3 ms·
Some ideas were in fact already tried, but whomever does not history might suffer reliving it. For example check: https://www.familistere.com/uploads/media/5a9c
by vladms 2y ago
Some ideas were in fact already tried, but whomever does not history might suffer reliving it. For example check: https://www.familistere.com/uploads/media/5a9c4bd061fce/familistere-press-kit-2017.pdf?token=/uploads/media/5a9c4bd061fce/familistere-press-kit-2017.pdf https://www.familistere.com/uploads/media/5a9c4bd061fce/fami...
To quote: "the association’s economic and social model fell victim
to its users and competitors. The hierarchy of association members,
originally intended to reflect ability, led to opposition between
Associates (whose status had finished by seeming hereditary) and
other, less privileged active members. The spirit of the Familistère
co-operative colony faded with each new generation."
It is fascinating that these things were already tried more than 100 years ago. It is also interesting that they did not succeed for simple reasons (people trying to take advantage of other people). I think any proposed solution must be more structural - involve more than ownership but a set of values...
- hkt 2y agoSome other examples: * Yugoslavian worker self management (arguably successful: the place had some other problems that hampered them, shall we say) * Mondragon (the world's largest worker cooperative) * John Lewis Partnership/Waitrose (an employee trust with some workplace democracy) * Rehn–Meidner model (which is more about mass ownership across the wider economy and was tried in Sweden if memory serves) There are a _lot_ of variations of this kind of thing and only some have been tried. Most haven't seen much action at all, just a few sui generis examples - most of the more specific examples above, really.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoyeah, It is really fascinating to learn about the historic and academic study of these challenges. Most of them have been explored, mapped, and debated by economists in a very robust manner for 100+ years. One interesting perspective that I gained from a recent Econtalk podcast[1] is that neither profit driven corporations or democratically governed worker collaboratives are perfectly efficient. It is rather a question of when and how the two perform or fail in contrast. It is easy to build criticisms of each when comparing it to an idealized alternative, where all of the challenges have been hand waved away, but that is a meaningless comparison. https://www.econtalk.org/does-market-failure-justify-government-intervention-with-michael-munger/ https://www.econtalk.org/does-market-failure-justify-governm...