[AnimalMuppet]

Wage labor was a deal that many, many people freely accepted, because on net it was better than subsistence farming.

Serious question: If you aren't doing wage labor, how are you going to live? Subsistence farming? Welfare? How?

[heavyset_go]

Worker ownership is not the same thing as wage labor. Wage labor bifurcates people into an asset owning class and laborers who don't own the assets they're forced to depend on to eat. Wage labor divorces workers from owning the fruit of their labor in place of wages, whereas worker ownership doesn't.

Wage labor was imposed upon people hundreds of years ago with the enclosure and privatization of common lands that people had relied on for centuries to provide for themselves. It was imposed because people voluntarily chose not to become wage laborers, as they preferred their lifestyles as is. To rectify this, a landless class of people was created, that could only rely on selling their labor to survive, through the enclosure of the land they had relied on in the past. People did not freely accept becoming factory workers, for example, they were forced into situations where it was the only option, and in many places, those that chose not to work were arrested and forced to work anyway.

[AnimalMuppet]

I gather that you're not in the US, then.

Worker ownership is at least a respectable alternative. But it has a problem with capital-intensive industries. The workers typically don't have the resources to pool their funds and build a semiconductor fab.

[TheCoelacanth]

They "freely accepted" it as an alternative to starvation when they were forced off of the land they were previously farming so that it could become a large private farm.

[heavyset_go]

A lot of the land that was enclosed wasn't even productive after privatization. Some of it just stood (and still stands) idle, despite previously providing sustenance prior to enclosure. Big estates with an abundance of non-productive land was a popular thing at one point.

[ok_dad]

There lies the problem: in todays society, I’m not free to choose how I live outside of a pre-approved selection of careers due to a small portion of people deciding they wanted this specific setup.

[BitwiseFool]

There are an incredible variety of careers to choose from and there are countless unconventional jobs out there that people have never heard of. There is no small portion of people creating a pre-approved selection of roles that we have no choice but to follow. Even if there were, it definitely begs the question of 'who are these people' and 'how do they have this power'?

[funnymony]

Counterpoint: Youtube influencers, standup comics, foo critics. (No investor chose to pay them)

[FooBarBizBazz]

They're called "investors", and they choose what kind of pursuits receive monetary compensation.

[AnimalMuppet]

Nope. Customers choose what kinds of pursuits receive monetary compensation.

You have something you want to do (and get paid for) that investors won't pay you to do? Can you get customers to pay for it? Then just go do it. Nobody's stopping you.

[AnimalMuppet]

> ... due to a small portion of people deciding they wanted this specific setup.

This sounds like you're saying: It's all the fault of them. Not our own choices, not even structural forces pushing us this direction. It's them.

That is, without further credible details, this sounds like paranoid conspiracy-theory stuff.