Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
Within the context of one person’s career, socialism on its own can do quite a bit to transform people’s relationship to their workplace. No longer would your job be at risk because you’ve all done too well and it’s to “cut labor costs” while profits soar. No longer would you be worried about automating away your job, instead you’d gladly automate your job away and then the whole organization could lower how much work needs to be done as things get more and more automated.
Democracy would massively improve work-life balance.
Of course this comes with problems, all of which exist in capitalism (how do we care for people outside of these organizations who won’t have access to work, for example). But if I had to choose between market socialism and capitalism, the choice is pretty clear, and it’s something much easier for liberals to stomach.
The idea of centrally planned economy ignores the lessons of the past. Bronze Age empires and recent examples all display universal inability to adjust to changes.
It’s the same magical thinking as the blind belief in market forces exhibits.
Priests of “invisible hand of market” ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia, believing that markets will just magically fix everything in time for it to matter.
Preachers of central planning ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia (and yes, there is a market, as long as there is goods and services exchange, however indirect) by believing they will have all the relevant information and the capacity to process it in time for it to matter.
Neither is true. Neither school of thought even attempted to show itself to be true.
I think the better way would be a centrally planned economy for some goods (electricity, “normal” food, health, …) and something more “free” for the rest of the market. Bread has a marked price but a PS5 doesn’t.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
Not always, sometimes it’s just an acknowledgement of insurmountable facts. Pointing out the inability of a particular engine to overcome the laws of thermodynamics to output more energy than is input is not useful criticism. Pointing out the mortality of individuals is not useful criticism. Those shortcomings are specific, but unless there’s some alternative that doesn’t have those shortcomings, those aren’t useful observations, they’re pointless complaints.
No because I don’t give you a gift only if you give me one. It’s not a transaction. They are gifts.
…but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it’s a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can’t occur then you’re relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you’re expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There’s little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
Right, and Marxists are characterized by their complete lack of reasoning skills, so they have to blindly parrot everything Marx has ever said, especially the stuff that obviously doesn’t work out. This is actually core marxist thinking.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
This is ironically a poor sales pitch, unless you believe that networking, marketing, and familial wealth should be what orders society.
And I never said that 250k was all they had, and in fact being able to throw that much money at something is going to be less and less of a concern the more money you have, though I don’t think his family was “poor as hell” to start with. Unfortunately for this point, their finances at the time are not publicized that I can find.
250k is a lot of money. It was more even more money in the 90s. Its an exceptionally large amount of money to recieve for free straight from your parents.
People don’t become billionaires from working. They become billionaires by taking profit from the surplus value of other peoples work.
But you believe in a propagandized version of capitaliam where everyone could equally become a billionaire, its a meritocracy, you’re all jealous and lazy of our deserving overlords
Where do they get the business owner who wants to do that? Can it happen? Sure, it has. But thats not going to happen for most bussiness operation in capitalist countries. Can workers get the money to buy out their owners? Sure. But that’s not super likely in most situations either.
That’s a good thing; socialism is a fledgling idea. It needs discoure and experimentation. The attack that lack of exact details and perfect cohesion is an empty one.
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
Those lazy commies with their limp wristed excuses like: “The reality of living under a capitalist society”. Why don’t they just eat some bootstrap stew like my pa did and die of preventable illness generating labor value for someone else?
Wait…so these are your examples of people who “did something”
Do you realize that the edge every single one of these companies had over the others is the willingness to do whatever it takes to extract as much value from labor for the least amount of money, right?
You are just making the case for the complete destruction of capitalism. Only soulless psychopaths are rewarded here. Winning is not beating these people at the same psychotic game that they’re playing.
This is the reasoning that leads to “if you think medicines are too expensive, stop buying them” with much the same problem of it not being quite that simple for the majority of humanity, whose “choices” are not as unconstrained as the ones you’re familiar with.
No one cares if you “buy into” anything. It exists whether you believe it or not.
The entire point of keeping unemployment at certain levels is so capitalists can dictate wages and responsibilities. It’s not a secret. Bourgeois media openly panics whenever unemployment levels get too low.
I try to tell myself that most of the people bought into capitalism can be rehabilitated, maybe some just need to spend a few years breaking rocks to get it through their heads that other people fucking exist on this planet.
Reading your comments has made me re-evaluate that
I don’t buy into that lame beta theory of gravity. You go down. If you don’t feel like going down, go up. It’s that simple. That is the beauty of jumping. I can jump as high as I want
Tesla is not close to bigger than GM. They only make consumer vehicles and maybe a model of semi truck but I don’t think that’s being produced yet, while GM has been making consumer cars in addition to commercial and military vehicles for decades. They might be valued as more but that doesn’t really say anything in practical terms.
Okay I said I was done talking with you but I actually love any excuse to nerd out on this so here:
The state of California has mandated compostable household and business waste be separated out and picked up separately much like recycling is already separated. This is a law that is already in effect; however, they have declined to enforce it so far. They have recently began making statements that they will begin enforcing the law and fining businesses and property owners for not complying.
Many small municipalities (and some big ones) have not even started setting up the infrastructure to do so. They’re way behind.
This means there is a captive market for a company providing those services. A potentially huge market.
Now anyone can set up a waste collection service, it’s pretty standardized, but here’s where my idea is different. A technology called pyrolization.. It mostly requires organic materials, lots of em. In essence, it’s burning without fire. The input is organic material, the output is a stable carbon-rich solid called biochar (similar to charcoal except not as flammable), and something called syngas, which is similar to natural gas. With the right machinery, the process produces energy and is carbon-negative.
The carbon-negative aspect is the selling point. Do you know how many carbon-negative businesses there are? You could probably count them, globally, on both hands. This would play EXTREMELY well in California.
Pyrolysis is not a new technology, but applying it at scale is. Currently it’s mainly in use as a way of processing human waste. There’s a company called BioForceTech in the Bay Area that has a successfully operating pyrolysis machine processing human waste, and they have machines globally that also process feedstock like wood chips and nut shells. Municipal organic waste would require a sorting machine for sure, but other than that it could use their machine just fine. And the sorting machine wouldn’t have to be as complex as those in municipal compost systems: if plastic gets mixed into your compost, that’s bad. If plastic gets mixed into something you’re just going to burn and bury, not a huge deal.
$850,000 is not enough to set something up like this on the municipal level. That would take millions. It’s enough to get buy-in from BioForceTech, ReCology (bay area waste management company that has experience with waste-gas powered trucks, and compost sorting machines), investors, and local and state government (the state has several grant and loan programs for “green” businesses, especially in waste collection).
In my opinion the biggest, most profitable market would be Santa Clara County or Alameda County, both in the bay area and both have limited compost pickup presently. But that’s a big bite to chew and I think beyond the capabilities of a new business. Something like small towns in Mendocino County would be perfect - small enough that they don’t have municipal organics collection aside from maybe yard trimmings, liberal enough that the carbon-negative aspect would play well, rural enough to have plenty of cheap land for a processing facility.
So that’s our market. We get to charge customers for the pickup, and then sell the power generated as “clean energy”. Not to mention the whole thing functions like a peaker plant. When electricity prices are low, you can adjust the output ratio to create more biochar - adding to the carbon-negative selling point (and getting some money from cap and trade). When electricity prices are high, you can get more syngas and burn it as carbon-neutral energy.
The one thing I’m not very familiar on and would need to consult experts on is the regulations involved in the “selling electricity” aspect. The regulatory burden may make that part not feasible, I just don’t know enough about it.
Surprise, when there are obstacles standing in the way of your goals, people may mention those obstacles when asked about progress towards their goals.
What an absolute flaccid take.
The system actively discourages that. It was tried in the 70s. Banks wouldn’t work with coops because they were diffrent. Other companies wouldn’t work with them because they didn’t being as high a ROI. They were more efficient and stable, but under capitalism none of that matters.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
You clearly know nothing of the coffee industry. Don’t speak on a topic if you literally know nothing. Third wave coffee exists because of the inherent abuse of the workers who actually harvest coffee. That you’re so naive to even think that the person behind the counter is the end of who is part of Starbucks is shockingly sad considering how much you’re trying to fight for something that is dependent on you needing a much better understanding of what you’re talking about.
I never said Starbucks owns the slave labor. But to ignore the influence they have is outstandingly naive. Like, do you think at all before replying? Are you in middle school and have any idea how the real world operates?
I think the point the other user was trying to make is that Starbucks already has connections, and they are able to source their coffee from more shady sources if they really want to. Someone starting out new has no such connections and will pay a higher price for their beans than Starbucks, ergo, they have to find something else to compete on other than price (which I think is possible, I live near many local coffee shops, including some worker co-ops). However, you’re still dealing with Starbucks having a larger presence than you, economically, and them being able to source cheaper goods due to economies of scale. I would think you’re already familiar with this. You’re correct in asserting that you’re stuck just having to “believe” your sources don’t use slave labor, because you’re sourcing it from another country. Starbucks at least has the money to check on such things, if they so choose.
The point that I was trying to make was that Starbucks works with more than just the people at the counter, which is how you characterized it. Moving goalposts now isn’t very helpful.
Starbucks doesn’t own the farms. They buy the beans from the people growing them. The exact same thing you would do if you started a coffee chain or you would buy from a wholesaler…
It’s so insanely more complicated than that. Not all farms are equal.
Yeah, and a third party candidate could be voted into every seat and the presidency, but it’s so stacked against it occurring, it’s effectively impossible.
The state of the economy today is what’s stopping a vast majority of people from doing so. You can open a coffee shop and survive, but you could never compete against Starbucks. You would not even dent their bottom line. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars to realistically compete. Capitalism has brought us to a point where a majority of folks need to sell their idea to investors, further separating most workers from the value of their work.
Edit: I’m really tired of the naive and childish defenses most people put up for capitalism. “Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah and “nothing” is stopping a transgender women from becoming our next president by the same definition of “nothing”. Might as well say nothing is stopping you from passing through walls as quantum mechanics says it’s possible.
Dutch brothers by revenue is essentially a drive through energy drink stand, not a coffee company and Peet’s is owned by a holding company that got rich off of Nazi work camp labor.
You haven’t owned coffee places. You’ve been entirely wrong on how to source coffee plus your description of what even makes coffee. If you used to own them, you probably ran them into the ground. You’re objectively wrong on coffee production.
Peet’s had 4 stores before it started changing hands, Peet’s and Starbucks famously did not compete with each other for years, and Starbucks wasn’t even selling brewed coffee before it was taken over by Shultz and venture capital.
But from my experience in the industry, your confident incorrectness is perfectly in character for a coffee shop owner.
You seem to think to compete, you have to grow larger.
You need to at least meet inflation, if not outpace it. Moreover, you’re not competing if you aren’t actually trying to battle. Competition breeds innovation. If you do not compete and do not get better or try to improve, society would degrade and regress. Come on. Before you respond next time, just think about what the consequence of what you’re saying is before.you actually hit the button. It saves us a lot of time.
Even if, hypothetically, 65% of people owned their homes outright, that’s still over a third of the population who can’t even consider getting a loan like you described.
And for those that COULD, they’re betting their entire life on it. People with money can afford to take risks. It’s not an even playing field, at all.
Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
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Within the context of one person’s career, socialism on its own can do quite a bit to transform people’s relationship to their workplace. No longer would your job be at risk because you’ve all done too well and it’s to “cut labor costs” while profits soar. No longer would you be worried about automating away your job, instead you’d gladly automate your job away and then the whole organization could lower how much work needs to be done as things get more and more automated.
Democracy would massively improve work-life balance.
Of course this comes with problems, all of which exist in capitalism (how do we care for people outside of these organizations who won’t have access to work, for example). But if I had to choose between market socialism and capitalism, the choice is pretty clear, and it’s something much easier for liberals to stomach.
Not saying I’m in favor of it, but there’s still market socialism out there as a political stance
The idea of centrally planned economy ignores the lessons of the past. Bronze Age empires and recent examples all display universal inability to adjust to changes.
It’s the same magical thinking as the blind belief in market forces exhibits.
Priests of “invisible hand of market” ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia, believing that markets will just magically fix everything in time for it to matter.
Preachers of central planning ignore information exchange speed limits and market inertia (and yes, there is a market, as long as there is goods and services exchange, however indirect) by believing they will have all the relevant information and the capacity to process it in time for it to matter.
Neither is true. Neither school of thought even attempted to show itself to be true.
I think the better way would be a centrally planned economy for some goods (electricity, “normal” food, health, …) and something more “free” for the rest of the market. Bread has a marked price but a PS5 doesn’t.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
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The ole can have criticism without perfect solutions response. Cool, how useless and pointless of you.
I’m confused, isn’t criticism without alternatives itself useless and pointless?
No, it broadens and deepens understanding.
Alternatives come from that understanding. Criticism is the fundamental step towards alternatives.
How exactly do you come to that conclusion?
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
“thing has specific shortcomings” is a useful criticism.
Not always, sometimes it’s just an acknowledgement of insurmountable facts. Pointing out the inability of a particular engine to overcome the laws of thermodynamics to output more energy than is input is not useful criticism. Pointing out the mortality of individuals is not useful criticism. Those shortcomings are specific, but unless there’s some alternative that doesn’t have those shortcomings, those aren’t useful observations, they’re pointless complaints.
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Yes. Do you not?
So Christmas gifts are a market?
No because I don’t give you a gift only if you give me one. It’s not a transaction. They are gifts.
…but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it’s a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can’t occur then you’re relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you’re expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There’s little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
Hunger is such a poor motivator.
The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact that it has a boss
So every company remodeled after REI, got it.
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We love oversimplifying generalizations that make us look like absolute buffoons though.
At least according to trustworthy sources, i.e. your gut feeling.
/s
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Right, and Marxists are characterized by their complete lack of reasoning skills, so they have to blindly parrot everything Marx has ever said, especially the stuff that obviously doesn’t work out. This is actually core marxist thinking.
/s
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Or as normal people call it, “money”
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How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
Not a market socialist though, just a socialist.
Are people investing in new automation currently because I’ve been using the same crappy tools for over 10 years now and they keep getting crappier.
Oh yeah we automate creative work now, the one thing that could still be a cheap hobby.
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Fully stop? No, not technically. But our society makes it as close to impossible as it can be without being illegal
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Just a small loan of a quarter million dollars from his parents to bail out his failing company, which one would be hard-pressed to imagine he would have even had that much success in founding if not for his wealthy parents supporting his upbringing as they did.
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This is ironically a poor sales pitch, unless you believe that networking, marketing, and familial wealth should be what orders society.
And I never said that 250k was all they had, and in fact being able to throw that much money at something is going to be less and less of a concern the more money you have, though I don’t think his family was “poor as hell” to start with. Unfortunately for this point, their finances at the time are not publicized that I can find.
He started out with a small loan of $250,000 from his parents, in 90s $s if memory serves.
You’re just a
aren’t you? Lazy workers could be billionaires if they just tried
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250k is a lot of money. It was more even more money in the 90s. Its an exceptionally large amount of money to recieve for free straight from your parents.
People don’t become billionaires from working. They become billionaires by taking profit from the surplus value of other peoples work.
But you believe in a propagandized version of capitaliam where everyone could equally become a billionaire, its a meritocracy, you’re all jealous and lazy of our deserving overlords
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Where do yhey get the money to buy the business?
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Where do they get the business owner who wants to do that? Can it happen? Sure, it has. But thats not going to happen for most bussiness operation in capitalist countries. Can workers get the money to buy out their owners? Sure. But that’s not super likely in most situations either.
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Cool. Thats several people. Thats not the majority of the capitalist system.
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Law enforcement?
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Did… did I say they couldn’t? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
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Did I attack the system in my comment or did I give a bare bones breakdown of what socialism is?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892938
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892727
Maybe even check my other posts in this thread to get a better idea of my opinion on this instead of jumping to conclusions.
They said it in the first comment
Good luck here lol
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That’s a good thing; socialism is a fledgling idea. It needs discoure and experimentation. The attack that lack of exact details and perfect cohesion is an empty one.
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How do you feel about Bernie or AOC, they are the system and aren’t trying to burn it down. They just want to fix the system.
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
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Those lazy commies with their limp wristed excuses like: “The reality of living under a capitalist society”. Why don’t they just eat some bootstrap stew like my pa did and die of preventable illness generating labor value for someone else?
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Massive inefficient redundancies that ended up making rich people money and hurting the poor? Yeah, fuck that.
Wait…so these are your examples of people who “did something”
Do you realize that the edge every single one of these companies had over the others is the willingness to do whatever it takes to extract as much value from labor for the least amount of money, right?
You are just making the case for the complete destruction of capitalism. Only soulless psychopaths are rewarded here. Winning is not beating these people at the same psychotic game that they’re playing.
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This is the reasoning that leads to “if you think medicines are too expensive, stop buying them” with much the same problem of it not being quite that simple for the majority of humanity, whose “choices” are not as unconstrained as the ones you’re familiar with.
Just because you say you enjoy the taste of shoe polish doesn’t mean you’re not a pathetic bootlicker.
No one cares if you “buy into” anything. It exists whether you believe it or not.
The entire point of keeping unemployment at certain levels is so capitalists can dictate wages and responsibilities. It’s not a secret. Bourgeois media openly panics whenever unemployment levels get too low.
I try to tell myself that most of the people bought into capitalism can be rehabilitated, maybe some just need to spend a few years breaking rocks to get it through their heads that other people fucking exist on this planet.
Reading your comments has made me re-evaluate that
I don’t buy into that lame beta theory of gravity. You go down. If you don’t feel like going down, go up. It’s that simple. That is the beauty of jumping. I can jump as high as I want
The problem with notable examples is that they’re pretty much never representative examples.
Tesla is not close to bigger than GM. They only make consumer vehicles and maybe a model of semi truck but I don’t think that’s being produced yet, while GM has been making consumer cars in addition to commercial and military vehicles for decades. They might be valued as more but that doesn’t really say anything in practical terms.
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Bubbles are fun.
You’re asking people with little to no resources to take on people who have all the resources.
You don’t seem like you understand modern capitalism.
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What poor people do you think are donating wages to “radical politicians”? Have you ever met any poor people?
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You do not.
Wanna loan me $850,000 so I can start my own business? If it works I’ll pay you back in 20 years.
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Okay I said I was done talking with you but I actually love any excuse to nerd out on this so here:
The state of California has mandated compostable household and business waste be separated out and picked up separately much like recycling is already separated. This is a law that is already in effect; however, they have declined to enforce it so far. They have recently began making statements that they will begin enforcing the law and fining businesses and property owners for not complying.
Many small municipalities (and some big ones) have not even started setting up the infrastructure to do so. They’re way behind.
This means there is a captive market for a company providing those services. A potentially huge market.
Now anyone can set up a waste collection service, it’s pretty standardized, but here’s where my idea is different. A technology called pyrolization.. It mostly requires organic materials, lots of em. In essence, it’s burning without fire. The input is organic material, the output is a stable carbon-rich solid called biochar (similar to charcoal except not as flammable), and something called syngas, which is similar to natural gas. With the right machinery, the process produces energy and is carbon-negative.
The carbon-negative aspect is the selling point. Do you know how many carbon-negative businesses there are? You could probably count them, globally, on both hands. This would play EXTREMELY well in California.
Pyrolysis is not a new technology, but applying it at scale is. Currently it’s mainly in use as a way of processing human waste. There’s a company called BioForceTech in the Bay Area that has a successfully operating pyrolysis machine processing human waste, and they have machines globally that also process feedstock like wood chips and nut shells. Municipal organic waste would require a sorting machine for sure, but other than that it could use their machine just fine. And the sorting machine wouldn’t have to be as complex as those in municipal compost systems: if plastic gets mixed into your compost, that’s bad. If plastic gets mixed into something you’re just going to burn and bury, not a huge deal.
$850,000 is not enough to set something up like this on the municipal level. That would take millions. It’s enough to get buy-in from BioForceTech, ReCology (bay area waste management company that has experience with waste-gas powered trucks, and compost sorting machines), investors, and local and state government (the state has several grant and loan programs for “green” businesses, especially in waste collection).
In my opinion the biggest, most profitable market would be Santa Clara County or Alameda County, both in the bay area and both have limited compost pickup presently. But that’s a big bite to chew and I think beyond the capabilities of a new business. Something like small towns in Mendocino County would be perfect - small enough that they don’t have municipal organics collection aside from maybe yard trimmings, liberal enough that the carbon-negative aspect would play well, rural enough to have plenty of cheap land for a processing facility.
So that’s our market. We get to charge customers for the pickup, and then sell the power generated as “clean energy”. Not to mention the whole thing functions like a peaker plant. When electricity prices are low, you can adjust the output ratio to create more biochar - adding to the carbon-negative selling point (and getting some money from cap and trade). When electricity prices are high, you can get more syngas and burn it as carbon-neutral energy.
The one thing I’m not very familiar on and would need to consult experts on is the regulations involved in the “selling electricity” aspect. The regulatory burden may make that part not feasible, I just don’t know enough about it.
Surprise, when there are obstacles standing in the way of your goals, people may mention those obstacles when asked about progress towards their goals. What an absolute flaccid take.
The system actively discourages that. It was tried in the 70s. Banks wouldn’t work with coops because they were diffrent. Other companies wouldn’t work with them because they didn’t being as high a ROI. They were more efficient and stable, but under capitalism none of that matters.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
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Ok now I know you’re a troll. And a liar.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
Ergo, troll.
I’m done talking with you.
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Banks frequently do.
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I don’t have access to the same network of third world slaves that Starbucks does.
As someone in the industry, I can say you actually do. It’s scary how easy it is to buy coffee harvested by literal or effectively slaves.
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You clearly know nothing of the coffee industry. Don’t speak on a topic if you literally know nothing. Third wave coffee exists because of the inherent abuse of the workers who actually harvest coffee. That you’re so naive to even think that the person behind the counter is the end of who is part of Starbucks is shockingly sad considering how much you’re trying to fight for something that is dependent on you needing a much better understanding of what you’re talking about.
Literally everything this person has said about how the coffee industry works has been wrong.
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I never said Starbucks owns the slave labor. But to ignore the influence they have is outstandingly naive. Like, do you think at all before replying? Are you in middle school and have any idea how the real world operates?
What do you think coffee is? Do you think people with colored hair just magically conjure coffee out of the ether?
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You clearly don’t understand what coffee is or how many hands it has to pass through before it even gets to the barista.
You do realize that coffee beans grow in the tropics… right?
They aren’t growin em in fuckin Seattle.
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I think the point the other user was trying to make is that Starbucks already has connections, and they are able to source their coffee from more shady sources if they really want to. Someone starting out new has no such connections and will pay a higher price for their beans than Starbucks, ergo, they have to find something else to compete on other than price (which I think is possible, I live near many local coffee shops, including some worker co-ops). However, you’re still dealing with Starbucks having a larger presence than you, economically, and them being able to source cheaper goods due to economies of scale. I would think you’re already familiar with this. You’re correct in asserting that you’re stuck just having to “believe” your sources don’t use slave labor, because you’re sourcing it from another country. Starbucks at least has the money to check on such things, if they so choose.
The point that I was trying to make was that Starbucks works with more than just the people at the counter, which is how you characterized it. Moving goalposts now isn’t very helpful.
It’s so insanely more complicated than that. Not all farms are equal.
Yeah, and a third party candidate could be voted into every seat and the presidency, but it’s so stacked against it occurring, it’s effectively impossible.
The state of the economy today is what’s stopping a vast majority of people from doing so. You can open a coffee shop and survive, but you could never compete against Starbucks. You would not even dent their bottom line. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars to realistically compete. Capitalism has brought us to a point where a majority of folks need to sell their idea to investors, further separating most workers from the value of their work.
Edit: I’m really tired of the naive and childish defenses most people put up for capitalism. “Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah and “nothing” is stopping a transgender women from becoming our next president by the same definition of “nothing”. Might as well say nothing is stopping you from passing through walls as quantum mechanics says it’s possible.
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Dutch brothers by revenue is essentially a drive through energy drink stand, not a coffee company and Peet’s is owned by a holding company that got rich off of Nazi work camp labor.
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You haven’t owned coffee places. You’ve been entirely wrong on how to source coffee plus your description of what even makes coffee. If you used to own them, you probably ran them into the ground. You’re objectively wrong on coffee production.
Peet’s had 4 stores before it started changing hands, Peet’s and Starbucks famously did not compete with each other for years, and Starbucks wasn’t even selling brewed coffee before it was taken over by Shultz and venture capital.
But from my experience in the industry, your confident incorrectness is perfectly in character for a coffee shop owner.
You need to at least meet inflation, if not outpace it. Moreover, you’re not competing if you aren’t actually trying to battle. Competition breeds innovation. If you do not compete and do not get better or try to improve, society would degrade and regress. Come on. Before you respond next time, just think about what the consequence of what you’re saying is before.you actually hit the button. It saves us a lot of time.
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You know the great majority of people don’t have any such collateral, right? Holy privilege, dude
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Own outright? Or have a mortgage?
Even if, hypothetically, 65% of people owned their homes outright, that’s still over a third of the population who can’t even consider getting a loan like you described.
And for those that COULD, they’re betting their entire life on it. People with money can afford to take risks. It’s not an even playing field, at all.