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Correct, except markets have been around longer than 2,000 years ago in Europe and elsewhere. The answer to the economic problems you detail is worker owned co

Correct, except markets have been around longer than 2,000 years ago in Europe and elsewhere. The answer to the economic problems you detail is worker owned cooperatives. The reason is that small business capitalists have too much incentive to being bought out by a larger conglomerate. They're also easy to run out of business with the Walmart model of running a loss for years. We won't all have or be able to bank on a capitalist coming in to give us all jobs. Keeping the money local is imperative as you said, especially for the majority of economic activity worldwide, which consists of guaranteed, proven business models. An example would be your local 7-Eleven, there's no reason all of these essential services should have a board of directors in Japan rather than every worker being the board. You might get better service too. I intend to turn my sole proprietorship into a worker owned co-op and at least coexist with Accenture if not run them out of the city with far more caring employees producing superior product. If you want a healthcare.gov debacle go with an inefficient capitalist enterprise, which has a singular goal of selling you the most expensive product made by the cheapest possible employees. Otherwise support your local worker owned co-ops.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago
Please keep a blog of your efforts - would love to read it
- BuckRogers 8y ago
  That's a great idea, when I get to that point, I'll do that. I've always wondered as a member of the working class on how I could make the world a better place (other than deeply devoting myself to my family), and I believe I've found it. We need more worker owned co-ops and less capitalist enterprises. The wonderful thing about it is that it can be done immediately, today, does not require waiting 50 or 100+ years for some major catastrophe like the Great Depression to enact positive change. Doesn't require a great leader to pass legislation granting equality. I hate that method of progress, and often I see it as laziness, corporate hand-waving. "Someday we'll have a fair and just system, but not today!" And once people see what economic democracy looks like, they'll demand it out of their governments. They'll go so far as to feign "diversity" efforts (in quotes because the only diversity corporations are interested in is diversity of wages). It'll be a lot of work as there are many details to work out but I've bookmarked your comment to let you know when the day comes.
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    The ownership is important - but (personally) i think that that gives chnage to the governace of the enterprise is the real big chnage - we live in a (mostly) democratic society, with the biggest actors being undemocratic feudal lordships - and changing that will I suspect unleash much more effective uses of the capital. Good luck Love the diversity comment
nine_k 8y ago
With a standard company, you have easy time firing and hiring people. In a cooperative, joining means buying a share in a company (not public stock), or bringing a share, and leaving means either letting the share go, or selling it back to the company. Since the company us co-owned, it involves everyone. This is not bad per se, and does have its upsides. But fast growth is hard with this model, so is market domination. And if your company is not pushing for market domination, your competition still is.
- BuckRogers 8y ago
  There's any number of ways to organize. Just as a rough, off the top of my head framework, you'd probably work the first few years as a contractor until every worker-shareholder voted to approve your application to join. Contractors won't be abused, because they'll go somewhere else they can join, or start their own co-op. You would also have performance reviews and management just as in any other enterprise. You can get fired even as a worker-owner. Everything would be democratic and transparent, if you're not doing your job it'll show and you may get voted out. Yes there would be better job security than the dominant capitalist business model, which is a good thing. I'm assuming that would mean you'd be repaid for the value of your share upon your exit. What this would do is attract the best employees to begin with. Between Accenture and a co-op where I get an ownership share and vote, and equal share of profits, I know which I'd prefer. The great trick that is played by the current capitalist model is that there's a few great enterprises like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook that pay well and treat people as good as if they had a union bargaining team. That doesn't exist for anyone else. These few dominant standouts build the reputation for other businesses that are a shadow of them. It would certainly cut the fat out of inefficient models that include more middle management trying to justify their jobs and directors doing doing the same. As far as growth, my view on that has always been that the size of companies that exist today are monstrosities. Many are propped up with government subsidies, defense contracts and such. Core government functions should be nationalized anyway, due to conflict of interest. The obvious one being folks who build bombs doing whatever it takes to encourage more wars and arms sales. That one is the most serious because it's not just waste, it's peoples lives being lost. Government has no such profit incentive conflict. There should be no such thing as perpetual contracts with the government. If it's a one-off and no co-op can meet the demand, there's options to scale quickly with contractors, and even in that case the co-op cares more about ensuring quality results than the capitalist enterprise. But you raise an important point, I'm suspicious of these mega-corps and their ties to government. I can't imagine a 10-person co-op bumbling healthcare.gov as Accenture did. In fact, I'm pretty sure with 10 hand-picked technologists, my cooperative could have outperformed Accenture's healthcare.gov job by a wide margin. That is really a prime example of capitalism's inherent inefficiencies. Get the contract, possibly through favorable previous Accenture/gov't deals, and who cares about the result. For the people that work there, it's not their business, it's Wall Streets. Accenture doesn't have to worry about their reputation after all, they're too big to fail. Where have we heard that before? We shouldn't encourage and participate in a system that enforces such mediocrity out of humanity. I'm one who expects excellence out of myself and those around me, and I can't see our current mode of production as encouraging that out of the majority. I'm not sure in a capitalist enterprise's efforts to dominate that they'd be able to bring in the best people when candidates can be essentially on the board of directors somewhere else either. Basically I believe that your point about competitors attempting to dominate an industry will be very difficult with widespread co-ops. Not without gov't collusion (or similar tactics). Employees at capitalist enterprises will be even more demotivated than they are today, knowing they're stuck as non-owners and without an equal payout of quarterly profits as their cooperative competitors enjoy. I can't see capitalism as a mode of production holding up very well once the idea spreads and is demonstrated more. In sum, all organizations are only as good as the people within them, no matter the ownership model used. Capitalist business fails today just as cooperatives will in the future. Most people, myself included really only want a fair shake for our hard work, and stability for the community we live in. That's what it provides. It's still work, and hard work at that. It's not utopia, it's just fair. It's probably more work than just working for someone else as an employee, but it's less work than starting your own company if you join an existing co-op, and you don't have to spend your time trying to trick people into working hard (or unpaid overtime) and not receiving 100% payment for that 100% effort.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

Please keep a blog of your efforts - would love to read it

BuckRogers 8y ago
That's a great idea, when I get to that point, I'll do that. I've always wondered as a member of the working class on how I could make the world a better place (other than deeply devoting myself to my family), and I believe I've found it. We need more worker owned co-ops and less capitalist enterprises. The wonderful thing about it is that it can be done immediately, today, does not require waiting 50 or 100+ years for some major catastrophe like the Great Depression to enact positive change. Doesn't require a great leader to pass legislation granting equality. I hate that method of progress, and often I see it as laziness, corporate hand-waving. "Someday we'll have a fair and just system, but not today!" And once people see what economic democracy looks like, they'll demand it out of their governments. They'll go so far as to feign "diversity" efforts (in quotes because the only diversity corporations are interested in is diversity of wages). It'll be a lot of work as there are many details to work out but I've bookmarked your comment to let you know when the day comes.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  The ownership is important - but (personally) i think that that gives chnage to the governace of the enterprise is the real big chnage - we live in a (mostly) democratic society, with the biggest actors being undemocratic feudal lordships - and changing that will I suspect unleash much more effective uses of the capital. Good luck Love the diversity comment

nine_k 8y ago

With a standard company, you have easy time firing and hiring people. In a cooperative, joining means buying a share in a company (not public stock), or bringing a share, and leaving means either letting the share go, or selling it back to the company. Since the company us co-owned, it involves everyone. This is not bad per se, and does have its upsides. But fast growth is hard with this model, so is market domination. And if your company is not pushing for market domination, your competition still is.

BuckRogers 8y ago
There's any number of ways to organize. Just as a rough, off the top of my head framework, you'd probably work the first few years as a contractor until every worker-shareholder voted to approve your application to join. Contractors won't be abused, because they'll go somewhere else they can join, or start their own co-op. You would also have performance reviews and management just as in any other enterprise. You can get fired even as a worker-owner. Everything would be democratic and transparent, if you're not doing your job it'll show and you may get voted out. Yes there would be better job security than the dominant capitalist business model, which is a good thing. I'm assuming that would mean you'd be repaid for the value of your share upon your exit. What this would do is attract the best employees to begin with. Between Accenture and a co-op where I get an ownership share and vote, and equal share of profits, I know which I'd prefer. The great trick that is played by the current capitalist model is that there's a few great enterprises like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook that pay well and treat people as good as if they had a union bargaining team. That doesn't exist for anyone else. These few dominant standouts build the reputation for other businesses that are a shadow of them. It would certainly cut the fat out of inefficient models that include more middle management trying to justify their jobs and directors doing doing the same. As far as growth, my view on that has always been that the size of companies that exist today are monstrosities. Many are propped up with government subsidies, defense contracts and such. Core government functions should be nationalized anyway, due to conflict of interest. The obvious one being folks who build bombs doing whatever it takes to encourage more wars and arms sales. That one is the most serious because it's not just waste, it's peoples lives being lost. Government has no such profit incentive conflict. There should be no such thing as perpetual contracts with the government. If it's a one-off and no co-op can meet the demand, there's options to scale quickly with contractors, and even in that case the co-op cares more about ensuring quality results than the capitalist enterprise. But you raise an important point, I'm suspicious of these mega-corps and their ties to government. I can't imagine a 10-person co-op bumbling healthcare.gov as Accenture did. In fact, I'm pretty sure with 10 hand-picked technologists, my cooperative could have outperformed Accenture's healthcare.gov job by a wide margin. That is really a prime example of capitalism's inherent inefficiencies. Get the contract, possibly through favorable previous Accenture/gov't deals, and who cares about the result. For the people that work there, it's not their business, it's Wall Streets. Accenture doesn't have to worry about their reputation after all, they're too big to fail. Where have we heard that before? We shouldn't encourage and participate in a system that enforces such mediocrity out of humanity. I'm one who expects excellence out of myself and those around me, and I can't see our current mode of production as encouraging that out of the majority. I'm not sure in a capitalist enterprise's efforts to dominate that they'd be able to bring in the best people when candidates can be essentially on the board of directors somewhere else either. Basically I believe that your point about competitors attempting to dominate an industry will be very difficult with widespread co-ops. Not without gov't collusion (or similar tactics). Employees at capitalist enterprises will be even more demotivated than they are today, knowing they're stuck as non-owners and without an equal payout of quarterly profits as their cooperative competitors enjoy. I can't see capitalism as a mode of production holding up very well once the idea spreads and is demonstrated more. In sum, all organizations are only as good as the people within them, no matter the ownership model used. Capitalist business fails today just as cooperatives will in the future. Most people, myself included really only want a fair shake for our hard work, and stability for the community we live in. That's what it provides. It's still work, and hard work at that. It's not utopia, it's just fair. It's probably more work than just working for someone else as an employee, but it's less work than starting your own company if you join an existing co-op, and you don't have to spend your time trying to trick people into working hard (or unpaid overtime) and not receiving 100% payment for that 100% effort.