I'd like to know whose control Amazon should be in ... according to this labour union.
The difficulty that the amazon workers face is that they turn up and a screen says pick up these things from these boxes and take them over there, put them in other boxes, stick postage labels on and put it in the back of the truck. It doesn't take much training to do, so workers who unionise are very vulnerable to being fired until enough have joined the union to hold an effective strike.
Unions are always going to naturally form in a pure libertarian society where the only rules are freedom of contract. Usually they are restricted by government regulation.
For example, libertarians do not believe people have a right to food or shelter. You only have a right to keep and use your body and your property.
for example, if you have a scarcity of labor, then labor sets the terms. AI architects could form a union any day they want, they just dont want to.
If you don't like it, you can't pick or make another.
By us law, you are usually allowed to quit the union, if you do, you still have to pay the union part of your salary.
In the US, workers can't join or start a union unless 51% of all workers vote to join them/let them.
If all this sounds crazy, polarizing, and like a recipe for conflict, you are correct. I think the European versions of unions makes much more sense, and are closer to free association
A myth. Employee has leverage.
If AMZN is a $2T company and has 1.5M employees, every worker can become a millionaire if they just do this one simple trick. Why don't they?
I'm also confused about what role you think investors should play in business if money is unimportant. What would YCombinator look like? A bank that just loans out money for a fixed interest rate?
A dude called Karl wrote a book that answers this.
In my libertarian-socialist days, I have actually gave some thought to this question. The best I could come up with was 1) variable return lending or 2) profit sharing agreements with a sunset duration.
Both seem like a more expensive option for companies in an environment with economic growth. The beauty about selling stock/corporate ownership is that you never have to pay your investors a dime as long as the company has growth prospects. The return for investors simply comes from sale to other investors.
When a company issues a bond or makes a profit sharing agreement, they actually have to pay that back. Maybe in a growth environment, they could perpetually use new loans to pay old debt, but this would put them at the mercy of the outside lending rate.
By way of example, instead YC buying 20% of a company, it could receive the rights to sell a 20-year contract for 20% of the company profit.
Surely not even this union is dumb enough to think the workers can control the owners.
A genuine question - can't people simply stand up and vote for better employer with their feet? Amazon ain't some 200-year old business that whole generations of towns evolved around with no other option in sight. Even then this should always be an option unless you live in some communist (eh) dictatorship.