I deeply appreciate these videos, Brett, for making such complicated things more digestible. Like ideologically I understand the centrality of workers and thereby the value and importance of worker ownership (unions at best a transitional form), but this really drove home the point that workers, for their indispensability, should also be the most powerful.
The more often you repeat this stuff, the better it sinks in! You should be writing economics courses for secondary schools, so that everyone gets to understand it while their brains are still capable of absorbing it all properly! But I guess there's a reason why the realities of economics and finance are not taught at school...
I feel there are two linked concepts that are missing from this video and that should be in it: the concept of "agency" and the related concept of "risk". Indeed you explain that we are all playing different roles in different situations: workers but also consumers and sometimes investors or taxmen.
However there are two roles that appear distinct: "worker" and "manager". One is either a "worker" or a "manager" - in the context of your explanation these two roles are in a dichotomy. So the question is raised: why can a worker also be a consumer or an investor or a taxman or a financier but not a manager?
If that implicit dichotomy was put in the spotlight, the answer would have been: "agency" and the ability to assess and take "risks". The reason people on the Continent prefer to be "workers" rather than "managers" is because they shun risks. Being a "worker" is a lot less risky than trying (and failing 99% of the time) to be a "manager".
In that respect, your implied symmetry (billionaires need workers to activate the assets) is not warranted. Billionaires have not been made so by the workers only, but also by their agency (starting a risky venture instead of going to do sports or watching TV) and by their luck (more often than "ability")
'Worker' and 'Manager' are categories that have a spectrum between them. Even I as a freelancer have both worker and manager aspects to my day to day life, but obviously in a large-scale corporation these types of things get split more explicitly, especially when you're comparing the very top with the very bottom
I understand your point on the risk, but in reality that's most used as an after-the-fact justification of inequality, especially by shareholders and managers to explain why they get paid more. In reality, a capitalist system is like an ecosystem: there can only be so many people on top, so, even if every worker wanted to be there, they wouldn't be able to, because it's systemically impossible (in much the same way that a ship would not run if everyone was trying to be the captain rather than doing all the actual tasks that make it run).
In the end, the 'captains' are often just people who are born into a particular caste who are brought up to believe that their role is to be captains of capitalism, and who have the 'social capital' to do that, rather than the most 'risk-taking' in society. This same point can be made by looking at old aristocrats, who believed they were the most responsible in society, and had to take on the burden of being leaders - in their own self-image, they saw themselves as honourable and even 'risk-taking' when compared to their servants, but it's not like the servants actually ever had the option to all be that figure themselves.
The historical reason why most people have to be 'workers', is that they lack the capital to buy up the required inputs to production to compete on the existing market, and so - in the absence of being on a level playing field - have to suck up to a class of people who do have that capital, and to essentially 'rent' that stuff from them. The ownership class then justifies this by saying that the act of holding the capital is more risky than merely renting it
But, even if a billionaire is a uniquely risk-taking or talented individual, in the end only a tiny percentage of their wealth can be attributed to that, because no amount of risk-taking or skill can have that level of impact in the world without it being amplified by the work of many others - aka. a ship captain might be highly skilled in steering a ship, and maybe they are uniquely risk-taking, but that means fuck all unless there are tens of thousands of others actually building the ship, and keeping the engines going etc. Without that, all you have is some guy standing in a cabin, moving an imaginary wheel to steer an imaginary ship
I deeply appreciate these videos, Brett, for making such complicated things more digestible. Like ideologically I understand the centrality of workers and thereby the value and importance of worker ownership (unions at best a transitional form), but this really drove home the point that workers, for their indispensability, should also be the most powerful.
I'm really glad you find it useful - thanks for the support Kermit
The vast majority of consumers are themselves workers. Ultimately, THEY are their own "job creators."
Which is to say, consumers are the "job creators" NOT the corporate weasels who claim this stolen valour for themselves.
The more often you repeat this stuff, the better it sinks in! You should be writing economics courses for secondary schools, so that everyone gets to understand it while their brains are still capable of absorbing it all properly! But I guess there's a reason why the realities of economics and finance are not taught at school...
I feel there are two linked concepts that are missing from this video and that should be in it: the concept of "agency" and the related concept of "risk". Indeed you explain that we are all playing different roles in different situations: workers but also consumers and sometimes investors or taxmen.
However there are two roles that appear distinct: "worker" and "manager". One is either a "worker" or a "manager" - in the context of your explanation these two roles are in a dichotomy. So the question is raised: why can a worker also be a consumer or an investor or a taxman or a financier but not a manager?
If that implicit dichotomy was put in the spotlight, the answer would have been: "agency" and the ability to assess and take "risks". The reason people on the Continent prefer to be "workers" rather than "managers" is because they shun risks. Being a "worker" is a lot less risky than trying (and failing 99% of the time) to be a "manager".
In that respect, your implied symmetry (billionaires need workers to activate the assets) is not warranted. Billionaires have not been made so by the workers only, but also by their agency (starting a risky venture instead of going to do sports or watching TV) and by their luck (more often than "ability")
'Worker' and 'Manager' are categories that have a spectrum between them. Even I as a freelancer have both worker and manager aspects to my day to day life, but obviously in a large-scale corporation these types of things get split more explicitly, especially when you're comparing the very top with the very bottom
I understand your point on the risk, but in reality that's most used as an after-the-fact justification of inequality, especially by shareholders and managers to explain why they get paid more. In reality, a capitalist system is like an ecosystem: there can only be so many people on top, so, even if every worker wanted to be there, they wouldn't be able to, because it's systemically impossible (in much the same way that a ship would not run if everyone was trying to be the captain rather than doing all the actual tasks that make it run).
In the end, the 'captains' are often just people who are born into a particular caste who are brought up to believe that their role is to be captains of capitalism, and who have the 'social capital' to do that, rather than the most 'risk-taking' in society. This same point can be made by looking at old aristocrats, who believed they were the most responsible in society, and had to take on the burden of being leaders - in their own self-image, they saw themselves as honourable and even 'risk-taking' when compared to their servants, but it's not like the servants actually ever had the option to all be that figure themselves.
The historical reason why most people have to be 'workers', is that they lack the capital to buy up the required inputs to production to compete on the existing market, and so - in the absence of being on a level playing field - have to suck up to a class of people who do have that capital, and to essentially 'rent' that stuff from them. The ownership class then justifies this by saying that the act of holding the capital is more risky than merely renting it
But, even if a billionaire is a uniquely risk-taking or talented individual, in the end only a tiny percentage of their wealth can be attributed to that, because no amount of risk-taking or skill can have that level of impact in the world without it being amplified by the work of many others - aka. a ship captain might be highly skilled in steering a ship, and maybe they are uniquely risk-taking, but that means fuck all unless there are tens of thousands of others actually building the ship, and keeping the engines going etc. Without that, all you have is some guy standing in a cabin, moving an imaginary wheel to steer an imaginary ship
See also, The Stone Soup Theory of Billionaires https://www.asomo.co/p/the-stone-soup-theory-of-billionaires