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My question was do executives deserve the output of the workers. The question wasn't a moral one, but a technical one. If the workers are producing the output, they should naturally control what happens to it.
There is no direct obligation but that should be the effect when demand is what forms supply (demand of the community). Sadly when you have corporate run businesses, they don't care what the people need, they formulate demand through marketing, product placement, monopolization of the supply chain/market place, and state intervention. When production is completed in excess, why should there be those that require something who should not receive it? In our private controlled state backed economy, we have a higher housing vacancy than we have a homeless population, the reason why is that exploitation is the basis of all trade in a personal profit driven economy with executives possessing more power than they operate with.
With respect, your analogy is not reflective of anything that I said, a car is your own personal property as you operate under it while production centers are cooperatively managed means that produce a good/service for the wider community.
Are you referring to an executive that is also an employee of a company or an executive that is an owner of the company?
I am assuming you have never served as an executive. Huge difference. Let’s start with an executive that is not an owner.
This type of executive is also a worker and does not have the power to direct the “output”. In this situation, the executive is working within the confines of systems, policies, objectives and budgets that are controlled/approved by a Board of Directors and/or owners. The executive executes within these confines.
My question was do executives deserve the output of the workers. The question wasn't a moral one, but a technical one. If the workers are producing the output, they should naturally control what happens to it.
Deserving anything isn't applicable. Do you understand the nature of an agreement or contract? Executives/owners request labor from the employee in exchange for the agreed upon wages. Those are the terms of the agreement.
The workers never even requested to control any output from the corporation. If the workers want to control the output, they have to have that agreement in place. Hence a co-op.
With respect, your analogy is not reflective of anything that I said, a car is your own personal property as you operate under it while production centers are cooperatively managed means that produce a good/service for the wider community.
No. Production centers are OWNED by the owners. The good/services belong to whomever the owners dictate.
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I didn't read through all 14 pages of this, so maybe someone mentioned this before, but Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream started with this theory that the highest paid employee should receive (what was it, 2X, 3X?) some small multiplier of the smallest paid employee. Um, that didn't work. As they grew, it became apparent that they needed to pay higher up execs more than 2X or 3X the wage they paid 16 year olds who scooped ice cream in their stores.
Ya get what ya pay for, Winterfall. In the free market, if you can pay a CEO 30K who will do as great a job as a CEO you pay 400K, they'd do that in a heartbeat. The truth is, you can't. Or that's who they would hire.
(Unlike trade unions, and that's a different story, and they are not a part of the free market economy. When a trade union is involved, you are forced to pay them a non free market price for their labor).
Deserving anything isn't applicable. Do you understand the nature of an agreement or contract? Executives/owners request labor from the employee in exchange for the agreed upon wages. Those are the terms of the agreement.
The workers never even requested to control any output from the corporation. If the workers want to control the output, they have to have that agreement in place. Hence a co-op.
No. Production centers are OWNED by the owners. The good/services belong to whomever the owners dictate.
Agreements made in a capitalist environment are done within the context of exploitation. When all the major capital is owned by the private for profit industry, workers have no choice but to labor through these institutions. As the choices are so limited, and corporate control is authoritarian across the board, these same workers lose freedom of input.
No single man or even a group of shareholders should have the legal rights to ownership of capital they don’t operate under. Conversely without state enforcement, these same shareholders would not have the power to control the operations of said company.
And I know about worker cooperatives, but if you want a self sustaining system where labor is not seen as a commodity and production is not handled for self profit of a few, you need ownership to exist under operation and for companies to be run democratically.
I didn't read through all 14 pages of this, so maybe someone mentioned this before, but Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream started with this theory that the highest paid employee should receive (what was it, 2X, 3X?) some small multiplier of the smallest paid employee. Um, that didn't work. As they grew, it became apparent that they needed to pay higher up execs more than 2X or 3X the wage they paid 16 year olds who scooped ice cream in their stores.
Ya get what ya pay for, Winterfall. In the free market, if you can pay a CEO 30K who will do as great a job as a CEO you pay 400K, they'd do that in a heartbeat. The truth is, you can't. Or that's who they would hire.
(Unlike trade unions, and that's a different story, and they are not a part of the free market economy. When a trade union is involved, you are forced to pay them a non free market price for their labor).
Managers only make sure production is profitable for shareholders, that’s it. In such a system labor is seen as a commodity and the costumer base (demand) is created, not served.
In a real free society production would be based on mutual aid, but even now the managers shouldn’t get paid a dime if they don’t help production.
What the OP fails to understand is that when you sell your labor, that's it...that is the entire transaction. Your paycheck is your compensation. You do not magically own the "output" of the corporation. You AGREED, voluntarily, to sell your labor for money.
If you want a different arrangement, like a share in the business, then there are agreements you could make instead. You could invest in the company (and many public companies provide a means for employees to do that through withholdings, and match the contributions made by the employee). You could work for equity, instead of for cash, if you like.
But when employees CHOOSE to sell their labor, that is a simple transaction and it doesn't entitle the worker to anything but the agreed upon payment for the amount of time worked.
Agreements made in a capitalist environment are done within the context of exploitation. When all the major capital is owned by the private for profit industry, workers have no choice but to labor through these institutions. As the choices are so limited, and corporate control is authoritarian across the board, these same workers lose freedom of input.
No single man or even a group of shareholders should have the legal rights to ownership of capital they don’t operate under. Conversely without state enforcement, these same shareholders would not have the power to control the operations of said company.
And I know about worker cooperatives, but if you want a self sustaining system where labor is not seen as a commodity and production is not handled for self profit of a few, you need ownership to exist under operation and for companies to be run democratically.
Dude, that's a bunch of delusional BS. Exploitation? Are you saying people don't have the free will to enter into agreements of their own choosing?
As to your last sentence, why can't labor be a commodity? What if I choose to sell my labor for wages? Who are YOU to take that choice away from me? Why can't production be for self profit? If you created an invention, don't you have the right to profit from your idea?
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