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For the billionth time already, socialism is not "when the government does it." Using the government to increase your capital and become even richer is standard
by Refreeze5224 2mo ago
For the billionth time already, socialism is not "when the government does it." Using the government to increase your capital and become even richer is standard capitalism.
Altman is not now and will not ever relinquish any means of production he own to the workers.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoWell, OpenAI workers do own shares. Tech companies are significantly more socialist than any other large scale enterprises in modern history (I don't know enough about pre-modern history to say).
- geysersam 2mo agoWhy do you say that?
- satvikpendem 2mo agoWhat do you mean why?
- geysersam 2mo agoI mean why do you say that large tax evading organizations, operating in an extremely capitalist environment, steered by a small, unfathomably rich, group of people with uncommon and often ultra liberal ideologies, are more socialist than typical manufacturing companies with a largely unionized workforce?
- satvikpendem 2mo agoUnions aren't socialist, the employees don't own the means of production while engineers for example at Google literally own shares of the company and can vote. Don't confuse your screed with the literal definition of the word.
- geysersam 2mo agoWhat fraction of Google is owned by the engineers at Google? 5%? That's nothing compared to the bargaining power obtained by organized labor, actual socialist organization.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoYou are misunderstanding me, I never said it was good or bad or better or worse than unions, just that unions are explicitly not socialist by the definition of the word as they are an external organization, not internal to the company. It is true that a tech company issuing voting shares like Google is explicitly more socialist than any union simply because shares are ownership of the means of production. As I said, I am arguing as to the definition of the word itself because most people get it wrong and think any labor movement is socialism which is wrong, it has a very specific definition.
- watwut 2mo agoThat is not socialism.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoWorkers owning the means of production, and shares are ownership. So yes it is (one form of) socialism.
- Refreeze5224 2mo agoShares are not the means of production. They are a mutually agreed upon fiction and sit firmly within the realm of capitalism.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoLeaving aside that market socialism also exists, in which shares do as well, not just Marxist Leninist, what do you define as ownership then? Especially in today's age where value is in software not only hardware. How would a worker own a means of production?
- Refreeze5224 2mo agoIn today's age of exclusive capitalism? There is no worker ownership of the means of production. If you can't use a mine to get some coal, or use some tools to make widget, or use a GPU to do inference I guess, then you don't own it, do you? The point is anyone who needs to do those things can, and that ownership is tangibly available to everyone. Not in the "this is public property" but the state actually owns it sense.
- satvikpendem 2mo ago[dead]
- watwut 2mo agoNot at all. They maybe get portion of future valie, but have no decision power and no power at all.
- pyeri 2mo agoAltman may not be an altruist but the overall direction the organization takes is what matters in the end. And as long as that organization retains even a semblance of a non-profit (despite having a revenue centric approach to tackle competition in the field), it is still a preferable organization to Anthropic and Amodei.