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Comment by 7sidedmarble | Hacker News Reader

I think it's short sighted to picture a 'centrally' planned economy as the only alternative to capitalism. I'm not an expert, but if you read Marx directly, he didn't say much about the structure of what proletarian ownership would look like. I think it's safe to say market structures.m can coexist with democratic ownership of the economy: see unions, coops, etc.

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I would say also that managerial incentives can co-exist with democratic ownership of the economy, and that this could ensure some level of creative destruction.

“democratic ownership of the economy” cute way of saying socialism. But if people in the democracy don’t want to own the economy then it’s not democratic.

Same critique of so-called “Democratic socialism”. If it’s socialism, it’s not democracy.

Coops, yes, but those are essentially groups of independent producers, while unions are much more in keeping with Marxism. To the point, I haven't seen any actual examples of modern unions that are anything but a drag on production. Perhaps you can mention one?

Unions, in principle, are market-oriented. Nothing inherently non-market about people banding together to increase negotiating leverage.

Obviously in practice there are often regulations concerning unions, but that's true of basically every part of a market too.

Yes Unions are def market oriented. They Want To Make Money.

More money for the business = more money for their members.

For example in British Columbia where a relic of alcohol prohibition remains in that the government manages liquor distribution and still has some (unionized!) liquor stores, the union agitated to have those liquor stores open on the weekends. The government initially wasn't interested! Union members though wanted more hours and more money and to sell more liquor.

One counterpoint: Unions tend to have vastly better safety records. It’s hard for individual workers to remain productive when they are injured.

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