[scarygliders]

> The real issue is company ownership is anti-democratic

Wrong. Company ownership is perfectly democratic.

> need to have some ownership share over the company because it effects us politically

This happens now with share ownership.

> AKA bobby kotick can say to his employee's "make games with drm" and the employee's must obey or be fired, that is the fundamnetal problem with capitalism in a nutshell.

Every single time communism has been tried, it inevitably ends up that ultimate power rests in the hands of a few. It turns out way, way worse than capitalism, and belief that scrapping capitalism in favour of socialism (which Lenin stated is the path to communism) or jumping straight to communism, is always - always! - from either young idealistic but naive people, or believed by older people who never grew out of their earlier naive disgruntlement.

Besides which, I still believe now in my early 50's that what we have now isn't capitalism at all; it's more akin to corporatism. It's certainly not lassez-faire capitalism.

[heavyset_go]

> This happens now with share ownership.

No it doesn't, you can not own shares in a company and still have it affect you. You can also own shares and have no voting rights, either.

Share ownership is, as it stands, undemocratic in the sense that there is no democratic decision making by all of those who are affected by a company. And a model where wealth decides how many votes you get isn't very democratic, either.

[bigfudge]

This is written from a position of ignorance on European companies. There are successful midpoints between US style capitalism and communism. In Germany, for example, company boards (for large firms) have worker representation: https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...

Heck - even functioning trade unions (not crippled as they are in the UK and US) provide a form of democratic check on individual companies.

The mistake is to paint this as a black or white choice, which tendency in the US is driven by hysteria media reporting of any policy which doesn't suit the needs of big business and rich elites.

[thereddaikon]

What Marx calls socialism and what Western Europeans style as socialism aren't the same thing. Western European nations practice social democracy which developed before and independently of Marx.

When discussed without stupid names and branding, most people are open to discussing some of the ideas you are presenting. But the moment you call it socialism you are going to lose people, especially Americans. Because a lot of people have been murdered in the name of socialism.

[heavyset_go]

> Western European nations practice social democracy which developed before and independently of Marx.

When we look at Germany and their universal healthcare system, it was developed in the 1880's under Otto von Bismarck and their monarchy in a direct response to the fears of a Marx-inspired socialist uprising.

A lot of what developed in Europe was inspired by Marx and socialist organizing and developments on the continent.

[mschuster91]

> Wrong. Company ownership is perfectly democratic.

It's not because a lot of shares end up owned by one of the few large ETF/pension plan administrators: in 88% of the S&P 500 companies [1], Vanguard/BlackRock/State Street together own the majority of the shares, and at least the passive ETF-held parts usually do not participate in voting which means that tiny "activist" investors now have a lot more vote percentage than they should.

Not to mention corporates with different share classes where the ones with voting rights are to a large degree privately held and the ones traded publicly do not have vote rights, such as Tesla [2].

> Every single time communism has been tried, it inevitably ends up that ultimate power rests in the hands of a few.

So where's the difference to the current situation, where those with the "ultimate powers" in society are effectively under control of their party donors? At least in communism, everyone had a right to a home to live in and to a decent employment matching his skill (see e.g. Art 24 sec. 1 of the Constitution of the former GDR [3]).

[1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politic...

[2]: https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/how-elon-musk-con...

[3]: https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=9c5c691c...

[falcolas]

Plus, I ask when did democracy get defined as “those who can pay get a say”?

Also, non-public companies exist.

[zirobi]

Interestingly, this belief is never shared by people from Europe who've actually experienced communism.

The issue in many cases is _corruption_ which will exist whatever you do (there's always a snake in the garden) so the trick is to implement the right legislation to control it and ensure freedom...

...which admittedly is easier said than done!