RE: Taking Stock of Wealth

I am not sure I understand this part. The worker sells his wages for next to nothing (say minimum wage) but then has to sell the products also for nothing, but presumably something, so they get poorer?

The difference between wages and profit keep the workers from being able to buy back their own products.
The crapitalust wants the highest prices, but the worker gets the lowest wage, this disparity keeps the poor poorer.

Because his administration work is exploitation?

No, because in a co-op the shareholders are the workers.
Not people who had nothing to do with the work at any point, as in most corporations.

Interesting perspective, perhaps modern entrepreneurs have rosy colored glasses on.

Nah, they were born into a game that favors them, they have no incentive to change things.

Because his administration work is exploitation?

Because his contribution to the production warrants less than one share.
He produced zero of the products.

The world in which this was written was certainly more exploitive than the one we are in today, but I do understand the parable of examples describing these conditions.

No.
Get out of line and see how fast it is you under the bridge.
Today the enslavement is much more nuanced and the crowd less aware.

You use company script in the company store, but you call that freedom, because you don't know the nuance of how money works.

As long as it is work to make somebody even richer, or starve, we are all simply slaves of the having classes.

Is it inherently wrong to accumulate capital, and earn interest?

No.
You are trapped in a game that will allow you to rise, IF you play by the rulz.

IF you save your money, buy what is necessary to conduct your business, and employ yourself, none of this applies to you.
You cannot exploit yourself, only your customer.
Keep prices reasonable, ie, less than what the corporations are charging, and you can still be a good force in the world.

I'd suggest appliance repair.
You can start in a car, with very few tools, and in a few years have enough to build a shop.
No boss, just the risk of crappy customers, but the only way to learn to spot them is to get out amongst them.

There are social supports now for people, in many places it is more profitable to be unemployed today than to risk and toil for wages.

So, hire armed, uniformed thugs to lock granny up when she doesn't want to pay her extortion fees so some can live and not have to do productive work?

Probably better to set up employment places that folks can go to get day work.
The system is really set up for failure.
Otherwise the skool to work pipeline would be more certain.

Maybe hunger is the real enemy.

Charging money to eat outside overflowing warehouses is the real enemy.
The pareto principle says we only need 20% of the population to maintain 80% of what we have.
IF we expand workers to 50% of the population we should see no drop in living standards.

Were the workers to band together to continue production while refusing wages or to pay to take things from the warehouses, everything is free.
No rent.
No car payment.
No cell phone bill.
No taxes.

As long as the work is done, the shelves stay full.

Simply go to where the work is done and fulfill your needed contributory number of hours.
(Math that will have to be worked out.)

Dividing all the work hours needed among the population means most of us don't work and we have more than ever before.

The neighbors will know who the bums are, proper socialization of the girls keeps the bums from out reproducing the productive.

Am I communist now?

Lolz, just about.
This book finally clued me in to admitting that I was an-commie.