Cosplay Socialist Fires Staff for Starting a Workers Co-Op

[uuuhname]

I've learned over the last while that a lot of socialists are complete and utter hypocrites who will grift to profit off the backs of other socialists. Look no further than Hasan Piker, used socialist talking points to grift his way into a 3 million dollar mansion. So much for hating on capitalism, eh? Nathan Robinson is just another example of someone playing pretend as a socialist in order to enrich themselves off the backs of gullible and ignorant socialists on the internet. These guys have played anyone who bought into their grift like Yoyo Ma playing a god damn Stradivarius.

oh Jesus Christ knock it off with the "being forced to partake in capitalism means you're a hypocrite" nonsense. I mean never mind the fact that any house that's up for sale in west Hollywood at this time is going to be over 2 million AT LEAST. but this idea that you need to live in a cardboard box in order to criticize capitalism is a bullshit talking point. it's the system we are forced to operate in.

the guy is a Twtich streamer no one is being fooled into throwing their money at him.

[Endus]

I've learned over the last while that a lot of socialists are complete and utter hypocrites who will grift to profit off the backs of other socialists.

Sure. And?

Look no further than Hasan Piker, used socialist talking points to grift his way into a 3 million dollar mansion. So much for hating on capitalism, eh?

As I went over earlier, not an example of anything relevant.

Supporting a socialist model does not mean one should not pursue success while living within a capitalist model. It means you shouldn't make use of exploitative means while seeking that success.

Which Piker didn't, as he made his money as a Twitch streamer, and most Twitch streamers don't have any employees at all. Working with other professionals or services like Twitch is not the same thing as exploiting workers to profit off their labor. If there are any such issues with those he partners with, that's an issue with their models, not Piker's.

"Socialist bought a house" is not the gotcha you apparently think it is, and just demonstrates bad faith.

[jonnysensible]

oh Jesus Christ knock it off with the "being forced to partake in capitalism means you're a hypocrite" nonsense. I mean never mind the fact that any house that's up for sale in west Hollywood at this time is going to be over 2 million AT LEAST. but this idea that you need to live in a cardboard box in order to criticize capitalism is a bullshit talking point. it's the system we are forced to operate in.

the guy is a Twtich streamer no one is being fooled into throwing their money at him.

you are only allowed to critique capitalism if Engels pays your rent and living expenses.

- - - Updated - - -

"Socialist bought a house" is not the gotcha you apparently think it is, and just demonstrates bad faith.

didnt milkshake make a thread about that with some girl, WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE

[downnola]

I've learned over the last while that a lot of socialists are complete and utter hypocrites who will grift to profit off the backs of other socialists. Look no further than Hasan Piker, used socialist talking points to grift his way into a 3 million dollar mansion. So much for hating on capitalism, eh? Nathan Robinson is just another example of someone playing pretend as a socialist in order to enrich themselves off the backs of gullible and ignorant socialists on the internet. These guys have played anyone who bought into their grift like Yoyo Ma playing a god damn Stradivarius.

There's no evidence that Hasan doesn't mean what he says. There's no virtue in being poor while advocating for socialist reforms. That's just plain idiocy and ineffective.

Nathan Robinson is a better example of a hypocrite who doesn't want those reforms to apply to himself. Sort of like Ben Shapiro who chastised others for not debating and letting feelings interfere with facts and then turned around and threw a grade A temper tantrum and walked off the stage during a BBC when pressed on his views.

[uuuhname]

you are only allowed to critique capitalism if Engels pays your rent and living expenses.

I mean I'm not against he idea of criticizing Hasan given he should donate or use his wealth to improve the community, but that's criticism I'll take from people who actually want to engage in community action. not this bad faith garbage.

[jonnysensible]

I mean I'm not against he idea of criticizing Hasan given he should donate or use his wealth to improve the community, but that's criticism I'll take from people who actually want to engage in community action. not this bad faith garbage.

i refuse to learn who hasan is and none of you will make me

[Endus]

didnt milkshake make a thread about that with some girl, WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE

Yeah, there was a similar thing about a BLM leader who, as a sign of overwhelming corruption by virtue of "living in the USA and drawing a salary for your labor", bought a house. Which clearly meant there was no racial injustice in America and a black person owning property must mean a crime's been committed, somehow.

[Kronik85]

Yes, that's the capitalist response to this kind of thing.

Which is the hypocrisy given that the owner has played up supposed socialist leanings.

Most countries with "socialist leanings" haven't done much experimentation with worker co ops. It's not hypocrisy to say that you are a socialist business owner who doesn't want to turn their business into a worker owned coop against their own wishes.

If this guy was a union busting piece of shit who didn't want to pay his employees what they are worth then I'd be with you but that doesn't seem to be the case in this story.

Worker coops are not unions. Really poor showing on your part here Endus conflating the two.

[Endus]

Most countries with "socialist leanings" haven't done much experimentation with worker co ops. It's not hypocrisy to say that you are a socialist business owner who doesn't want to turn their business into a worker owned coop against their own wishes.

If this guy was a union busting piece of shit who didn't want to pay his employees what they are worth then I'd be with you but that doesn't seem to be the case in this story.

Worker coops are not unions. Really poor showing on your part here Endus conflating the two.

Unions also aren't socialism. They're a response to capitalist exploitation, but they don't fundamentally change the imbalance in ownership of the means of production; they try and levy collective power against the inequities of said ownership. When the unions own the workshops, that's where that changes to a socialist framework.

Robinson didn't necessarily have to sell/give his ownership over to the worker co-op, and it's not even clear they were seeking that. Robinson himself encouraged a co-op "feel" and let staff have a lot of agency over business decisions, but in the end, that agency was an illusion; as he himself admitted, he was willing to let people do what they wanted as long as "what they wanted" lined up with "what he, Robinson wanted", and once those came into conflict, he shut that agency down, because it never actually existed. It was false. The issue, here, is that he's made a lot of statements and arguments against these kinds of attitudes. He wanted to retain control and ownership of his own company, regardless of what the workers wanted, and when they started to question that, he fired everyone involved.

Nobody was talking about this like there was a union. He ran his company like a co-op and led his employees to think it was an informal co-op, but the moment they tried to formalize that arrangement, he fired everyone so he could retain sole control, meaning his informal attitude was not honest and was used to mislead his staff, knowingly or not.

[Rennadrel]

Little late to that conversation.

No shit, because opening the thread shows the first page, genius. Still gonna throw my two cents in, meanwhile you waste effort pointing out what I can observe, but can't be arsed to scroll through the whole fucking thread to see if anyone actually replied.

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Unions also aren't socialism. They're a response to capitalist exploitation, but they don't fundamentally change the imbalance in ownership of the means of production; they try and levy collective power against the inequities of said ownership. When the unions own the workshops, that's where that changes to a socialist framework.

Robinson didn't necessarily have to sell/give his ownership over to the worker co-op, and it's not even clear they were seeking that. Robinson himself encouraged a co-op "feel" and let staff have a lot of agency over business decisions, but in the end, that agency was an illusion; as he himself admitted, he was willing to let people do what they wanted as long as "what they wanted" lined up with "what he, Robinson wanted", and once those came into conflict, he shut that agency down, because it never actually existed. It was false. The issue, here, is that he's made a lot of statements and arguments against these kinds of attitudes. He wanted to retain control and ownership of his own company, regardless of what the workers wanted, and when they started to question that, he fired everyone involved.

Nobody was talking about this like there was a union. He ran his company like a co-op and led his employees to think it was an informal co-op, but the moment they tried to formalize that arrangement, he fired everyone so he could retain sole control, meaning his informal attitude was not honest and was used to mislead his staff, knowingly or not.

Most worker owned co-ops that I know of, you have to slap down a sum of money in order to even get in the door as an employee. If that isn't a requirement of employment, it's a generic capitalist business venture with a side of having more freedom than a lot of employers give. Did he mislead people? Possibly, but it's also pretty evident that the workplace wasn't at all a co-op and shouldn't have been treated as such by the employees without raising the issue with the owner. Instead they tried to bully their way into control and are having a hissy fit because they all got canned.

[JohnBrown1917]

I've learned over the last while that a lot of socialists are complete and utter hypocrites who will grift to profit off the backs of other socialists. Look no further than Hasan Piker, used socialist talking points to grift his way into a 3 million dollar mansion. So much for hating on capitalism, eh? Nathan Robinson is just another example of someone playing pretend as a socialist in order to enrich themselves off the backs of gullible and ignorant socialists on the internet. These guys have played anyone who bought into their grift like Yoyo Ma playing a god damn Stradivarius.

You can just say you only know a few socialists in fewer words.

[Endus]

Most worker owned co-ops that I know of, you have to slap down a sum of money in order to even get in the door as an employee. If that isn't a requirement of employment, it's a generic capitalist business venture with a side of having more freedom than a lot of employers give. Did he mislead people? Possibly, but it's also pretty evident that the workplace wasn't at all a co-op and shouldn't have been treated as such by the employees without raising the issue with the owner. Instead they tried to bully their way into control and are having a hissy fit because they all got canned.

That's not descriptive of what was happening, no. Which you'd know, if you'd read the article in the OP. There was no "bullying", and the originator of the co-op approach was Robinson himself, albeit informally.

[NED funded]

This is funny af

The controlling nature of leftist dogma prevents them from actually doing coops

That being said this is an online magazine that I literally realized it existed right now, so kind of irrelevant.

Still funny

[JohnBrown1917]

This is funny af

The controlling nature of leftist dogma prevents them from actually doing coops

That being said this is an online magazine that I literally realized it existed right now, so kind of irrelevant.

Still funny

Plenty of co-ops exist, but then again you have no idea how anything works outside your neo-liberal bubble.

[Endus]

This is funny af

The controlling nature of leftist dogma prevents them from actually doing coops

That being said this is an online magazine that I literally realized it existed right now, so kind of irrelevant.

Still funny

Except the entire point is that he didn't follow his own "dogma".

You're so deep into your propaganda hole you've completely lost touch with reality and can't see how the claim of "controlling leftist dogma" is directly contradicted by this story.

[Kronik85]

Unions also aren't socialism. They're a response to capitalist exploitation, but they don't fundamentally change the imbalance in ownership of the means of production; they try and levy collective power against the inequities of said ownership. When the unions own the workshops, that's where that changes to a socialist framework.

Robinson didn't necessarily have to sell/give his ownership over to the worker co-op, and it's not even clear they were seeking that. Robinson himself encouraged a co-op "feel" and let staff have a lot of agency over business decisions, but in the end, that agency was an illusion; as he himself admitted, he was willing to let people do what they wanted as long as "what they wanted" lined up with "what he, Robinson wanted", and once those came into conflict, he shut that agency down, because it never actually existed. It was false. The issue, here, is that he's made a lot of statements and arguments against these kinds of attitudes. He wanted to retain control and ownership of his own company, regardless of what the workers wanted, and when they started to question that, he fired everyone involved.

Nobody was talking about this like there was a union. He ran his company like a co-op and led his employees to think it was an informal co-op, but the moment they tried to formalize that arrangement, he fired everyone so he could retain sole control, meaning his informal attitude was not honest and was used to mislead his staff, knowingly or not.

I REALLY don't want to have a semantics argument about "what is socialism" but I would personally consider that Unions factor into most people's definition of socialism.

My own idea of a utopian civilisation is one where we have a generous safety net that in one way or another allows its citizens to pursue business endeavours without the risk of homelessness, I think that's probably the biggest brake we have on innovation right now and I think worker coops in this situation sound like the most workable solution.

However I am not about to rescind someone's Socialist Card because in 2021 someone didn't want to have their business taken outside of their control because they fostered a work environment that let the staff feel like they had a say. I think this is a disingenuous argument that probably encapsulates everything that is wrong in hard left commentary on social media right now with endless stupid purity tests until no one is socialist enough for the community.

I am not super familiar with the owner in question, I've only read the article, maybe you can say that he might have led his workforce as to how far he wanted their input but it's really unfair to equivocate paying people well, and asking for their input with turning an already successful business into a Coop.

So yeah, saying this guy is some form of plastic socialist in 2021 because they didn't want to lose it seems grossly uncharitable to me. My 2 cents /shrug

[Shadowferal]

My own idea of a utopian civilisation is one where we have a generous safety net that in one way or another allows its citizens to pursue business endeavours without the risk of homelessness

Imagine if Nikola Tesla didn't have to worry about funding back before WWII. (Or that fucker Edison)

[Milchshake]

Are Podcasters are basically past or future Republicans making $30k a month?
Rich people pay less in taxes under Republicans. That's the whole story.
Feigning Concern about healthcare and forever wars, is just the story with extra steps.


The Young Turks come out in support of the California Recall of Gov. Newsom

I dont care about them buying 2 million dollar homes. I do mind their grifting.

[Endus]

I REALLY don't want to have a semantics argument about "what is socialism" but I would personally consider that Unions factor into most people's definition of socialism.

Then people have no idea what they're talking about, and I'm really not interested in entertaining people's ignorance as a valid counter-point.

Unions form within a capitalist system so that collective power can offset the inherent advantages employers have over employees in labor negotiations. In nearly all socialist systems this would be superfluous, as the means of production wouldn't be owned by some independent owner in the first place. Even in cases where a socialist system uses the same word, "union", to describe a worker collective, it's not anything like what we're talking about when we describe "unions" in common parlance; it's a word applied to a form of worker co-operative, where the union itself owns the shop its members work at, and thus they share in its profits as a result.

Any framing where a "union" is a worker's group meant to negotiate with ownership over compensation and working conditions and such, that's explicitly capitalist in origin, not socialist. You've defined the concept in relation to the economic system of capitalism, and while it's working to offset the power of the capitalist class, it's still fundamentally rooted in capitalist theory.

Like, words mean things. The reason we keep having these arguments is because we let bad people misuse the terminology so egregiously, in the first place.

However I am not about to rescind someone's Socialist Card because in 2021 someone didn't want to have their business taken outside of their control because they fostered a work environment that let the staff feel like they had a say. I think this is a disingenuous argument that probably encapsulates everything that is wrong in hard left commentary on social media right now with endless stupid purity tests until no one is socialist enough for the community.

I've put in bold the phrase that should explain pretty darned clearly why it's not a socialist attitude.

Again; "Capitalism" means "private ownership of the means of production". "Socialism" means "collective ownership of the means of production". Everything else is flavor text about which variety of each we're talking about.

If someone describes a company as "their (single ownership) business", that's pretty much definitively capitalism. Pretty much the sole exception is businesses that are so structurally small they're essentially only that individual working in it; an independent freelance writer is the sole worker in "their business", for instance.

I'm not gonna try and gatekeep socialism by saying stuff "isn't true socialism" just because it's a flavor I don't like, or something. But there's a pretty simple and obvious demarcation between "socialism" and "capitalism", and that's the ownership of the means of production. Stalinism is socialism, and hippie communes are socialism, and market socialism is socialism, but private ownership is always capitalism.

[JohnBrown1917]

Are Podcasters are basically past or future Republicans making $30k a month?
Rich people pay less in taxes under Republicans. That's the whole story.
Feigning Concern about healthcare and forever wars, is just the story with extra steps.


The Young Turks come out in support of the California Recall of Gov. Newsom

I dont care about them buying 2 million dollar homes. I do mind their grifting.

No you do not, your not even part of the groups they try to grift.

And 'podcasters' is a huge, worldwide group of people, but leave it to you to have a purely american focus on podcasting[and the majority does not even make close to 30k a month]