196

Workers start a worker owned cooperative that undercuts the old boss.

"NOT LIKE THAT!"

Have you seen how expensive bootstraps are these days?

They can’t because their boots are too caked in horse shit!

As a meme? I remember this being taught in middle school social studies.

For more details on how animal husbandry led to the notion of lending money with interest, see David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years"

That's what my Dom calls it, too

If I call this socialism I'll probably get yelled at by a nerd

Year 1:

A farmer owns two cows. You offer your services to milk them. You are now co-owners of cow-milkers incorporated. You each milk one cow. This gives you more than enough milk for yourself, and you sell the rest of the milk to pay for maintenance of the cow and are still left with a little cash left over to purchase what you want. Much of your left over cash goes to a community fund.

Year 2:

Your cow business is going well. You and the farmer agree that you could probably handle more cows. You opt to purchase a bull. This is a large purchase so you petition the community to allow you to dip into its funds and purchase a bull. You do so and soon you have five or six cows, still enough for you and the farmer to handle but honestly, it's a pretty full day's work. You employ a third person for the business. They become a co-owner and are afforded an equal share of the revenue. This share of profits is still larger for all three of you, you can even reduce the price of milk, in a similar manner the beer producers are reducing the price of their products because the community agrees for them to buy a bigger still and the vegetable sellers are reducing the price of their products because they were afforded larger fields. Now you're selling stuff for cheaper but so is everyone else so it feels like you've got even more spending power to buy luxuries on top of the public good you support!

Year 3:

Here's the kicker: you and the other two people think you can keep expanding. You dip into the communal fund to purchase new automatic cow milkers that were developed by the egghead academics that were funded by part of that community fund you keep contributing to. The same community fund that's stopped you from being severely sick at multiple points in your life and has been used to provide housing for everyone in your village.

And suddenly.

You're making more milk than you ever dreamed of! Sure you've got to clean the machines once a day, but you're milking a hundred cows! And maybe you add, hell, five new people onto the company! That just gives you more free time, you can sell the milk for dirt cheap and still make more money than you ever were. Sure, you've got to divide the work up now. Shipping 100 cows worth of milk a day to the market ain't easy but you're going gangbusters.

Not to mention! The vegetable farmer and the beer producer automated their own stock, so they're selling beer for carrots for milk for pennies on the dollar they cost last year, and they're only getting richer! Those egghead's keep inventing new gizmos and the world has its basic needs met while everyone is able to work less and less. Not only are the basics dirt cheap but the luxuries are too.

Do you not see how we are currently slipping towards feudalism? No one owns anything anymore, we pay half our money to land-lords, the rest to stay alive

More than one thing can be bad.