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Great, merit based compensation could be a powerful way to run a company. I sincerely agree with your belief that purpose-driven enterprises are more successful

Great, merit based compensation could be a powerful way to run a company. I sincerely agree with your belief that purpose-driven enterprises are more successful, especially when that purpose is to produce a fantastic product. I read a bit of your "open enterprise manifesto" (which is way too long to read in my opinion, but that may not be your goal), and found conflict with this statement: "We made our government democratic, and our corporations everything but..." Actually, we made our government a Republic, with a set of laws and inalienable rights. The process for changing those laws was made democratic, but the system was created as a Republic to protect the rights of individuals from the arbitrary force of government. I don't understand why so many people focus on the "greed" and "corruption" inherent in "top-down" corporations, but ignore the greed and corruption inherent in centralized government. Those who operate the government are no different than those who operate corporations. They're all human. If you can't trust corporations, then you DEFINITELY can't trust government, because they are all run by humans of the same nature.

kabuks 16y ago
I agree with what you're saying. The system of government is definitely far from perfect. The reference to it in our manifesto is that we at least see the value of democracy in our attempt to govern ourselves politically, but have made very few strides in that in our attempts to govern our businesses. I would trust our government much more if it ran all its work transparently on bettermeans, and allowed me to vote, discuss, and comment freely. Also, "greed" and "corruption" are IMHO not a function of human nature, but a function of poor governance systems that we find ourselves in. Our entire model is based on an inherit trust in our nature. That given the right circumstances, and a fair, transparent, accountable system we can rise above "greed" and "corruption" We wrote a post about it here: http://bettermeans.org/front/?p=565 http://bettermeans.org/front/?p=565
- ericingram 16y ago
  You may well be right about the idea that greed and corruption are not natural to humans, you've obviously done a lot more thinking about that side of it than I have and your logic is reasonable. I really like the application you built. I need some more convincing on the model and how it would work, without reading the entire manifesto, do you have a document that explains it in much shorter form? Great job on the design, it LOOKS like you spent about a year on it :)
- nandemo 16y ago
  Viktor Frankl's video (at the link above) is amazing.

kabuks 16y ago

I agree with what you're saying. The system of government is definitely far from perfect. The reference to it in our manifesto is that we at least see the value of democracy in our attempt to govern ourselves politically, but have made very few strides in that in our attempts to govern our businesses. I would trust our government much more if it ran all its work transparently on bettermeans, and allowed me to vote, discuss, and comment freely. Also, "greed" and "corruption" are IMHO not a function of human nature, but a function of poor governance systems that we find ourselves in. Our entire model is based on an inherit trust in our nature. That given the right circumstances, and a fair, transparent, accountable system we can rise above "greed" and "corruption" We wrote a post about it here: http://bettermeans.org/front/?p=565 http://bettermeans.org/front/?p=565

ericingram 16y ago
You may well be right about the idea that greed and corruption are not natural to humans, you've obviously done a lot more thinking about that side of it than I have and your logic is reasonable. I really like the application you built. I need some more convincing on the model and how it would work, without reading the entire manifesto, do you have a document that explains it in much shorter form? Great job on the design, it LOOKS like you spent about a year on it :)
nandemo 16y ago
Viktor Frankl's video (at the link above) is amazing.