Fabio G.@jlou Why wouldn't there be a social aversion even if there is nothing morally wrong with selling voting rights? Breaches of etiquette are morally fine yet socially skeevy. Social norms are not the same thing as morality.
J LouI’ll concede that violations of social etiquette constitute social aversion. However, there are problems that make this limited in its effectiveness at preserving egalitarianism.
1. Social etiquette violations don’t merit as strong of a response as moral rights’ violation.
2. Social etiquettes are difficult to preserve in the presence of strong economic incentives for breaking them.
3. What is economically incentivized transforms culture.
@jlou Reciprocally, from a level playing field the incentives are small enough that social norms keep them harmless.
@magitweeter source?
@jlou Under egalitarianism, political parity is valued roughly equally by all agents, i.e. even if the agent who valued it the lowest were to trade it with the one who valued it the highest, the surplus would be very low.
Social norms impose a high transaction cost, higher even than the surplus. Thus the transaction is not mutually beneficial at any price point.
I could just as easily come up with an alternative narrative where individuals don’t value political parity that highly due to the initial equal distribution of voting rights, they can expect other voters to have similar interests. By the time the attacker has bought up a large share of voting rights, it’s too late to do anything.
Also, you don’t know that social norms would create transaction costs higher than the benefit to the attacker. You’re speculating. That isn’t evidence.
@jlou That's a silly idea. Consent is reversible. There's no such thing as “too late” for a significant mass of voters to take back their voting rights.
You can’t simply take back the voting rights if you sold them. They belong to the person who bought them. You’ve to buy new voting rights. It essentially makes governance into a corporation. Inalienable rights say that such sales are immoral.
@jlou Voting rights are an institutional fiction that is only preserved with consent. When consent is violated (such as when one actor tries to appropriate power by purchasing vast amounts of votes), the members are free to rearrange the institution to restore consent.
How is consent violated in that situation though? All the sales of voting rights were consensual.
@magitweeter wouldn’t they be violating the terms of those voting rights sales if they decided to ignore those legitimate transactions?
@jlou Nonconsensual contracts are void.
We're talking about an attacker trying to purchase a decisive share of the votes. This would not happen in the open because the attacker would not risk social retaliation. Thus it would happen under the table, hence violating informed consent.
I don’t think you have to have knowledge about every transaction that is happening behind the scenes to have informed consent.
I don’t see this couldn’t be over the table. The attacker could enter negotiations with each vote-seller than announce when a deal with all of them is secured
@jlou When it comes to a socially binding vote, yeah, information is paramount because the goal is social good. It's why manipulability is such a concern in social choice theory.
People would be alarmed that someone were going around trying to negotiate others' voting rights. This would carry an enormous risk of retaliation.
You’re mixing utilitarian considerations with deontological ones. For the pure deontologist, there is no conception of social good beyond protecting people’s rights. From the point of view of consent, there is nothing wrong with consensually exchanging voting rights in secret.
@jlou The whole point i'm making is that trading votes under the table violates consent, specifically other voters' consent, because it deprives them of critical information for an informed choice. There is nothing consensual about trading votes under the table. It is fraud.
@magitweeter Selling voting rights is fraudulent for inalienable rights reasons. If you ignore those arguments, I disagree with your view that it violates informed consent. Voting rights are basically like voting shares when they’re alienable. You don’t necessarily need to know how many other shares someone has to be able to consent to selling your shares.
@jlou You have no moral argument against the sale of voting rights, because you've said that manipulation of a vote by distributing option contracts is admissible to you, and that is materially equivalent to the purchase of voting rights.
Giving people assets whose value will change, if a certain policy is enacted, is not equivalent to paying them to vote a certain way. You have to give people an economic interest in those ventures.
If this proves to be a serious attack against the system, I would just use a voting system that takes into account how coordinated agents are. I don’t see the issue with using such a voting system.
@jlou That's what an option contract does: it lets the holder buy an economic interest in the venture. Venture becomes unprofitable = the option becomes worthless. For the holder to cash in, the venture has to stay profitable, thus the holder is economically interested in the outcome of the vote.
@magitweeter yeah I understand. You’d have to give a large portion of the population these options depending on how popular the policy is without manipulation. I also think another mitigation a system can have is to have elements of sortition as well.
@jlou Of course, but the point is that you don't have a moral argument against that type of manipulation. “Very expensive” ≠ “fraudulent”.
@magitweeter what I mean by selling voting rights is trading them like shares not having certain economic interests that cause you to vote a certain way. I do have moral objection to these types of attack, but it just isn’t that it is fraudulent. It’s a false equivalence to suggest that both situations are equivalent.
@jlou Materially, they are equivalent. A sufficiently wealthy interest group can engineer a financial instrument that lets them chase any sufficiently favorable electoral outcome. If this type of arrangement is permissible, then full institutional capture is permissible.
I disagree that they are equivalent because I can treat them morally differently by giving different moral reasons for why they’re invalid.
I don’t think this attack is permissible because people holding the same financial instrument are economically coordinated.
@jlou Yes, you've said you don't regard it as morally equivalent. They are materially equivalent because their material outcomes are the same: an exchange of a vote for an economic benefit.
«I don’t think this attack is permissible because people holding the same financial instrument are economically coordinated.» I'm not following. Would you clarify?
@magitweeter just to be clear, I’m anti-capitalist. I’m arguing that consent vs coercion isn’t the right framing for arguing against capitalism. In that context, I was pointing out capitalism+Georgism+UBI could enable capitalist employment to be voluntary because it eliminates the work or starve aspect.
@jlou I'm aware. I don't think there's anything automatically wrong about labor contracts as such. The problem here is that labor contracts are embedded in a greater system that is founded down to its core on violations of consent. I've been trying to point out that Georgist/UBI institutions are capturable. That means an attacker can impose their will against the polity's consent.
okay, that is a major disagreement. Wage labor/employment contracts are always invalid and inherently violate workers inalienable rights to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor and to workplace democracy. The alternative is individual or joint self-employment as in a worker cooperative.
Going back to the quibble about consent. In the hypothetical, we would be starting with a roughly equal distribution of wealth. I was focused on critiquing labor contracts
@jlou I have no idea what “the right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of one's labor” even means. It does not appeal to my moral intuitions in any sense.
@magitweeter It means the property rights and liabilities that workers create in production. Those ought to belong jointly to the workers in the firm. This inalienable right entails all firms must be worker co-ops to be morally valid.
The moral intuition is that the right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of your labor is just the principle that legal responsibility ought to be assigned to the de facto responsible party applied to property.
Source: https://youtu.be/fvWJ10ONPkY
David Ellerman on Mistakes and Metaphors in Economics
@jlou I haven't watched the whole video, but the argument that the presenter seems to be setting up is not one that's intended to address one's moral intuitions. (And i have no moral intuitions about “legal responsibility”, no).
Regardless, i'm interested in your moral stance on a setup where all productive firms are worker co-ops with no productive capital while all capital goods are owned by private individuals. No labor contracts, only rental contracts for capital goods.
@magitweeter so you don’t think that the person who is factually response for a result ought to be the one held legally or institutionally responsible? For example, if someone commits theft, shouldn’t the person who actually carried out the theft be responsible rather than some innocent party?
I think a system with a worker co-op mandate and leased capital is fine, but it would need social ownership of the means of production through venture communes to make getting start up capital easier.
@jlou More accurately, legal or institutional responsibility is not how i go about framing ethical problems.
I think you may be conceding the admissibility of an arrangement that is materially equivalent to labor contracts under a sort of state capitalism.
The notion of responsibility is core to morality because it is what distinguishes moral agents from moral patients. The notion of justice is people are held responsible for the results to their own actions. Do you think it is acceptable for one person to commit a murder and an innocent person to be held responsible by the community?
It isn’t equivalent to capitalism because workers get a democratic say.
@jlou Responsibility, yes, just not legal or institutional responsibility. No, a community is not the same thing as an institution.
Workers would get as much of a democratic say as the rental contract said they get.
Communities can have institutions, such as mechanisms for democratic self-management and accountability for results of intentional human actions. If such an institution exists, then principles of justice are relevant.
You didn’t answer my question about who ought to be held responsible.
A “capital rental” contract that denies workers’ democratic rights in the workplace is not a capital rental contract; it’s an employment contract.
@jlou Sure, communities can have institutions, but those are far removed from my moral *intuitions*. Of course i have positions on how an institution ought to work, but i don't draw those from intution, i draw them from analysis.
Sure, call it an employment contract, but the co-op's options are to sign it or find a different state to rent capital from. If you have no moral objection to worker co-ops renting state capital, you have no moral objection against this.
Some aspects of how institutions ought to be comes directly from moral principles. Other aspects are up to the democratic decision of the people involved and no right or principle is violated doing it some way.
What is there to analyze here? This is basic aspect of justice. Any system that holds innocent people responsible for the results of other people’s intentional actions is inherently unjust. You still haven’t answered the question of who ought to be held responsible.
Ellerman’s analysis shows the two concepts are equivalent. If people should be held responsible for the results of their actions, they should appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Since workers are jointly de facto responsible for productions’ positive and negative results, they are guilty, while employers are often innocent. Holding employers responsible for production results, as the employment contract does, is holding an innocent party guilty.
@jlou That is a very silly idea. Maybe there's just something i'm not seeing and i really need to watch the talk and let the analysis defeat my intuitions. But on the face of it, that sounds really silly. If malpractice insurance is morally fine, then employment contracts under that conception are morally fine.
@magitweeter The argument isn’t talking about who gets the value. It’s a labor theory of property not labor theory of value. We’re talking about assigning property rights and liabilities created in production not who ends up getting the value. Ellerman explicitly mentions insurance to illustrate that the role of the employer isn’t, in principle, risk-bearing.
If you’re fined, you can, in principle, get someone else to cover the cost of the fine. That doesn’t mean you weren’t held responsible.
@jlou The material effects of such an arrangement are, under most circumstances, the same as those of an employment contract.
We keep coming back to the same spot. Your moral objections to certain arrangements seem not to apply to certain other materially equivalent arrangements.
@magitweeter They aren’t materially equivalent. In one arrangement, workers own 100% of the product of their labor. In the other, workers own 0% of the product of their labor. 0% is quite different from 100%.
I think an economy where all firms are mandated to be worker co-ops is materially different from capitalism.
@jlou In both arrangements, ownership of the produced goods is transferred to the provider of the capital. In both arrangements, the liabilities are economically and legally (i.e. materially) transferred to the provider of the capital, even if the workers cannot morally divest themselves from them.
Materially equivalent.
There is no legal or institutional transfer of produced goods under the employment contract. The employer owns it at all points during production, which is what alienates management authority from the workers to the employer.
In a worker co-op, the workers appropriate the liabilities.
They’re obviously not materially equivalent.
@jlou You list a series of differences that are not material and then say “they're obviously not materially equivalent”. That is a non sequitur.
@magitweeter Those are material differences. Who owns property is a material difference. Why are those not material differences? Please explain in detail. Also, please define what you consider a “material” difference.
Mandating worker co-op structure on all firms effectively acts as a minimum-wage-like regulation where the “wage” is expressed as inalienable voting shares in the firm. Do you think having a minimum wage is materially different than not having one?
@jlou I'm thinking of a “you can use my machines for this long, and you give me these amounts of these finished goods, and i'll insure you for these and these liabilities” contract.
Ownership of the goods is transferred only when determined by the contract.
Voting rights for the co-op mean little if the only materially relevant vote is on accepting or rejecting these terms.
This situation is bad because it’s monopolistic. Markets need competition to function. If this is the only choice available to them, there must be very limited competition in the market.
Insurers only get the return to risk-bearing not the entire pure profits. Any profit leftover after pricing out risk-bearing would go to the workers. This is what I was alluding to when I said that Ellerman argues that the role of the employer isn’t the same as the risk bearer.
@jlou Call it very little competition, but i don't see a moral objection there. Collective ownership of the means of production is monopolistic. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
@magitweeter That is a moral objection. Markets with limited competition are bad. We ought to maximize people’s freedom, quantified as number of economic opportunities available to them while protecting human rights. Collective ownership of the means of production can be done in a decentralized fashion where the possessor handles day-to-day asset management and investment while a large percentage of the value flows into a collective fund such as through common ownership self-assessed “taxation.”
@jlou More moral considerations unrelated to inalienable rights keep appearing.
From my point of view, that sounds like you're avoiding using the word “consent” to explain why monopolistic markets are bad and why maximizing freedom is better.
@magitweeter These moral considerations are also important.
Every ethical consideration can’t be boiled down to consent unless you’re a right libertarian.
Let me know if you read David Ellerman’s work in more detail.
@jlou That is a very silly idea. Right-libertarians believe in the primacy of private property. They do not care about consent. Anyway.
@magitweeter of course, they do. They believe in voluntary alienation of rights. To the right #libertarian, human rights = property rights. Property rights are transferable with consent.
@jlou A claim to property represents everyone's agreement to respect someone's ownership of some good (typically land or a capital good that allows control of a resource flow).
Such a claim can't be transferred except with the consent of everyone involved.
Individualized private property rights are not consensual.
@magitweeter I disagree. As long as all property rights are initiated justly, property rights can be legitimate moral rights. Of course, no property rights today are initiated justly due to employment contract etc. Part of just appropriation is compensating the community for liabilities for using up land services and natural resources. The right libertarian view doesn’t include these liabilities because their property theory is asymmetric, so it is illegitimate for that reason.
@magitweeter I think the problem with extreme anti-property views is they run into issues accounting for prosthetic and other kinds of body extensions and body modification. Such body extensions clearly ought to be under the control of the individual not the authority of community.
@jlou There is no such thing as “initiating justly” a permanent and irreversible claim to ownership.
Personally, i favor usufruct. No such thing as appropriating what belongs equally to all. Ownership is always subjet to recall.
@magitweeter I disagree. Products of labor initially belong to the workers that created them. Everyone has an equal claim to products of nature. Workers that use up products of nature to create their labor products are liable to the community for using it up.
@jlou Cory Doctorow's newest newsletter reminded me of our conversation:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/
If the state monopolizes all capital goods, what will prevent it from “chickenizing” all the worker co-ops?
@magitweeter These cases generally involve companies legally treating people as independent contractors despite them being employees from a moral standpoint. In the system I advocate, such workers would have voting rights in the firm.
The situation you suggest where state monopolizes capital is illegitimate on anti-competitive and private property grounds.
Unfortunately, some statist democratic socialists literally advocate a situation where the state monopolizes all capital unironically.
@jlou Also, no. The cases described by Doctorow involve Amazon treating the DSPs, or “delivery service provider” firms, as agents of its will with no power of self-management. Amazon could even let the DSP structure itself as a worker co-op and those workers' voting rights would mean nothing.
So yes. How would you prevent the state becoming a monopoly?
No what I’m suggesting is that these aren’t really separate firms really. The DSPs’ workers should be considered part of Amazon and on that basis have voting rights over Amazon.
@jlou But how does one tell which firms are “really” the same firm?
Does any amount of vertical integration mean that the firms are “really” the same firm?
What's the criterion?
I fear that this would entail consolidation into a few large unwieldy co-ops.
@magitweeter There are legal tests for distinguishing independent contractors from employees (e.g. control test). The control test checks for whether the potential employer has control over how the potential employee(s) do the work and whether there is exclsuivity etc.
I’m not too worried about it because firms will probably be smaller under postcapitalism. Large firms will be less necessary because there would be mechanisms to directly fund public goods.