system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I think the Marxist ideal of collective ownership of the means of production would hinder progress and would not benefit companies or consumers. CMV

Marxism is based on the idea of collective ownership of the means of production....or at least that's how it has been presented to me. I wonder how Marxists actually think that could realistically be pulled off. Let me give an example:
Say you there is a fast food joint. Modern technology has now made it possible to have touch screens and other forms of ordering systems that will reduce mistakes and increase efficiency. As a result, you have higher customer satisfaction and can produce burgers at a lower cost. If the fast food company was collectively owned, how could progress like that actually happen? The counter service staff, who under a Marxist system would partially own the company, would collectively disallow an upgrade like that to be made for the simple reason that they wouldn't vote themselves out of a job. How could you possibly get collective owners to vote in favor of the fact that they are now redundant? I think there has to be someone at the top whose income is more reliant on the success of the company than others because decisions like that have to be made, and a collective ownership would hinder progress with new technology. Can you CMV?
gpt
First, a minor vocabulary note. Marxism has said a great deal about collective or democratic ownership of the means of production and is relevant, but the more accurate term you would want to use is simply socialism, as this is what we are discussing.

Secondly, your argument is not a very good one because it's been dealt with for a while, since Marx in fact who included it in his critique of capitalism. Capitalists, also known as business owners, terminate workers when they are no longer necessary in order to reduce their costs and maximize the surplus they exploit from the workers, also known as profiteering. Not only does socialism not run into this problem, but socialism **flourishes** under technological automation and has been argued for as a necessity since our economy is becoming ceaselessly automated. When new technology comes along that speeds up production and reduces human labor, the workers can progressively reduce the hours they need to work and still maintain the enterprise at the same quality of operation. If the technology is advanced enough to completely make a worker obsolete, then the worker can in fact stop working but continue to receive the fruits from the machine's functioning given that they have a stake in the ownership and management. Under capitalism, all money saved laying off workers goes into the pockets of the capitalist.