So, the Communists won the Cold War, didn't they?

[Earthjade]

Don't you need a powerful govt to enforce these kinds of ideas? You talk about diffusing power, except you think it is OK for govt to have power?
If you take away much of the govt's power and diffuse it amongst the populace, you are saying that people have the right to run their lives and their businesses as they see fit.
Or am I reading that wrong?

We need to move away from a powerful government, not towards one.
So in that sense I am against big government.
Would you need big government to enforce these ideas?
You would need government to at least prevent the worst excesses. Unlike you, I don't believe in slavery under any circumstances, for example.
If this kind of system was the norm, it wouldn't require big brother regulation.
The system would be - you want to join this corporation, you sign this partnership agreement.

But having said that, there would be a place for employment arrangements as they are now.
For example, small businesses are probably impractical to have employee ownership.
To have 3 people putting up their hands to vote in the back room of a cafe is a little silly.
So I do think after some thought, that "risk-free" wage labour would actually good for this kind of system.

Why?
Because there is that democratic alternative out there.
If a boss who hires you on a wage doesn't treat you well or pay you enough, you would be free to leave for another job and this includes the world of the democratic corporations.
This would be market forces at work.
But you do raise a good point about the benefits of risk-free employment. Less risk, less reward.
Democracy is stronger when it is diverse.

Are you telling me that the people I employ will be mandated by law to have a say in how my company is run? Are you telling me that if I begin to make a profit in year five (after I have paid back my start up costs and recouped a decade of my own spent capital) that my workers will have a right to vote to increase their remuneration packages as their "fair" share of the profits? Are you telling me that they will have the right to decide who their supervisors are and "vote" out the people I have put in those positions? Are you telling me that they have an equal right to decide on what my year 5 salary will be?

This is a good question.
They way I imagine it, any viable democratic society needs proper reward for innovation. otherwise, you stifle innovation.
So the system would work like this in your scenario:

You would own the firm and be in charge because you created the company.
An important point is that as the owner, you are also the risk taker as an entrepreneur.
You could not delegate your responsibilities to a manager without making them a joint partner. This is because such a delegation would be separating risk-taking from ownership.
You would have to attract your own labour who would work under you for a wage.
If you didn't treat them well or if the wage was too low, they could leave and seek better employment in a democratic corporation.
Your technology is made immediately available to society and you would need to reveal how you did what you did.
This is because in a proper free market, the flow of information is free.
But, you would be the recognised originator of the technology and be entitled to royalties for a certain period by anyone else that uses the tech (maybe 20-30 years like the current patent system).

When it came time to sell your company, you would not be able to sell it to another entrepreneur because they did not earn the right to your efforts.
But the employees under you do earn that right because they worked with you.
So when it comes time to sell, your company becomes democratised and the employees would buy out your stake in the management of the company.
If they couldn't afford to do so or didn't want to buy you out, then the company would be sold to utility bank for its asset value.
Utility bank would then democratise the corporation by selling it back to the employees on a gradual basis until it is back into private hands.
If you did not want to sell your company, you could keep it until you died. After that, it would become democratised and the asset value of the company would be given to whomever you specified in your will.

The natural regulatory mechanism is that if you as an entrepreneur treat your employees too poorly, then you will not be able to attract the best talent because they will leave you in favour of another corporation were they could get a better deal.

 

[Lovey80]

Omg that is possibly the worst system I have ever heard of and would stifle private innovation faster than communism ever did.

I am not free to sell my company to another entrepreneur because they haven't earnt the right to my efforts?

What you are saying is that I as the entrepreneur don't have the rights to the full fruits of my efforts. If I deem that a certain monetary value is fair for my efforts and another entrepreneur does so also that a fair market price for those efforts may not be ever found because my workers can afford to meet that market price and I am forced to sell for asset value. Where is my reward and price for my innovation/ idea value? That goes into the trash can because the workers couldn't afford to do so.

My technology is made freely available to the market? That would be fine if the royalties could some how be calculated to equal to the profits I would have made had I produced the product myself. That can never be done so the entrepreneur would have another disincentive to working hard, innovating and sacrificing for the benefit of society. Society already benefits the most because I have made a cheaper form of renewable energy to them. Leaving countless dollars not wasted on current solar or coal to be put into the next entrepreneur's innovation-maybe a superior battery technology.

When it boils down to it your " Economic Democracy " in reality is akin to putting the Union in charge of the company. Ask GM how that would work out.

It would be a disaster and I for one would take up arms to fight it. I want economic freedom not economic democracy.

 

[hawkeye]

I have to agree at least broadly with Lovey on this one.

As for your slavery thing. If you think it about it slavery is completely uneconomical. You have to pay for their food, heqalth care costs etc, and for that you get someone who is generally specialized at only one thing, ie cleaning or whatever. Why not just pay for a cleaner? Can the slave that cleans repair your car or fix your roof. The idea is silly. That's why I can't think of any reason why people would want to own slaves. I can think of people who would want to give up their freedom to be looked after though. And if that's what they want and they can find someone who'll do it, good for them. Better that, than we all have to have the govt taking away our liberties just so a certain amount of people can feel safe.

Democracy hasn't worked in the political sphere, I don't know why we would want in the economic sphere.

I'll also point out to you that it isn't dictators that create fiat currency, derivatives, mountains of debt, algorithmic trading and manipulated commodity markets, it's parliamentary democracies who do so.

 

[hawkeye]

I want economic freedom not economic democracy.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Earthjade]

If I deem that a certain monetary value is fair for my efforts and another entrepreneur does so also that a fair market price for those efforts may not be ever found because my workers can afford to meet that market price and I am forced to sell for asset value.

You get fair market price for the assets of your company, which includes the goodwill.
You sell to the workers or you sell to utility bank.
The point is the company gets democratised in the end and you were rewarded for your efforts but no more.

Where is my reward and price for my innovation/ idea value? That goes into the trash can because the workers couldn't afford to do so.

In that case, as I explained, the business would be sold to utility bank, whose mandate would be to transition the company to democracy and thus return it to private ownership.
you would always have a buyer at the time to sell.

My technology is made freely available to the market? That would be fine if the royalties could some how be calculated to equal to the profits I would have made had I produced the product myself. That can never be done so the entrepreneur would have another disincentive to working hard, innovating and sacrificing for the benefit of society.

You don't see the flip side - you would freely be able to take advantage of the technological innovation of others by paying a royalty and not having to develop the technology yourself.
As a whole, society will benefit from a free exchange of information where the originators are rewarded for their efforts with royalties.

Society already benefits the most because I have made a cheaper form of renewable energy to them.

But by monopolising the technology, you would slow down the rate that the innovation could be developed. Also, if your company has limited capacity, the rate at which the technology can get into the hands of consumers is delayed.

When it boils down to it your " Economic Democracy " in reality is akin to putting the Union in charge of the company. Ask GM how that would work out.

But you see, in Economic democracy, there would be no "too big to fails".
You forget that the "union" as you call it, reaps the rewards but are also liable for the company's debts in a way that workers are not in today's economy.
If the employees abuse the company or run it inefficiently, not only will they be out of a job when the company fails, but they will also have to pay off the debts of the company as well.
When you add personal risk into the equation, you put in place a natural mechanism against abuse of the corporation.
If that is too risky for you, you can work in hawkeye's "low risk, low reward" wage labour market.

It would be a disaster and I for one would take up arms to fight it. I want economic freedom not economic democracy.

Calm down, clam down.
Something like my proposed model already exists in real life and it has been a great success.
It went from nothing to Spain's 7th biggest company in 50 years. It's called the Mondragon Corporation.

 

[Lovey80]

I didn't mean to thank but quote you EJ. I can't be bother pointing out the fruitlessness of this anymore so will let this go. If by any chance I am alive to see something so absurd come to fruition and be enforced upon me, expect some serious "push back".

 

[Earthjade]

I have to agree at least broadly with Lovey on this one.

As for your slavery thing. If you think it about it slavery is completely uneconomical. You have to pay for their food, heqalth care costs etc, and for that you get someone who is generally specialized at only one thing, ie cleaning or whatever. Why not just pay for a cleaner? Can the slave that cleans repair your car or fix your roof. The idea is silly. That's why I can't think of any reason why people would want to own slaves. I can think of people who would want to give up their freedom to be looked after though. And if that's what they want and they can find someone who'll do it, good for them. Better that, than we all have to have the govt taking away our liberties just so a certain amount of people can feel safe.

But the point is that you agree that slavery is permissible in some circumstances.

Democracy hasn't worked in the political sphere, I don't know why we would want in the economic sphere.

We do still have a lot of work to do here.
I also believe in the democratic reform of our government to move it past a Coke and Pepsi representative "democracy", but that would be a whole other topic.

I'll also point out to you that it isn't dictators that create fiat currency, derivatives, mountains of debt, algorithmic trading and manipulated commodity markets, it's parliamentary democracies who do so.

Really?
So it's not the privately owned Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Metlife, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, State Street, BB&T, Capital One, Bank of New York Mellon or US Bancorp that are responsible? yhave you seen the top campaign contributors to Mitt Romney?

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00000286

So just who controls who?

 

[Earthjade]

I didn't mean to thank but quote you EJ. I can't be bother pointing out the fruitlessness of this anymore so will let this go. If by any chance I am alive to see something so absurd come to fruition and be enforced upon me, expect some serious "push back".

Well you know, to be honest, if something like this ever came to be the norm, the world would be a very different place than the one you or I know today.
I can't predict the future, but the coming crisis would be so great and so deep that the current capitalist system would have to be totally discredited.

But if mega-crisis ever did happen, I don't think we would move towards this kind of economic democracy.
We would move to something much much worse - corporate fascism and an electronic police state.
When fiat collapses, who is going to have the wealth?
I hear that JP Morgan is buying up commodities and farmland in the US.
Those that have the wealth now will keep it and we will be screwed down even harder.
This is much more likely than my pie-in-the-sky dream.

 

[Big A.D.]

Ah hah...but they are your profits - you earned them.
Conversely, if we failed in our enterprise, I'd expect you to pay up your share to our creditors - the utility banks.
We would all be joint partners in the enterprise.

Meh, cooperatives don't work in Australia. This has been proven over and again - too many financial restrictions to be able to stay competitive.

Sure they do. Well run ones that is. Fisheries have had co-ops working for years and have remained successful.

And the Dairy Farmers co-op.

And the 100-odd member owned credit unions that have lower fees and better rates than the Big Four banks.

 

[hawkeye]

I have to agree at least broadly with Lovey on this one.

As for your slavery thing. If you think it about it slavery is completely uneconomical. You have to pay for their food, heqalth care costs etc, and for that you get someone who is generally specialized at only one thing, ie cleaning or whatever. Why not just pay for a cleaner? Can the slave that cleans repair your car or fix your roof. The idea is silly. That's why I can't think of any reason why people would want to own slaves. I can think of people who would want to give up their freedom to be looked after though. And if that's what they want and they can find someone who'll do it, good for them. Better that, than we all have to have the govt taking away our liberties just so a certain amount of people can feel safe.

But the point is that you agree that slavery is permissible in some circumstances.

OK, look I don't want to drag out this slavery thing because I feel it's pointless, but slavery historically has been all about force. What I am talking about is voluntary transactions.

Some people refer to work as wage slavery.

Some people like to tie each up in dungeons and torture each other. And all kinds of other things. Then afterwards they sip a cup of tea together or whatever. It's not for me to tell other people what they can and can't do and if someone wants to voluntarily indenture themselves to someone else, it is their choice. Maybe you would refer to that as slavery, but I call it personal choice. Slavery to me is something that is against someone's will.

Just as assault is wrong, but if someone wants someone else to whip them and torture them then that is OK.

Voluntary is the key word. Is that clear enough?

 

[Earthjade]

Look, I understand - the transaction is voluntary.
But whether or not it is voluntary, the fact is that that person is now a slave without their liberty or rights.
They freely chose to give this away.
So two conclusions about your position:

1) You do agree that slavery is permissible if agreed to voluntarily.
2) You believe that the right to liberty is not inherent in human beings as an inalienable natural right, but is something that can be sold.

I know that sounds really ugly in the way I have worded it, but these are the inescapable conclusions you must arrive at if you reason through your argument.

 

[hawkeye]

This is always the problem with you govt types. You defend a morally ambiguous (to say the least) institution like the govt and all of a sudden you can't figure out right from wrong. Because defending govt means you have to defend a massive amount of immoral behaviour, so much so that it seems, to me anyway, that you become used to it and can't figure out simple morals. Or you get hung up on labels thinking they are everything, when it is the definitions that count.

I sell my liberty for 8 hours every day for money. It's only a question of different time limits and different rewards. There's no such thing as a free lunch. On the other hand holding people against their will is completely wrong (what the dictionary defines as slavery).

Try thinking beyond labels. You can have the thread, I'm done.

 

[Earthjade]

This is always the problem with you govt types. You defend a morally ambiguous (to say the least) institution like the govt and all of a sudden you can't figure out right from wrong.

This is an ad hominem attack.
You're attacking me as a person rather than the merits of the argument.
I think this is poor form.

Because defending govt means you have to defend a massive amount of immoral behaviour, so much so that it seems, to me anyway, that you become used to it and can't figure out simple morals. Or you get hung up on labels thinking they are everything, when it is the definitions that count.

Seeing the merits in some government intervention does not mean that someone supports a monolithic government run totalitarian state.
What I have tried to show you by taking your argument about free contracts to an absurd limit is that all ideologies and ethical systems, without exception, will fail when presented with extreme situations (like the slavery example).
But this doesn't make them worthless. It simply means that we cannot take them with absolute purity, because then we get absurdities like the one we've just seen.

If you support freedom of contract, you support some form of government by default.
This is because there needs to be a body to enforce private property rights and to ensure the terms of the contract is not broken.
So the question is not if you support government, but to what degree you support government and the answer in your case would be very minimal government.
But that is still some kind of government intervention.

I understand your whole free market/honest money position because most people on this board are like that.
But I hope you can also understand that if you unwaveringly stick to an ideological line with no pragmatic compromise whatsoever, then that is when untenable positions can arise.
I believe it would be sensible to say in your case that freedom of contract is only limited by ethical considerations agreed upon by society, which would include a ban on all contracts that endorsed illegal activity - murder, slavery, drug trafficking, theft etc etc

Try thinking beyond labels.

That is exactly what I am trying to do.
I am trying to move beyond ideology and labels.

 

[hiho]

no one won the cold war

 

[Goldmember]

Humans and ideologies.

Wherever you have humans,youll always have problems.Theres no such thing as a perfect world,or ideology

My late Dads (simple country boy) 1 liner...."wherever you go, youll always find an a***hole".Thats why human ideologies never work...theres always some corrupt person (or group) ruining it for everyone else...