers are going to be some of those most able to take advantage of it (they already are).
I'm also wondering when there's going to be a sea change. London is full of people in their 20s spending ~50% of their income on rent, and pretty much just breaking even overall.
I feel like people are going to get sick of this eventually. Either people will leave the most expensive cities, or new ways of "hacking" housing will emerge.
If someone takes a risk to build something valuable, he/she deserves to get rich.
Capitalism seems to have made us all think it's completely okay to exploit someone else's surplus labour. How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? Their payout is usually vastly different, but their contribution not so much.
> How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's?
Employee #1 will probably be getting a salary, if the company fails he can get a job somewhere else. Meanwhile the founders who worked on the idea probably used their savings initially not to mention quitting their jobs and working on the idea and facing humiliation if the company fails.
That takes courage which everyone cannot do which is why founders deserve to get rich if they build something valuable, employees not so much unless they are willing to stick it out till the end.
Please describe what "risks" the average high-flying tech startup CEO has taken.
Those companies and many others will not work as a cooperative.
Just look around you, most of the tech titans are founders who took risk, can you give examples of tech cooperatives which are equally famous?
Because it's so hard to adapt CEO skills to the jobs market? Whilst peons can pick up a low paid job and should just lap it up and be happy about it??
If the founder is taking a risk running the company then the employees are taking a risk working there; their risk is often as great, the chance to lose one's livelihood.
To my mind a guy in sales that wrote up £1 million of orders in one days work and a guy in janitorial that cleaned the toilets all day both did a days work and both deserve a days pay - they're both humans who gave a day of their lives to the purposes of the company.
The janitor should be paid the market rate, nobody is denying that but he should not expect to get rich via the company
I am sorry but the whole disagreement is on what value a worker contributes.
According to Capitalism and Capitalism supporters, a productive activity is the sum of (Land/raw materials + Labor + Capital). Capital is nothing but deferred consumption. If you don't consume what you could consume, then that constitutes as capital.
When you say that Capitalism exploits another's surplus labor, what you don't understand is that the Capitalist pays for that surplus labor via capital (or time). Any worker in Capitalism is entitled to the full share of the profit as long as he does not expect wages to be paid out immediately, and that he is willing to wait until the profits pour in.
Because most labor is paid immediately, and workers have no risk or delayed consumption, they don't get the share from the profit.
Karl Marx noticed this phenomenon, but was unable to understand the role of Capital(and yea I know he wrote a whole book on this concept). To him, careful inspection revealed a 'conspiracy theory' among the capitalists which he dubbed as class struggle and class interest.
> How is the risk the founder takes that different to Employee #1's? < When you compare the risk of the founder vs risk of the employee #1, it is the matter of how much capital is on line there. Clearly the risk taken by someone who has invested $1000 is less than the risk taken by someone who has invested $10,000 into the same venture at the same time.
Funny thing is when people talk about a cooperative, it's no different than an early stage equity startup where nobody gets paid a salary. The moment a cooperative pays salary before the revenue, it will need capital and the person providing the capital would deserve a bigger share from the profits.
You possess an either infantile and misinformed understanding of Marx, or you're just being ideological here. Have you read Capital? It's not just one book. Marx very well understood the concept, role, and agency of capital. His careful inspection did not reveal a conspiracy theory; instead, it elucidated the ways capital influences our material existence. There was no conspiracy among capitalists, only naturally flowing consequences of capital's impact on the material bases of society.
I don't understand what is offending you so much here. I am claiming that Marx does not understand Capital, and just because he claimed to have analysed the role of 'capital', it doesn't mean that he 'understood' it. A christian biologist writing about the role of fossils doesn't mean he understands it.
> His careful inspection did not reveal a conspiracy theory; instead, it elucidated the ways capital influences our material existence. <
Did Marx not say that the employer is able to claim a right to 'surplus labor' because the capitalist class (state being one of them) protects this right(property rights)?
Does he not claim that almost all property is acquired via theft and coercion of the labor class? I understand that conspiracy theory is a loaded term, but his idea of 'class interest' is nothing but a conspiracy theory. That somehow all the capitalist are conspiring against the workers, without being explicitly aware of it.
Karl Marx did not understand that Capital allows production but doing division of 'labor'(used here to mean 'tasks'). Workers don't need to invest their time in the production process, and wait for the revenue of a business to pour in, while a person specializing in saving, does the job of providing the wages.
That this is a necessary factor needed in any economy and it's impossible for any society (including the one recommending by Marx) to live by not having division of capital accumulation from labor.
Why are you assuming I am offended? I'm calling out your erroneous claims of Marx's work as either misunderstanding or ideology. I'm not in the slightest bit offended. Your clarifications haven't moved the needle on being unable to determine if you're being purely ideological, or if you're infusing ideology into what is, fundamentally, a misunderstanding of Marx.
> I am claiming that Marx does not understand Capital, and just because he claimed to have analysed the role of 'capital', it doesn't mean that he 'understood' it.
Just because you think you know what Marx says, and because you have a couple of his terms in your head, does not mean you understand Marx.
You are claiming that you understand capital better than Marx, who devoted 25 years to analyzing and explaining it--particularly insofar as it relates to the material conditions of our existence, and how it informs, produces, and reproduces the social, economic, cultural, and political structures of human society. Considering the vast breadth and depth of Marx's work, that is a very bold claim to make. You can certainly disagree with the more philosophical and political conclusions Marx draws from his understanding of capital, but to make a blanket assertion that he simply does not understand capital is something that requires an incredibly strong argument. Even Marx's detractors do not make such wide-sweeping, hand-waving claims as "Marx doesn't understand capital". They typically disagree on finer points, many of which have more to do with the material ramifications of capital on political economy and social structure.
> A christian biologist writing about the role of fossils doesn't mean he understands it.
Please. You're creating a ridiculous argument here.
As an ignostic, even I wouldn't say the religion of a biologist is inherently relevant to determining whether or not that biologist understood the role of fossils. There are plenty of Christians who do not find their faith at odds with the scientific consensus on evolution and the fossil record. If you read the biologist's writing about the role of fossils, and it accurately describes the role of fossils in accord with the greater body of scientific work on the matter, what exactly does the biologist's faith have to do with determining or proving anything? Sure, it might be worth considering as a signifier of a certain probability of misunderstanding based on factors external to the biologist's own work, but it's sounding like you're giving automatic preference to a non-Christian biologist's writing about the role of fossils for absolutely zero reason. The non-Christian could be a complete imbecile who winds up on the History Channel shouting, "Aliens!" You're making errors based on a loud segment of Christians who reject the science of evolution, and automatically applying their ignorance/misunderstanding/ideology as something that the Christian biologist shares. That's foolish.
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Anyway, this is really an irrelevant tangent from a thread that was asking about people being happy programming. Although, Marx might find it rather relevant, as there is quite a bit of voiced discontent that he'd categorize as expressions of alienation. The labor of the many is transformed into the capital of the few. Dialectically speaking, it's a struggle of contraries that co-exist with different interests. Labor has nothing and its members are required to sell themselves to subsist and exist. Capital has everything, and is motivated to keep as much of that everything as it can, while expending as little as necessary to further increase the share of everything it has as more of everything is produced by those who have nothing. What does labor get in return? Nothing but a wage that is (ideally) as low as possible to prevent them from leaving the workforce (and certainly not enough to permit capital accumulation by the laborers themselves). Moreover, those with capital are additionally motivated to protect this arrangement that they might continue to profit off those who sell themselves to subsist and exist, so that those with capital do not have to work.
> Did Marx not say that the employer is able to claim a right to 'surplus labor' because the capitalist class (state being one of them) protects this right(property rights)?
You're somewhat confusing categories and their relations here. Surplus labor is that labor which is demanded of and performed by a worker that exceeds the labor necessary to pay for her wage. In the majority of cases, surplus labor is unpaid. It is a necessary condition of increasing capital through profits, which is most simply the extraction and control of the surplus value created by workers in excess of their labor cost. The capitalist appropriates this surplus value when the products of workers' labor is sold. Marx goes further to argue that capital accumulation is the condition that drives production--when production ceases to be profitable for the capitalist, capital will eventually be diverted elsewhere, withdrawn from the unprofitable enterprise, etc. There are, of course, absolute and relative surplus values, but suffice to say that capital accumulation is the driving force of the capitalists. Private property is that legal protection that is based on a history of convincing people that objects were only useful and valuable if they could simultaneously possess them use them for themselves. It has nothing direct to do with surplus labor, but is instead used to establish and defend the private ownership of the capitalist means of production, and thus the claims to surplus value and capital accumulation. If you cannot understand how this accurately reflects the workings of capital and capitalism, I'm simply not sure how we can get you past your ideological lens.
Marx does not argue that "almost all property is acquired via theft and coercion of the labor class". At least, not in such a crudely simplistic way as that. Profits are acquired via alienation and exploitation of the labor class. In earnest material modes of existence, property didn't exist until those who were more powerful began staking and defending claims on the products of others' labor--so that they themselves would not have to labor. This has continued a circuitous and tortuous route through human history until our present age in which we've codified these practices into centuries of legal trappings that convince everyone it is good and right, and entirely fair and above-board. Or so Marx might loosely argue.
The notion of class interest is no more a conspiracy theory than the capitalist narrative that labor and capital work hand-in-hand to create a better tomorrow. Class interest is trivially easy to spot and demonstrate--both in Marx's time and our own (and far back before both, as well). Look at pg's now-infamous essay on income inequality from the start of the year, and his vociferous critics. Class interest on display in both. The capitalist 'class' is inherently motivated to protect their interests and see them expanded. This is not some insane idea that requires tin foil hats, or the ravings of a lunatic. Marx doesn't exactly argue that the capitalists are inherently conspiring against the workers. Just that they are guilty of accumulating capital from surplus value that is the product of surplus labor for which the workers have not been compensated, and the capitalist does not own.
> Karl Marx did not understand that Capital allows production but doing division of 'labor'(used here to mean 'tasks').
This is how I know you have no serious understanding of Marx and his work. Marx has most certainly written of, categorized, and fit division of labor into dialectical materialism and his explications of capital and its place in human society. Exhaustively.
> Workers don't need to invest their time in the production process, and wait for the revenue of a business to pour in, while a person specializing in saving, does the job of providing the wages.
The wages are not provided by a person who specializes in saving. They are provided by the capital accumulated from the surplus value appropriated from the workers' own surplus labor, for which they are not compensated, Marx would say. Wages come from the revenues of the business. If there are no revenues, there are no wages.
You seem to be making a number of simple mistakes here that are perhaps related to misapplication of your understanding of working in tech/startups to the role of capital. It's a pretty easy set of mistakes to make, but it seriously would require a lot of discussion to even try to completely straighten all of this out. Marx is almost universally misunderstood. Even among those who understand him better than most as a result of spending years studying his vast body of work, there is still disagreement on how to properly understand him. It's the nature of such a prolific beast.
Maybe each employee has to donate credit to the company for expenses if they don’t have the cash?
I started my company with bank loans and credit lines. If it goes bust, it's my reputation and I will have to pay back the money.
If someone isn't willing to risk this as well, they aren't an equal partner and shouldn't share equally in the reward.
Some people aren't willing to risk this much, yet still want to contribute. They are employees.
In a free market people are free to create their own ownership structures. If people want to setup up a company, and distribute equity equally to employees that's completely up them
How can it more risky for first four employees?