this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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I fuckin HATE ayn rand, but those workers are being paid for their labor, they're not slaves. If that labor provides a little profit or a lot of profit is up to good or bad business practices of the company they're working for, and doesn't need to be shared with them outright, unless it happens naturally as a result of supply/demand making their labor more valuable (because otherwise they'd just go somewhere else where they will be paid more).
The crux here is that for this to happen appropriately, we need to be living in an ideal world with appropriate laws, no corruption, exploitation, loopholes, bribing, lobbying, etc. and we do not currently live in that world, so the above is just theoretical.
I'm not saying the employees are slaves at all. The point I'm making is that, if a company finds a way to make more money, then it's only logical that the workers, whose work is the very reason the company is profitable, should at least get part of the profits, whether it's through worker benefits, more pay, or anything else.
And this is the crux of the problem with randism (and modern capitalism).
Nothing forces companies to treat workers well which means the natural direction for money to flow is towards the owners of resources and not to the producers of them.
As time goes on and tech advances, the natural action of the owners is to reduce the number of workers they employ to maximize their own income.
If you don't own things, the response is "tough shit".
This is why so many businesses and investors are jizzing themselves over AI. The very thought of being about to fire people gives them a boner.
Totally true.
Because the power of workers (via unions or simply a fair job market or labor regulations) has been systematically attacked since forever, because that is in the self-interest of corporations and their owners.
As corpos and rich fucks amass more power, it is easier for them to take power from workers. They can more easily crush existing unions and attempts at unionizing, change or hobble labor laws, meddle with the job market itself, and influence the government's management of the economy.
So the trend is towards overpowered corporations and underpowered workers. We get to a point where workers don't really have many options for better jobs, and they don't have enough sway to raise the minimum wage for decades, let alone attain a more fair job market. Or implement regulations requiring better treatment.
That's in addition to seeking ways to replace workers with technology, or increase their productivity.
Thing is, if most of us are unemployed because of automation, who's buying the products and services enough to sustain these companies?
Workers have to work to earn money. Owners have to own money to earn money. Workers and owners don't play by the same rules. Because of that the same amount of effort and time results in a very different amount of money earned. It will always create tension and if not addressed by proper redistribution of wealth lead to large concentrations of wealth, and those always lead to violence. Humans have always been sensitive about relative wealth differences, and that not only goes for humans.
I think the point is "profit" is wage theft by definition to some. The workers generate profit, meaning they make someone else money they earned from their labor, and regardless of the structures or systems they're a part of that make that profit possible they should be given that profit.
I think I agree that profit by default is wage theft but I can appreciate that if a system of capital and practices enable the profit past the individual workers wage that there should be some reward to that system. The problem is how that reward is distributed, which right now is poorly done in most places.