4 ms·

I am more and more convinced that democratic decision making is necessary in companies - literally voting by employees - maybe as swiss style referendums or pla

I am more and more convinced that democratic decision making is necessary in companies - literally voting by employees - maybe as swiss style referendums or plain old vote for the CEO. It's such a huge change it simply does not fit in most brains, but same is true for say social democracy during the time of Watt Tyler. I think the point is politics exists no matter what the rhetoric of the elites says, so you may as well surface the politics keep it in sunshine and deal with it. Plus it's ridiculous to grant a tiny elite the power to allocate resources of society simply because they got promoted...

WalterBright 3y ago
> grant a tiny elite the power to allocate resources of society simply because they got promoted... They can only allocate the resources of the company, not society. And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources. Democracy has never demonstrated efficient allocation.
- n6242 3y ago
  > And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources. I've seen too many managers fail upwards to truly believe that is true in general. In plenty of companies connections are just as or more important than being effective at allocating resources.
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    This is what motivates me in my ... admittedly belief. Of course politics will always play a huge deciding part in resource allocation. But if the allocation is based on a small "elite" then it looks a lot like historical societies - and we think we have moved beyond that. If we believe in democracy for our civic society, if we believe in the Totalitarian Bet, why not apply democracy to the companies that are too big to fail? It is also why I suspect founder led companies do very well (if the founder is good enough) - the internicine politics just gets overwhelmed by the founder picking and choosing - but history has taught us that it's vanishingly rare to find such people, to place them in the elite and have them continue to make excellent decisions over decades. There are better solutions
    - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
      Just heard a great quote: What separates bureaucrats and leaders is the latter has a hunger for detail, the former for order
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others. That's why not. Have you ever seen democracy be efficient at anything?
- DarkNova6 3y ago
  Transparency and competition drive efficient allocation, which are things encouraged in a _true_ democracy. All other forms of governance are strictly more inefficient.
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    That's more or less my argument in the EU - it's something federal USA has stopped noticing but it's clear in Europe. You can become leader of Hungary by wrapping yourself in the patriotic history of the mid-European medieval struggles - struggles that carry cultural weight in the countries that bore the brunt of the middle ages. But talking about medieval knightly charges just gets a laugh in Sweden whose cultural resonance is more gunpowder and forest rights. Any pan-European agreements need to be appealing to commonly held incentives - those almost always look like "greater common wealth, growth, consumer protection" The Federal US has a similar setup and I think can be found at root of many of the wedge issues troubling the US
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Democracy is not required for a free market to function well. Running a company as a democracy pretty much requires every employee to be an equal owner of it. That doesn't work well. Sometimes a fearless leader, like Jobs, Gates, or Bezos, who gets things done without endless debate and compromise.
    - DarkNova6 3y ago
      Who defines what "functions well"? And how do you define "free market"? I'm not being pedantic, these questions require important distinctions. Arguably, the US has the "freest market" out of all, but it also has rules and is not entirely "free". You can make the case that you only have a "market" if you have transparency, many buyers and many suppliers. Our economy nowadays becomes less and less of a free market. Big companies buy off competition, reduce the amount of suppliers as well as transparency. They don't want an informed customer and they don't like competition. See where it got us. Democracy is absolutely necessary to maintain a market.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  Look up the "Totalitarian Bet" by Guardian columnist. The basic idea is that in a totalitarian society elites hoard knowledge and access to technology to support their own position, the common example is Saudi Air Force pilots are basically all princes. democracy and openness and metritocracy leads to better people in positions of influence, and leads to organisations that are more mission focused and more flexible. But it's a bet. There is no reason to believe that the military industrial complex of democratic mid-century USA is down to democracy or just luck. But is "our society" defined by liberal democracy? And if so place our bets on liberal democracy
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    There's little indication that democracies are more flexible. The politicians spend all their time arguing with each other, eventually reaching an ineffectual compromise. "more mission focused", I seriously doubt. More like "everyone pulling in a different direction."
lelanthran 3y ago
> I am more and more convinced that democratic decision making is necessary in companies - literally voting by employees - maybe as swiss style referendums or plain old vote for the CEO. If this lead to more successful companies, we'd see more successful democratic companies. As things are, it will take an extraordinary amount of evidence for a claim this extraordinary.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  That's what's Henry VIII said ! /s
- DarkNova6 3y ago
  We have seen so many companies happily go bankrupt, while top managers cash out big time. Few people give a shit if company is successful or not as long as everybody can make bucks until the party ends. Democracy keeps those with power honest and in-check. Especially with technology you can enforce top-down mechanisms unlike in previous human times. Regardless of whether your policy makes sense or not.
- carlmr 3y ago
  >If this lead to more successful companies, we'd see more successful democratic companies. If something hasn't been tried at a wide-scale I wouldn't say you can conclude that. Concluding democratic systems don't work in the 15th century would be somewhat similar, because you're living in one of many successful kingdoms, with not many successful democracies to point at. There were some past democracies, like the Greeks, but naysayers would say, if that system worked so well, we'd see more of it. I think it might be worth a try. It might fail. I personally think it's a question of scale. We know from high-level politics that usually for large nation-states, democracy works better long-term than dictatorships. Dictatorships often work well in the short-term due to faster decision making, but long-term they lack the error-correction and accountability of a democracy. A company that executes too slowly might not be successful. So I can imagine that small companies work better as dictatorships. They need fast decisions, they need a vision. But big corporations? They move slowly anyway. They have a lot of subdivisions. One part doesn't know what another is doing. It could be that a bit more error-correction through democratic participation helps.

WalterBright 3y ago

> grant a tiny elite the power to allocate resources of society simply because they got promoted... They can only allocate the resources of the company, not society. And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources. Democracy has never demonstrated efficient allocation.

n6242 3y ago
> And they get selected based on their track record of effective allocation of those resources. I've seen too many managers fail upwards to truly believe that is true in general. In plenty of companies connections are just as or more important than being effective at allocating resources.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  This is what motivates me in my ... admittedly belief. Of course politics will always play a huge deciding part in resource allocation. But if the allocation is based on a small "elite" then it looks a lot like historical societies - and we think we have moved beyond that. If we believe in democracy for our civic society, if we believe in the Totalitarian Bet, why not apply democracy to the companies that are too big to fail? It is also why I suspect founder led companies do very well (if the founder is good enough) - the internicine politics just gets overwhelmed by the founder picking and choosing - but history has taught us that it's vanishingly rare to find such people, to place them in the elite and have them continue to make excellent decisions over decades. There are better solutions
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    Just heard a great quote: What separates bureaucrats and leaders is the latter has a hunger for detail, the former for order
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others. That's why not. Have you ever seen democracy be efficient at anything?
DarkNova6 3y ago
Transparency and competition drive efficient allocation, which are things encouraged in a _true_ democracy. All other forms of governance are strictly more inefficient.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  That's more or less my argument in the EU - it's something federal USA has stopped noticing but it's clear in Europe. You can become leader of Hungary by wrapping yourself in the patriotic history of the mid-European medieval struggles - struggles that carry cultural weight in the countries that bore the brunt of the middle ages. But talking about medieval knightly charges just gets a laugh in Sweden whose cultural resonance is more gunpowder and forest rights. Any pan-European agreements need to be appealing to commonly held incentives - those almost always look like "greater common wealth, growth, consumer protection" The Federal US has a similar setup and I think can be found at root of many of the wedge issues troubling the US
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Democracy is not required for a free market to function well. Running a company as a democracy pretty much requires every employee to be an equal owner of it. That doesn't work well. Sometimes a fearless leader, like Jobs, Gates, or Bezos, who gets things done without endless debate and compromise.
  - DarkNova6 3y ago
    Who defines what "functions well"? And how do you define "free market"? I'm not being pedantic, these questions require important distinctions. Arguably, the US has the "freest market" out of all, but it also has rules and is not entirely "free". You can make the case that you only have a "market" if you have transparency, many buyers and many suppliers. Our economy nowadays becomes less and less of a free market. Big companies buy off competition, reduce the amount of suppliers as well as transparency. They don't want an informed customer and they don't like competition. See where it got us. Democracy is absolutely necessary to maintain a market.
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
Look up the "Totalitarian Bet" by Guardian columnist. The basic idea is that in a totalitarian society elites hoard knowledge and access to technology to support their own position, the common example is Saudi Air Force pilots are basically all princes. democracy and openness and metritocracy leads to better people in positions of influence, and leads to organisations that are more mission focused and more flexible. But it's a bet. There is no reason to believe that the military industrial complex of democratic mid-century USA is down to democracy or just luck. But is "our society" defined by liberal democracy? And if so place our bets on liberal democracy
- WalterBright 3y ago
  There's little indication that democracies are more flexible. The politicians spend all their time arguing with each other, eventually reaching an ineffectual compromise. "more mission focused", I seriously doubt. More like "everyone pulling in a different direction."

lelanthran 3y ago

> I am more and more convinced that democratic decision making is necessary in companies - literally voting by employees - maybe as swiss style referendums or plain old vote for the CEO. If this lead to more successful companies, we'd see more successful democratic companies. As things are, it will take an extraordinary amount of evidence for a claim this extraordinary.

lifeisstillgood 3y ago
That's what's Henry VIII said ! /s
DarkNova6 3y ago
We have seen so many companies happily go bankrupt, while top managers cash out big time. Few people give a shit if company is successful or not as long as everybody can make bucks until the party ends. Democracy keeps those with power honest and in-check. Especially with technology you can enforce top-down mechanisms unlike in previous human times. Regardless of whether your policy makes sense or not.
carlmr 3y ago
>If this lead to more successful companies, we'd see more successful democratic companies. If something hasn't been tried at a wide-scale I wouldn't say you can conclude that. Concluding democratic systems don't work in the 15th century would be somewhat similar, because you're living in one of many successful kingdoms, with not many successful democracies to point at. There were some past democracies, like the Greeks, but naysayers would say, if that system worked so well, we'd see more of it. I think it might be worth a try. It might fail. I personally think it's a question of scale. We know from high-level politics that usually for large nation-states, democracy works better long-term than dictatorships. Dictatorships often work well in the short-term due to faster decision making, but long-term they lack the error-correction and accountability of a democracy. A company that executes too slowly might not be successful. So I can imagine that small companies work better as dictatorships. They need fast decisions, they need a vision. But big corporations? They move slowly anyway. They have a lot of subdivisions. One part doesn't know what another is doing. It could be that a bit more error-correction through democratic participation helps.