This presupposes that either a) inventions only happen in non-scarcity environments and b) that all inventors/support workers need be motivated by the common good, neither of which are necessarily true.

The question is further not about how someone can get rich, a workers pay movement can be motivated from either more individual pay, less class division, more equality, or even other reasons.

Society needs pavers, teachers, scientists to function, regardless if they do it out of charity or not. In the principle of being entitled to the fruits of your labors, these yield a huge return over a generation, making societal progress and welfare possible by preparing communal resources, teaching cultural and practical skills, or discovering things that could fundamentally change the reality society operates in.

In a Star Trek/The Culture post-scarcity egalitarian utopia where all needs are met, regardless if anarchist or not, this is definitionally not a problem.

But currently, teachers and scientists’ basic needs are not consistently met, and pavers regularly can’t sustain their profession until retirement.

So I find that the question remains: how would a system giving them a fairer share of the fruits of their labor work?

The divide is commonly not between laborer/other, but between the working and owning classes.

All those you mention are typically included in those who should be entitled to the fruits of their labor.

For profit landlords, venture capitalists, bankers, stock owners, etc. are typically those classed as leeching off of those performing the labor.

Thank you, I can at least understand worker cooperatives, as well as family businesses, homesteads, communes like convents and the like, from a maintenance perspective.

It might be that I’m too poisoned by capitalist thinking, and presupposing capitalist solutions to capitalist problems, but I welcome perspectives, even of my own blindness.

But say we want to create a new electric car manufacturer. This requires a wide range of specialties, tools and coordination.

Would the worker co-op need to buy all the things needed to even get started? Or how does investment happen? Or is it that risk capitalists should exit not by selling to the stock market, but the laborers?

Ah, duh, that’s how bank loans work, I see now.

I still don’t understand how this applies to intellectual property though, the person who designed the car, do they only get paid for the design as long as they co-own the company? How does it work for the pilot project engineer, are they not entitled to part of the profits from the subsequent production runs that are arguably the fruit of their labor?

And how do we compensate the scientists discovering the fundamental principles that require decades of work to implement, but then transform society?

I’m thinking Babbage/Lovelace creating the computer, whoever discovered concrete, quantum physicists, but also those who provide support for work like road layers, city planners, and teachers.

So, honest question:

If labor would get the value of their production, but we still live in this capitalist hellscape, wouldn’t the logical conclusion be that the owning class should take out rent for the tools and premises?

Or how would qualified tradespeople get access to tools and facilities to make factories?

And how would you price marketing, lobbying, procurement, and other supporting roles? If they should also be entitled to their labor, do they get some kind of profit share?

And how does intellectual property work? Are ideas worthless and only execution matter? Or does the architect, the project manager, the engineer, the scientist, get some kind of royalties?

I’ve seen the propaganda for so long I just never reflected upon it against today’s knowledge based and networked economy, and now I find I don’t even know how it would apply.