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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always.

Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.

Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.

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It's not about eliminating competition. It's about trying to create an economic environment where companies are incentivized to compete by actually producing value rather than:

- Regulatory capture

- Buying out their competitors

- Being cheaper at the cost of horrible externalities

And the many other failure modes of "free markets".

Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope

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?

> but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete

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.

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