this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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What the capitalists did was pay all the workers right after they did the work, even though the phones wouldn’t actually be sold for some time after that. Capitalists bring capital. Money. It takes money to get things started.
I completely agree that the rewards are all disproportionate. The people who put up the capital shouldn’t get all the rewards. But it’s just dumb to claim that they play no role at all. If that’s true, walk out of your house and make a phone you designed yourself out of sticks you find on the ground.
The only thing you can remove from the process and still get the same result is capital...
And while I get that capital does "play a role", at least insofar as incentive predicated on people's ability to function in the capitalistic society we currently inhabit goes, to imply that somehow without it people would be left to trying to "design a phone out of sticks on the ground" is extremely disingenuous.
So the workers will work unpaid?
Some of y’all have never run a small business, and it shows.
Oh, hello again, mind keeping your responses to my comments under one thread? It's inconvenient to jump around like this.
Obviously, in a capitalist system, a worker without the means to cover their needs won’t work without pay. But that only shows that pay is a mechanism of this system, not the goal itself. If another economic structure were in place, people would act according to the incentives and access points that system provided to meet their needs and wants.
We can already see this in practice today: retirees, hobbyists, and people with spare time often volunteer, create, or collaborate in groups for reasons that have nothing to do with money. Their motivation comes from purpose, community, or fulfillment. Proof that creation does not require capital to exist, only a framework that connects effort with meeting human needs.
Iv yet to see a single volunteer system that doesn't require capital. Even unpaid volunteer labor requires capital to sustain the ability for people to volunteer.
Go work with any non profit ever. Hell go just start trying to do anything at all. Capital is required even if free labor is used. :/
Just because the retiree does something for free doesn't make it free. Every system requires input for output.