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That’s a weird thing to say about “coup attempts.” Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. I

That’s a weird thing to say about “coup attempts.” Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight. In the world of AI I imagine that Automattic’s core business model is in turmoil.

sva_ 1mo ago
> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? I think we've seen over an over again which one works and which one doesn't.
- jmull 1mo ago
  Is that a settled question? China isn't exactly struggling right now.
  - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
    > China isn't exactly struggling right now. Have you asked people in China about this?
    - gverrilla 1mo ago
      Support for the party is very strong.
      - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
        Boy, you're not right about that. Where'd you get the idea?
  - sva_ 1mo ago
    If you look on Alibaba or AliExpress and see different companies competing and undercutting each others prices, I don't really see it as a planned economy.
    - dghlsakjg 1mo ago
      I think a better term might be a “steered economy”. You see fierce competition in some very specific and preordained market areas. Lithium batteries, solar panels, electric cars, industrial and autonomous robots, AI. Now go look at the 5 year plan from Beijing. Green technology, robotics, mature node chips, and AI are the focuses. In other words, it isn’t a mistake that China dominates in the industries that it does.
    - throwup238 1mo ago
      The CCP publishes their primary central planning mechanism for all to see. They just adopted the new 15th Five Year Plan in March [1]. There’s a whole bureaucracy just to coordinate the implementation at the sector, provincial, and corporate level driven by the State Council, NDRC, and NPC. Governments at all levels are involved with coming up with their own implementation plans to execute on the Five Year Plan. You can trace decades of Chinese industrial development to those plans but the Chinese system is very different from the Soviet central planning mechanism, which is why I think you’re misinterpreting Alibaba’s price competition. The CCP explicitly allows non-state owned enterprises like Alibaba and the manufacturers on it to compete; that’s their whole point within the system, and they operate within the regulatory environment setup to promote the five year plan instead of quotas like the Soviet system. The resolution of the planning is different, but it’s very much there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan
      - mitxela 1mo ago
        If that's central planning then the USA is also centrally planned.
        throwup238 1mo ago
        Please point to the US central planning mechanism.
        mitxela 1mo ago
  - edgyquant 1mo ago
    China has succeeded so much by moving away from a planned economy when they were fully planned they were one of the poorest nations in the world. Most successful nations are mixed economies and yes, this is a settled question.
    - miyoji 1mo ago
      Past performance is no indication of future success. It doesn't matter what's been successful in the past, these things can change. Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was), then that changed and so did the narrative. None of this is settled, because it's a living system that changes over time. What may have been perfectly true in 1850 might not be remotely accurate in 2050.
      - Kuxe 1mo ago
        > Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was) According to whom?
        nixon_why69 1mo ago
        Soviet Russia and early communist China both went from mostly-illiterate peasant economies to mostly-literate, partially industrialized, with home-grown heavy industry and weapons technology in the span of like 15-20 years. Then the soviet system stagnated hard under Brezhnev while the Chinese pivoted under Deng. But those first gains definitely happened under full communism and no capitalist economy has modernized faster.
      - wavemode 1mo ago
        > Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was), then that changed The word you're looking for is "collapse". It's when something is stable at one point in time, but then later breaks down. That's what "changed". It wasn't random like weather or something. The economic systems collapsed. > None of this is settled The fact that it has happened numerous times in different parts of the world makes it pretty settled in my mind.
- shigawire 1mo ago
  Democracy in business would be worker co-ops or employee ownership schemes. It would still be fully market-based, not planned.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- miyoji 1mo ago
  > Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? Not at all. Market vs planned economy is about how the economy is set up. Are there businesses that offer products that you can choose between? That's a market economy. You can have that with democratic governance of corporations. The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy. You don't need ownership by idiot dictators with money to have a market.
  - vasco 1mo ago
    > The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy How? Will you also advocate to killing a bunch of people to get from now to the state where workers own the means of production like Trotsky and friends?
freedomben 1mo ago
> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. Ianal but I don't think the laws care about governing structure of corps. You can start a new corp and run it democratically all you want. There are co-ops and other interesting structures out there
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- marcus_holmes 1mo ago
  Afaik corps can only have board voting on the basis of share ownership ("one share one vote"), but you can mess around with how many votes each share class gets. Co-ops can have more democratic voting arrangements, and usually have "one shareholder one vote" principles, though other options are available, and you can mess around with how many votes each shareholder gets.
  - jeltz 1mo ago
    This is very dependent on jurisdiction and type of company.
Arnt 1mo ago
Companies have a largely democratic component at the top, called the board. Voters (those who own the company) have representatives on the board. Some boards also have representatives from the employees, that varies.
- kmeisthax 1mo ago
  It's not one person, one vote, so it's not democracy. It's very explicitly plutocracy (rule by money) as the operating principle of voting power is one share, one vote. Except there's also a bunch of companies with special dual class share structures, where the founder gets way more voting power than everyone else and you can't even buy your way in. A lot of tech companies do this. This is, functionally speaking, an autocracy. If you want an actual corporate democracy you would need to assign voting rights to everyone working at the company, aka build a co-op. Co-ops are a great corporate structure in a lot of cases but you can't really raise capital that way because VCs all want on your cap table, so all the big companies wind up being plutocracies.
  - Arnt 1mo ago
    It's one share, one vote. And you have a choice: You can ask the company to pay you (ie. apply for a job there), or you can pay for a share in the company. Either way, the decisions are made by those who pay. And that can include you — anyone and everyone has the right to start a company and to employ others, anyone and everyone has the right to ask for shares in the company as part of negotiating compensation. I employed a painter a few months ago, and I decided what colour the kitchen now is.
    - Timon3 1mo ago
      > It's one share, one vote. This is just wrong. As kmeisthax mentioned, shares can have different voting weights - if any at all. Many shareholders have no voting power. > I employed a painter a few months ago, and I decided what colour the kitchen now is. Did you actually employ them, or did you buy a specific service?
tirpen 1mo ago
> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight. Congratulations you have reinvented communism from first principles! And you are completely correct in your analysis.
- noir_lord 1mo ago
  Regulation of corporations and the internal/external harms they do isn't communism. That's a hilarious leap.
  - flossly 1mo ago
    Actually you reply to a comment that makes a lot of sense. Look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative And in Russian I believe such a company is called a "Soviet". They idea that the main part of the economy is run by this kind of organizations is one of the best parts of the USSR's attempt at communism.
    - noir_lord 1mo ago
      Except A) he said none of that B) it's not actually relevant to what he did say. There is a vast range of ways you can regulate a corporation and only some of them qualify as communism. Germany has worker councils, it's still not communist. Several European countries have much stricter regulations on how companies behave that moves them from the absolute power fiefdom internal model, guess what, still not communism.
- 976157424477 1mo ago
  [dead]
jasonvorhe 1mo ago
Who do you think pays for the political election campaign theater of all theses "democratic candidates" though? I often have to think of Bane putting his hand on the shoulder of that Ben Mendelsohn character in The Dark Knight Rises while asking if he feels in charge. Reminds me of living in a western democracy.
flossly 1mo ago
It's allowed to do a more democratic business in most countries, it's called a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative There have been some govts that mandated this type of organization for part of their economy; we usually refer to that as communism. (no value judgement here, there are day's when I'm quite a commie myself)
bawolff 1mo ago
We picked democracy because it is very difficult for a citizen to move to a different country/start their own if they are unhappy. Democracy is a fix for that power imbalance. By contrast its relatively easy to quit and start a new company if you feel like it. That is the control for a company.

sva_ 1mo ago

> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? I think we've seen over an over again which one works and which one doesn't.

jmull 1mo ago
Is that a settled question? China isn't exactly struggling right now.
- thaumasiotes 1mo ago
  > China isn't exactly struggling right now. Have you asked people in China about this?
  - gverrilla 1mo ago
    Support for the party is very strong.
    - thaumasiotes 1mo ago
      Boy, you're not right about that. Where'd you get the idea?
- sva_ 1mo ago
  If you look on Alibaba or AliExpress and see different companies competing and undercutting each others prices, I don't really see it as a planned economy.
  - dghlsakjg 1mo ago
    I think a better term might be a “steered economy”. You see fierce competition in some very specific and preordained market areas. Lithium batteries, solar panels, electric cars, industrial and autonomous robots, AI. Now go look at the 5 year plan from Beijing. Green technology, robotics, mature node chips, and AI are the focuses. In other words, it isn’t a mistake that China dominates in the industries that it does.
  - throwup238 1mo ago
    The CCP publishes their primary central planning mechanism for all to see. They just adopted the new 15th Five Year Plan in March [1]. There’s a whole bureaucracy just to coordinate the implementation at the sector, provincial, and corporate level driven by the State Council, NDRC, and NPC. Governments at all levels are involved with coming up with their own implementation plans to execute on the Five Year Plan. You can trace decades of Chinese industrial development to those plans but the Chinese system is very different from the Soviet central planning mechanism, which is why I think you’re misinterpreting Alibaba’s price competition. The CCP explicitly allows non-state owned enterprises like Alibaba and the manufacturers on it to compete; that’s their whole point within the system, and they operate within the regulatory environment setup to promote the five year plan instead of quotas like the Soviet system. The resolution of the planning is different, but it’s very much there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan
    - mitxela 1mo ago
      If that's central planning then the USA is also centrally planned.
      - throwup238 1mo ago
        Please point to the US central planning mechanism.
        mitxela 1mo ago
- edgyquant 1mo ago
  China has succeeded so much by moving away from a planned economy when they were fully planned they were one of the poorest nations in the world. Most successful nations are mixed economies and yes, this is a settled question.
  - miyoji 1mo ago
    Past performance is no indication of future success. It doesn't matter what's been successful in the past, these things can change. Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was), then that changed and so did the narrative. None of this is settled, because it's a living system that changes over time. What may have been perfectly true in 1850 might not be remotely accurate in 2050.
    - Kuxe 1mo ago
      > Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was) According to whom?
      - nixon_why69 1mo ago
        Soviet Russia and early communist China both went from mostly-illiterate peasant economies to mostly-literate, partially industrialized, with home-grown heavy industry and weapons technology in the span of like 15-20 years. Then the soviet system stagnated hard under Brezhnev while the Chinese pivoted under Deng. But those first gains definitely happened under full communism and no capitalist economy has modernized faster.
    - wavemode 1mo ago
      > Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was), then that changed The word you're looking for is "collapse". It's when something is stable at one point in time, but then later breaks down. That's what "changed". It wasn't random like weather or something. The economic systems collapsed. > None of this is settled The fact that it has happened numerous times in different parts of the world makes it pretty settled in my mind.
shigawire 1mo ago
Democracy in business would be worker co-ops or employee ownership schemes. It would still be fully market-based, not planned.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
miyoji 1mo ago
> Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? Not at all. Market vs planned economy is about how the economy is set up. Are there businesses that offer products that you can choose between? That's a market economy. You can have that with democratic governance of corporations. The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy. You don't need ownership by idiot dictators with money to have a market.
- vasco 1mo ago
  > The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy How? Will you also advocate to killing a bunch of people to get from now to the state where workers own the means of production like Trotsky and friends?

freedomben 1mo ago

> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. Ianal but I don't think the laws care about governing structure of corps. You can start a new corp and run it democratically all you want. There are co-ops and other interesting structures out there

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
marcus_holmes 1mo ago
Afaik corps can only have board voting on the basis of share ownership ("one share one vote"), but you can mess around with how many votes each share class gets. Co-ops can have more democratic voting arrangements, and usually have "one shareholder one vote" principles, though other options are available, and you can mess around with how many votes each shareholder gets.
- jeltz 1mo ago
  This is very dependent on jurisdiction and type of company.

Arnt 1mo ago

Companies have a largely democratic component at the top, called the board. Voters (those who own the company) have representatives on the board. Some boards also have representatives from the employees, that varies.

kmeisthax 1mo ago
It's not one person, one vote, so it's not democracy. It's very explicitly plutocracy (rule by money) as the operating principle of voting power is one share, one vote. Except there's also a bunch of companies with special dual class share structures, where the founder gets way more voting power than everyone else and you can't even buy your way in. A lot of tech companies do this. This is, functionally speaking, an autocracy. If you want an actual corporate democracy you would need to assign voting rights to everyone working at the company, aka build a co-op. Co-ops are a great corporate structure in a lot of cases but you can't really raise capital that way because VCs all want on your cap table, so all the big companies wind up being plutocracies.
- Arnt 1mo ago
  It's one share, one vote. And you have a choice: You can ask the company to pay you (ie. apply for a job there), or you can pay for a share in the company. Either way, the decisions are made by those who pay. And that can include you — anyone and everyone has the right to start a company and to employ others, anyone and everyone has the right to ask for shares in the company as part of negotiating compensation. I employed a painter a few months ago, and I decided what colour the kitchen now is.
  - Timon3 1mo ago
    > It's one share, one vote. This is just wrong. As kmeisthax mentioned, shares can have different voting weights - if any at all. Many shareholders have no voting power. > I employed a painter a few months ago, and I decided what colour the kitchen now is. Did you actually employ them, or did you buy a specific service?

tirpen 1mo ago

> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight. Congratulations you have reinvented communism from first principles! And you are completely correct in your analysis.

noir_lord 1mo ago
Regulation of corporations and the internal/external harms they do isn't communism. That's a hilarious leap.
- flossly 1mo ago
  Actually you reply to a comment that makes a lot of sense. Look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative And in Russian I believe such a company is called a "Soviet". They idea that the main part of the economy is run by this kind of organizations is one of the best parts of the USSR's attempt at communism.
  - noir_lord 1mo ago
    Except A) he said none of that B) it's not actually relevant to what he did say. There is a vast range of ways you can regulate a corporation and only some of them qualify as communism. Germany has worker councils, it's still not communist. Several European countries have much stricter regulations on how companies behave that moves them from the absolute power fiefdom internal model, guess what, still not communism.
976157424477 1mo ago
[dead]

jasonvorhe 1mo ago

Who do you think pays for the political election campaign theater of all theses "democratic candidates" though? I often have to think of Bane putting his hand on the shoulder of that Ben Mendelsohn character in The Dark Knight Rises while asking if he feels in charge. Reminds me of living in a western democracy.

flossly 1mo ago

It's allowed to do a more democratic business in most countries, it's called a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative There have been some govts that mandated this type of organization for part of their economy; we usually refer to that as communism. (no value judgement here, there are day's when I'm quite a commie myself)

bawolff 1mo ago

We picked democracy because it is very difficult for a citizen to move to a different country/start their own if they are unhappy. Democracy is a fix for that power imbalance. By contrast its relatively easy to quit and start a new company if you feel like it. That is the control for a company.