Man socialism keeps sounding better and better they will even take those pesky wife and kids off my hands/s.

But in serious most Americans don't know shit about socialism our capitalism they live under. Dumb fucks look at you with surprise when you mention our highway system would be considered socialist program.

American here and fuck capitalism.

Hey now, that's unfair!

As à Canadian, I can attest that we also blindly defend capitalism.

We are poor and our freedoms are exploited, but at least we're free!

Yeah I'm not sure why it's nowadays common to simplify socialism as "workers owning the means of production". It's not exactly wrong, but it is often misunderstood.

A company being owned by it's employees is not necessarily "socialism". In today's global capitalist economy, there are worker-cooperatives as well, but they too exist within the capitalist economy and have to follow its rules, which is above all the profit motive. If you don't orient yourself based on profit, you will be out-competed eventually.

Traditionally, when socialists talk about "workers owning/seizing the means of production", they are not talking about individual workers or individual businesses.

Workers means "the working class", which would be pretty much everyone ("the 99%"). Means of production means industry and the economy overall, not individual factories and businesses.

What makes FOSS special is that the software is not privately owned by anyone, not by the devs, not by a couple of programmers, not by a company. It is commonly owned, anyone can use, copy and alter the code however they want without any artificial barriers. This of course makes it a lot harder to extract money from users.

In publicly-traded corporations, long term wealth extraction isn’t the goal. Getting sales up next quarter is. Employee-owned cooperatives are more likely to think long term. Plus, I’d vastly prefer to trust the average worker to do the right thing in a coop situation vs a manager doing it in a situation where they’re legally required (as standard publicly-traded corporations are) to prioritize the financial gains of shareholders above all other interests. Maybe you’ve lost so much faith in people that you think no one would ever choose to be slightly less rich for any reason. But plenty of people know there’s such a thing as enough, that there are interests as important as next quarter’s profits. They just don’t usually get MBAs.

Ah, yes, we can see it with all the communities running their own Mastodon servers and extracting the maximum of wealth from their users. /s

You must think that humans are inherently greedy and/or are projecting what you would do in a scenario where you're part of a worker co-op. Most workplaces aren't worth millions. Most folks who round themselves in a worker co-op would most likely try to better the operation for everyone.

Yah, if workers own a tiny portion of the means of production, as they do now in various co-ops around the globe, they will be either (1) required to operate on the basis of profit in order to outcompete entities that are not worker-owned, or (2) cease to exist because they get outcompeted by those who operate on the basis of profit.

This forces all existing co-ops to behave in line with capitalism as a whole. The point is to overcome that system of socio-economic relations: When calls are made for workers to own and operate production, as in this meme, they mean that the class constituted by workers — the proletariat — should be in control of all productive means. Not just that some workers should start co-ops, for this primary reason.

The idea that owners would sacrifice their profits if their business were merely a co-op is, I agree, not necessarily true. (Though workers in co-ops who are directly connected to the point of value production would definitely be more willing to sacrifice profits for decisions that enhance social value.) The point, however, is to move beyond an economy owned and operated for profit and forge a society in which profit is not the basis for operation in the first place. If, for example, workers' needs were guaranteed, the impetus for profit-seeking would evaporate, though will not be absent, at least while the artifacts of capitalist society persist in us and our institutions.

Rise up! Seize the beans of production!

That would be an improvement actually, because the customers of these companies are not users, they are other companies looking to advertise or buy users personal data. The users of for profit social media are in fact the product, not the customers.

Workers don’t give a shit about customers because that’s how the incentive system is set up. Give workers the profits, you give them a good reason to give a shit about how clients feel.

I'm reminded by that guy on TikTok

"You just lost a customer"

"Good"

Look, they're just temporary inconvenienced billionaires.

What I learned from observation is that they tend to believe that, one day, they will be part of the "small minority". The American Dream!!!1

KRUSTY KRAB IS UNFAIR!

MR. KRABS IS IN THERE!

STANDING AT THE CONCESSION!

PLOTTING HIS OPPRESSION!

Using socialism as a boogeyman by definition, is a poor argument. There are merits to many different economic systems, many of which have pros and cons, capitalism and socialism included.

The laugh, and "listen" while providing absolutely no reasoning demonstrates a certain level of arrogance, while at the same time demonstrating a lack of knowledge on the subject

Thank you for providing a great example of being confidently incorrect.

Monetisation rules are a direct result of capitalism. Profits are what motivates the decision making. In a post-capitalism economy it would be the needs and wants that motivates the decision making. One of the failures of capitalism is that we assume wants/needs has a correlation with profits, when clearly the enshitification demonstrates otherwise.

the disastrous YouTube monetisation policy comes in part from a desire to keep the site “child friendly”

Sure, but the reason why they want to keep the site “child friendly” is because content for children is incredibly profitable and because advertisers don't want their ads getting related to "controversial" content.

Even if YouTube was run by a worker co-op, or was a state enterprise those two factors would likely still lead to stringent monetisation rules.

This is the reason why I don't like equating socialism with "workers owning the means of production". Worker-cooperatives can exist in a capitalist economy, which means they have to follow capitalist rules (including the drive to generate profits).

When leftists say "workers", they generally mean "the 99%" or "the working class", not individual workers. When leftists say "the means of production", they mean the economy/industry overall, not individual companies.

If youtube was owned and operated in common, it would not be bound to profitability, but to use.

We can also look at something like peertube, which is essentially a commonly owned version of youtube. Instead of being guided by profitability, it is used based on many different use-cases. There can be peertube instances that are completely private, there can be peertube instances that are used for a specific topic or community (for example kids) and there can be peertube instances which are not for children at all.

Capitalism generally allows for a range of ownership structures, including traditional privately owned businesses, publicly traded corporations, and worker-owned enterprises.

I guess an argument would be that privately owned companies are already too wealthy to allow for fair market competition, but in worker owned companies nothing is stopping them from becoming large corporations that can also do everything a private lobbyist company does. If you don't believe me, just look at your democratically elected capitalist government. Just because something is democratic doesn't mean it will be ethical or fair internally or externally.

Actual workers. If we made a society where people are taken care of, we'd find most folks would be enthusiastic about their work. Saying "people don't want to work" is often taken at face value when the reality is that most people do want to work, because it helps them feel a sense of purpose. They don't, however, want to be exploited/work under capitalism because that is soul crushing.