If anyone wants to read Marx and understand what people mean exactly when they say workers create value, but are intimidated by Capital, I recommend starting with Wage Labor and Capital It's a short, concise work by Marx specifically made for people without any background knowledge, unlike the Communist Manifesto.
I prefer hillbillies to rednecks. Rednecks have "back the blue" stickers while hillbillies take pot shots at any car with federal plates. Rednecks have lifted mall crawlers while hillbillies have an old busted Tacoma or Geo Metro. Rednecks have pets, hillbillies have raccoon and possum neighbors who hang out on their porch together.
Originally rednecks were the hillbillies that wore red neckerchiefs at the battle of Blair mountain. They fought against Pinkertons who were hired by the coal mines to break up the rednecks who had taken over the company property.
That may have changed since the blue collar comedy tour, but originally rednecks were the works seizing the means of production.
It's more that investing in the place you work sucks because you know how shit of an investment it is. Most people would rather own shares in the s&p500 than their place of work.
I think it’s more like, imagine if all the shares of Amazon were confiscated from Bezos and his main henchmen and his original remaining backers, and then those shares were equally redistributed to Amazon employees and contractors. I don’t think the workers would disagree with that move.
An owner/operator does not own a share of a large corporation. The idea of the workers controlling the means of production is that the workers collectively own the company, not that each worker owns their own dump truck.
As for most people not wanting that, I wonder if that would be true if they understood it meant that they got a share of the profits on top of their regular paycheck?
Yes, they're not mutually exclusive. In fact owning the means of production would give the workers more financial stability and might lead to better home ownership.
Look around the status quo, how many people do you think can afford owning a home in the current situation?
Regardless of whoever is voted in in my country (Canada) no politicians will be capable of facilitating a system where in the average working citizen can comfortably afford food and shelter.
No one can do this because there is overwhelming sentiment that any attempt to socialize necessities necessarily devolves into some kind of dictatorship.
If you want to suggest I should align myself with those people you're going to have to do a little better than fear mongering because the writing is on the wall for how the country is going to end up if we keep following this route.
Being able to vote for one of three people who are either unwilling or unable to ensure some basic standard of living for me is pretty damn low on my hierarchy of needs.
I have no problem with socializing necessities, I find it amusing you went off on that unrelated tangent. Or that because I don't think communism is a workable solution in the real world, that I think our current solutions are good.
The problem is every form of "communism" implemented to date has immediately become a authoritarian dictatorship. One could even say "communism" is just snake oil used to convince the populous to allow the installation of authoritarian dictatorships...