I listened to the Richard D. Wolff lecture this morning. Nothing that earthshattering for me. I've heard or read these things before.
He, like Marx, tries to portray "profit" as an immoral term and underrates the contributions of the capitalists and business leaders to "get things done" in commerce. I see this as a major fault of marxist thinking. The average worker just can't assume the tasks these people do.
Running between my ears is a somewhat complex web of how profits should be distributed. Someday I should put this idea on paper.
However, I already have one far-out idea that nobody wants to investigate: government without political parties. Not much sense in putting together this profit web concept until I get some traction for this new kind of democracy.
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15 years ago, I joined my first union. I would have to say that without the union, I probably would have been fired in the first years simply because my managers did not like me. Management is deathly scared of dealing with grievances.
However, I started as a part-time employee and moved up to 32 hours a week within two years. That 32 hours is the magical number where management does not have to put me on full benefits. That was 13 years ago. In several cycles of collective bargaining, I have asked the union to take this unfairness on--and they won't.
As I said, my department needs a big restructuring. But the union will resist--and management does not want to fight the union. Not exactly an ideal situation to better my employer's ability to serve its clientele.
The old union model needs to disappear just like political parties.
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Several years ago, I got frustrated with Facebook. So I started thinking about a social media forum that was co-operative driven rather than profit-driven.
My pen and brain cells went on overdrive for a year. You might be interested in how I put the pieces together:
