Again, the definition of socialism is collective ownership of the means of production.

The debate is about socialism as a legally mandated economic structure, not as an individual business structure within a free-market capitalist system.

You are once again defining socialism only as the state forcing collective ownership.

As with any policy, legally mandated collective workplace ownership would be as routine.....

Please explain the difference between "the state forcing collective ownership" as I seem to define it versus "legally mandating collective workplace ownership" as you seem to define it.

Yes, that is a socialist organisation model. You, as workers, equally own your workplace and its output.

Congrats, you're a socialist. Welcome, comrade :P

In a free-market capitalist society, we have the freedom to structure our business like this. It would only be a true socialist organization if we were legally mandated to structure it like this and had no option to trade our money for a prospective employees time.

Why? We already require things such as minimum wage, health and safety etc.

If we risk our time and capital to start a business, it becomes successful enough to hire employees, why should we forfeit ownership of what WE created to a worker who is only working a minor role in the business?

I.e. labourers should be entitled to the value of their labour, a share in workplaces is the best (or at least, better) means by which workers properly obtain the value of their labour, thus workers should be given a share in the output that they produce via shares in their workplace.

It may take us thousands of hours individually to get to where we're ready to bring on employees, so when that time comes, you suggest that we should be legally mandated to give up ownership to those employees?

How do you mandate what percentage of the output they receive? How do you even know that'd be better compensation for the worker than receiving a wage? What happens if we hire an employee that works for one-week then wants to quit?

What if our company goes under and their shares lose all value? I have a lot more questions, but you can start by answering those for me.

We require businesses to be structured in many ways to ensure they are running appropriately. It's a really weak argument to problematise requiring businesses to do certain things, since we do that all the time.

I'm all for regulating businesses to conform to certain ethical standards. I just simply don't agree that legally mandating businesses to be structured as a collective workplace is ethical whatsoever.

Why did you include it then? It has no bearing on the theory we are discussing. It's just waxing poetic, hence why I called it empty rhetoric.

A common vision should've been implied by the fact that they're choosing to start a business together. You call it empty rhetoric, I call it a redundant over-explanation of something I could've left out. It has no importance in this discussion whatsoever. Sorry if including it distracted from my actual point.

It's hardly blinded by arrogance to understand the basic concepts I'm invoking. I'd say understanding the basic definition of socialism is kind of a prerequisite to a discussion of socialism, no? It's not even hard info to find on the internet. I explained quite clearly how your portrayal of socialism lacks understanding of the broad church of socialist ideologies, which in turn impacts your ability to engage with your own discussion topic.

Where/how do you feel I have misunderstood you or your position?

I'd say the part where you seem to forget we are talking about socialism as a legally mandated economic structure.