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It's odd to see you expressing disdain for 'high school politics' and 'because younger generations don't know' while also displaying such ignorance or disregard of the subject matter, like watching factual waves roll in and dash themselves on the rocks of obdurate opinion.
My reply was to a specific comment. I do express disdain for those who preach socialism in 2025 because, as an European who was alive during the 20th century and has some mileage I do know the subject matter... And everyone should, too because of the ample historical and economic record available for all to study. Hence, "youth" is the only generous 'excuse' as the debate was conclusively settled by the 1980s. Judging by the puerile reactions I will go with that... Please refrain from the typical ad hominem attacks and insults.
Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.
Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
- Regulatory capture
- Buying out their competitors
- Being cheaper at the cost of horrible externalities
And the many other failure modes of "free markets".
Nobody is doing that. The article specifically mentions pursuing opportunities in the export market.
Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.
The workers bought out the previous owners, presumably due to frustration with the firm having had 4 near-collapses in the last 20 years under the capitalistic management approach.Your objections seem conditioned rather than considered; did you actually think any of this through, or are just just reacting to concepts that make you uncomfortable while overlooking the facts?
There is no such thing as an actual "free market", nor should there be. Markets need rules to operate otherwise you get fraud and "unhealthy" competition like sabotage and assassinations.
> Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
That's like saying that capitalism only ends one way and that is slavery.
In reality, there is no inherently slippery slope in either direction. There is a spectrum of ways to aporoach market regulation and individual freedom with various tradeoffs.
Blind partisan rhetoric like yours doesn't help uncover what those tradeoffs are so we can make good decisions. Instead it spreads ignorance and division.
At the end of the day, if we had a million worker owned cooperatives, they would still need to compete. Since workers from Coop1 need to sell better products than workers from Coop2, otherwise they will still lose their jobs.
Also, the current setup is a race to the bottom: lowest quality that doesn't self destruct immediately (aka planned obsolescence), dumping ALL externalities onto the general public: ideally with the same timed fuse approach so that it's not noticed immediately (dumping toxic waste in rivers, polluting the earth and the air, oil spills, etc - the list is endless), all in the name of a slightly lower initial price to attract customers. It's not sustainable.