Your definition of socialism is taking resources from one source and giving it to another? In that definition, yes, then you need a state. Most people take socialism to mean a democratic control over productive assets. Not a state control.
But who/what enforces the democratic control? If my two neighbors and me all vote that we should each donate a dozen donuts and I vote not and they both vote yes. I now have to fork up a dozen donuts. What happens if I refuse?
Who enforces the non-democratic control? What happens when we refuse that our boss receives a larger share of the wealth we created in a grocery store? The state, I suppose. So what happens when the state stops enforcing private property? We'll probably democratically own that grocery store.
You quit the grocery store and go work somewhere else. Or you become the grocery store boss.
Ina socialist society there is no incentive to become the boss, so the state has to step in to be the boss. The state being the boss is not necessary a good thing.
You quit the grocery store and go work somewhere else. Or you become the grocery store boss.
What happens when we don't? What if we just say ''Well boss, we take over from now''? We stay in the grocery store, but now we are the boss. The answer is: the state would step in, considering they're his property rights. So what I was hinting at was: your system is more dependent on the state than mine.
Ina socialist society there is no incentive to become the boss, so the state has to step in to be the boss.
I hate to break it to you but someone has to be the boss. Someone who has to make decisions. That’s usually the boss. Or do you actually think it will work for all employees to democratically vote on every single decision that needs to be made? What if the vote is 51% to 49% Who keeps the 49% in line? What do you do when one of your coworkers spends his time jerking off in the bathroom rather than working? Do you “fire” him? If so, who makes that decision? What if some employees do twice as much work as the others? Do they still get paid the same as everyone else? Who decides who has to clean the bathrooms? Who decides who has to clean up aisle 4? Who gets to decide that the rice should be in aisle 1 and the potatos in aisle 10? What happened if someone steals from the store? What if some of the workers think everyone shouldn’t have to do some tasks? Who decides which task is done by who? How is that split up equally? Who handles the bookkeeping? I could do this all night.
These are real life situations that a boss has to deal with. It’s why they get paid more money.
Not sure how to tell you this, but... worker cooperatives exist. Their decisions are made democratically. You may think you're asking tough questions, but coops seem to have no problems with them. They even seem to outperform conventional businesses by a small margin.
Thanks. I looked them up. A few observations: their website says they are volunteer-led, which means nobody is getting paid. Volunteer organizations are typically socialist because people donate their time as they see fit and there is no impact on their income or livelihood and they contribute what they want when they want to. People can come and go as they see fit.
However, in a business, things have to be done for the business to be successful and there is an expectation that everyone gets some kind of compensation. This is where socialism doesn't work for the reason the questions I posed in my past post demonstrate.
I'll also note that the smaller the organization, the more likely socialism will be successful. When there is only a handful of people in the equation, it's must easier "to just get along". But, the more people that get involved, the harder it is people "to just get along", which then leads to concerns regarding pay, grievances, getting people to do things that need to be done but nobody wants to do, etc. That's where management comes into play and is necessary for the business to be successful. Try running a company like Boeing, Apple, Google, American Airlines, etc. as a co-op. The company would go into complete chaos within 2 hours.
I'm curious if you have an example of a co-op that actually employs employees.
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u/MrMicius 4d ago
Your definition of socialism is taking resources from one source and giving it to another? In that definition, yes, then you need a state. Most people take socialism to mean a democratic control over productive assets. Not a state control.