The whole article documents a product that people do want and like so much that they're willing to donate 4x what the owner-operators of the company asked for.
It's odd to see you expressing disdain for 'high school politics' and 'because younger generations don't know' while also displaying such ignorance or disregard of the subject matter, like watching factual waves roll in and dash themselves on the rocks of obdurate opinion.
The article is about a failing company on the verge of bankruptcy and which already went bankrupt 4 times this century, with turnover down 20% over the last 10 years...
My reply was to a specific comment. I do express disdain for those who preach socialism in 2025 because, as an European who was alive during the 20th century and has some mileage I do know the subject matter... And everyone should, too because of the ample historical and economic record available for all to study. Hence, "youth" is the only generous 'excuse' as the debate was conclusively settled by the 1980s. Judging by the puerile reactions I will go with that...
Please refrain from the typical ad hominem attacks and insults.
I'm probably older than you; perhaps that's why your argumentation seems so juvenile. It seems not to have occurred to you that bankruptcies can occur other than for reasons of pure supply and demand or product quality.
You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.
This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always.
Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.
Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
It's not about eliminating competition. It's about trying to create an economic environment where companies are incentivized to compete by actually producing value rather than:
- Regulatory capture
- Buying out their competitors
- Being cheaper at the cost of horrible externalities
And the many other failure modes of "free markets".
Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope
Nobody is doing that. The article specifically mentions pursuing opportunities in the export market.
Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.
The workers bought out the previous owners, presumably due to frustration with the firm having had 4 near-collapses in the last 20 years under the capitalistic management approach.Your objections seem conditioned rather than considered; did you actually think any of this through, or are just just reacting to concepts that make you uncomfortable while overlooking the facts?
> but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete
There is no such thing as an actual "free market", nor should there be. Markets need rules to operate otherwise you get fraud and "unhealthy" competition like sabotage and assassinations.
> Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
That's like saying that capitalism only ends one way and that is slavery.
In reality, there is no inherently slippery slope in either direction. There is a spectrum of ways to aporoach market regulation and individual freedom with various tradeoffs.
Blind partisan rhetoric like yours doesn't help uncover what those tradeoffs are so we can make good decisions. Instead it spreads ignorance and division.
Are you honestly comparing their proposal to the USSR and the "proletarian dictatorship imposed at gun point" to democratically changing laws to force all companies to become worker owned cooperatives?
At the end of the day, if we had a million worker owned cooperatives, they would still need to compete. Since workers from Coop1 need to sell better products than workers from Coop2, otherwise they will still lose their jobs.
Also, the current setup is a race to the bottom: lowest quality that doesn't self destruct immediately (aka planned obsolescence), dumping ALL externalities onto the general public: ideally with the same timed fuse approach so that it's not noticed immediately (dumping toxic waste in rivers, polluting the earth and the air, oil spills, etc - the list is endless), all in the name of a slightly lower initial price to attract customers. It's not sustainable.
