[kazinator]

People engage in wage labor because they find it preferable to alternatives like hunting and gathering berries.

However meager is their lifestyle, it's better than what it would be under the alternatives. That's what people are slaves of: consumption. People engage in wage labor because it sustains a certain level of consumption that alternative activities wouldn't.

[heavyset_go]

It isn't a dichotomy between wage labor and living in the woods picking berries. You can have extremely similar production and economies that we have now, but without wage labor. One other option is worker ownership, as owning the fruits of one's own labor is not the same thing as wage labor. There are plenty of examples of historical and contemporary worker ownership, and none of them involve living in the woods.

[nradov]

Worker cooperatives are legal and there are some around today. There's nothing stopping workers from owning the fruits of their own labor. Yet most workers choose not to join or start cooperatives, and instead prefer wage labor. Why is that?

It seems that most workers prioritize a steady wage without the risk of being an owner. And it's difficult for worker cooperatives in capital-intensive industries to attract outside investors; investors who put in significant amounts of money quite rationally want some control over the enterprise rather than leaving the decisions up to workers.

One of the most prominent examples of employee ownership was with United Airlines. Employees gained majority ownership in 1994. That kind of worked for a while but ultimately failed, ironically partly due to labor union disputes. It seems the workers had trouble deciding how to share the fruits of their labor.

[mgrthrow]

It is orders of magnitude more challenging to found a co-op. Let alone get enough capital to get started.

We've set up our society to make it difficult for worker owned businesses.

[dicethrowaway1]

A good elaboration of this point is Greg Dow's "Governing the Firm" and "The Labor-Managed Firm".

In short, worker-owned businesses are rare because individual workers are poor (relative to the capital that's needed) and they can't get external funding because the investors want control in return, which labor management can't provide.

That's why most large-scale worker-owned businesses are part of a federation supported by a bank - e.g. Mondragon's Caja Laboral. Institutional design indeed does matter.

[mgrthrow]

Funding is a huge part, for sure, but also getting incorporated. Talk to a lawyer and your state about founding an LLC or sole proprietorship. Ezpz. Done in an hour.

Talk about founding a workers co-op that's democratically run? With shares issued to each worker? There's just no template for it. It's days of work to get it over the line.

[drekipus]

This really is the same as the YouTuber "how I bought a house within a week of watching this video"

"Ownership is so easy, imagine if you not only have to work, but also have to deal with ownership problems such as maintenance, insurance, business and real-estate, logistics, marketing, depreciation, and management. - and, best of all, you don't own any of it if you stop working!"

[heavyset_go]

Please show me where in my post I said anything about things being easy or not.

[kazinator]

In order to own the fruits of your labor, you have to pay for all the tools and materials you need, and the space where you apply the tools to the materials.

The material suppliers and toolsmiths also own the fruits of their labor, and don't owe them to you.

Capitalism exists because individual worker ownership doesn't scale beyond simple trades. If a worker gets enough wherewithal to scale his or her operation to just a small shop, there are going to be workers there, who are either wage labor, or else customers who pay to use the shop.

[mgrthrow]

I'd encourage you to read The Conquest of Bread for some high level thoughts on other ways we could arrange things that a) aren't primitive and b) aren't capitalism.

[kazinator]

Unless demonstrated otherwise, this sort of "could" is indistinguishable from "couldn't".

[mgrthrow]

Good news then, because many of his ideas have been demonstrated!

[FooBarBizBazz]

> People engage in wage labor because they find it preferable to alternatives like hunting and gathering berries.

They don't exactly choose.

If a person wants to live by hunting and gathering, or by subsistence agriculture, he first has to acquire fertile land. And all that land is taken. In the United States, you don't even have the Right to Roam. Nor, on the public rights-of-way, do you have any right to so much as a sidewalk.

The ability to live an "indigenous" lifestyle no longer exists. The whole place has been terraformed.

You are trapped by the actions of everyone else. Mathematically, it's some kind of game theoretic equilibrium. But what it feels like is a prison.

[nradov]

Now you're just making excuses. In the USA at least, there are still small parcels of fertile land available very cheaply in isolated rural areas where no one else wants to live. Look for places in Alaska or Appalachia. If someone wants to live the 18th Century subsistence farmer lifestyle then it's totally possible. Get off the Internet and go live your dream.

[kergonath]

This is very short sighted. 10 billions people cannot live off the land like that, and the land won’t stay cheap or undefended for long if millions of people suddenly spread out of the cities to do what you say.

We’d just end up with tribes defending their land because isolated people are vulnerable. It won’t solve the issue of involuntary labour, if anything it would make it worse for quite a lot of people as it is easier for leaders of smaller groups to exercise absolute control. We’ve been there before and there is a reason why we ended up in our current situation. The life of the average urban dweller is still better than that of a medieval serf.

[nradov]

I never claimed that billions of people can live that way. I was merely responding to @FooBarBizBazz's comment above, pointing out that they can live that way if they really want to. There are others living that lifestyle voluntarily right now. Personally I think it would be miserable, but the option exists for those who really want it.

In developed countries at least, most labor is voluntary. There are certainly cases where people have been trafficked and essentially held as slaves, and we should do everything possible to stop those, but such cases are rare.

[nverno]

There are quite a few Amish communities that pretty much live like that. We are lucky in the US- we still have quite a bit of wilderness, plenty to lose yourself in, and live a hunter gatherer lifestyle. I think it would be significantly harder to get away with farming without buying the land, at least in the contiguous states.

[FooBarBizBazz]

> Amish

I think a typical Amish family farm is nowadays worth $1-2M, maybe more. And I believe their children have been moving to new places in recent years, in search of more affordable land.

> farming without buying the land

Illegal cannabis farms apparently operate in national forests. There are surreptitious irrigation systems, and there's a whole cat-and-mouse game to find and destroy them.

> We are lucky in the US- we still have quite a bit of wilderness, plenty to lose yourself in, and live a hunter gatherer lifestyle.

You're right though. Particularly, I would bet, up in Alaska.

[nverno]

> I think a typical Amish family farm

Maybe I was confusing amish with Quaker? I think it was a quaker village near where I grew up, they still use horses to plow fields and stuff like that.

Either way, they're obviously not all living like that, but whichever one it is, they have communities here and there where they live old school

> Illegal cannabis farms apparently operate in national forests

This is a million times easier to do than grow crops. Of course it's possible people could get away with growing crops in national forests, but the risk/reward just isn't there like it is(was?) for weed.

[matkoniecz]

< People engage in wage labor because they find it preferable to alternatives like hunting and gathering berries.

Not exactly, all good hunting land was terraformed into farmland/cities or become closed off areas or at least hunting was banned.

There are last scraps, but except narrow exceptions general public is not free to hunt there.