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This isn’t exactly the most convincing argument against Rand’s philosophy - the workers didn’t invent the device and don’t work any harder than they did before. Their feeling of entitlement to the profit from it appears to be naked greed unsupported by any moral principle. Acting in one’s rational self-interest would include keeping them placated if they can credibly threaten violence, but their role as workers is completely irrelevant in that context.

You’re missing a very important point here, which is that the workers are the ones whose labor is turned into profit. That means that if their work is able to generate more money, they are perfectly within their right to demand more, even if they don’t necessarily work any harder.

If I think that investing in capital and getting a return on my investment is a valid use of the money I earn but you do not, our disagreement is ideological rather than factual; who’s right and who’s wrong is a matter of opinion.

With that said, I do find it ironic that proponents of an ideology that has failed quite dramatically are accusing proponents of an ideology that has been quite successful of being insufficiently rational.

J Lou

The workers are factually responsible for using up the inputs to produce the output. Imputing the positive and negative product, which together make up the whole product, to the employer is a denial of that basic fact. The whole product's value is the profit.

It is possible to have investment in capital and getting return on investment in an economy consisting exclusively of worker coops.

Not all anti-capitalists are communists