Questions for the surprisingly far right CFC population

[Sommerswerd]

I dunno... that starving bear thing sounds kinda fun... very sporty...

 

[Farm Boy]

Anyone got a shovel, a log, some grease, and a lot of alcohol?

Well, and I suppose a bear. Details.

 

[Sommerswerd]

You forgot "a hill". Well either that or a smooth flat surface like a frozen lake or a parking lot.

 

[Lexicus]

Feel free to demonstrate otherwise. I think they're viable for industries where the number of employees needed is fairly stable and where you have a steady reliable customer base (such as a grocery store) but in industries where there are wide swings in demand and unstable needs for employees (such as tech sector) it seems to me that employee ownership would likely prevent businesses from being able to make the sort of tough decisions needed to remain viable in the 21st century economy.

The question is not whether employee-owned businesses are able to make these decisions, the question is whether they are better able to do so than conventionally-run firms, all other things equal. I think we would agree that criticizing electoral democracy on the basis of, say, Trump winning the recent election wouldn't make the point that electoral democracy is bad, because you have to show that it's worse than the other options, not just that it occasionally spits out bad outcomes.
https://www.nceo.org/articles/research-employee-ownership-corporate-performance

In the largest and most significant study to date of the performance of ESOPs in closely held companies, in 2000 Douglas Kruse and Joseph Blasi of Rutgers University found that ESOPs increase sales, employment, and sales/employee by about 2.3% to 2.4% per year over what would have been expected absent an ESOP. ESOP companies are also somewhat more likely to still be in business several years later.

https://hbr.org/1987/09/how-well-is-employee-ownership-working
(this one is quite dated but I don't see any reason to dismiss its relevance because of that).

Still, the ultimate test of employee ownership is how well ESOPs affect corporate performance. If the only way to keep a company competitive is to distance employees from the managerial prerogatives of ownership, so be it. When a ship sinks, it is no consolation to the surviving hands that they own a piece of the wreck.

We have recently completed a major study of ESOP companies that should put an end to talk about wrecks. Not only have workers gained financially, but we can prove that ESOP companies have grown much faster than they would have without their ownership plans. We have found, moreover, that ESOP companies grow fastest when ownership is combined with a program for worker participation.

http://daviderdal.net/beyond-the-corporation-humanity-working/
^This book contains a number of case studies that I think completely disprove your argument about making tough choices, including one employee-owned ceramics company where the employees voted to move operations to China.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blog...31/why-we-need-more-employee-owned-businesses

https://www.forbes.com/sites/darren...panies-like-new-belgium-brewing/#62d6be7872d1

Moreover I don't think those modifications need to be revolutionary or destructive to the current order of things, even though they could have profound impacts on many people's lives.

Well, I see it as building up new layers on top of what's already there - despite our best tries that's all we can really do. There is no abruptly breaking with the past, just as there is no returning to it.

 

[timtofly]

The question is not whether employee-owned businesses are able to make these decisions, the question is whether they are better able to do so than conventionally-run firms, all other things equal. I think we would agree that criticizing electoral democracy on the basis of, say, Trump winning the recent election wouldn't make the point that electoral democracy is bad, because you have to show that it's worse than feudal monarchy, not just that it occasionally spits out bad outcomes. And feudal monarchy is essentially how most businesses are run today.



Well, I see it as building up new layers on top of what's already there - despite our best tries that's all we can really do. There is no abruptly breaking with the past, just as there is no returning to it.

There may still be the nuclear reset button option.

 

[aelf]

Well, is he/she right? Is it enough, are they satiated and healthy? My gut reaction is that this is probably backasswards. Rather instead, the order should be that work done to survive happens to be a form of exercise. Very much not the same statement in the realm of this analogy. I'd rather people pick a tough row to hoe, or pick up litter on a couple extra highway ditches as an extracurricular than release starving bears even if both get the blood pumping.

Extracurricular implies manual labour that is not done to survive, unlike for most of human history. It falls under work that is done in people's free time, so we're still within the realm of free time vs. no free time, for which you opined initially that it's better for primates to have less free time.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yup. I had to add extracurricular in there to distinguish it from "do it or die." That particular word was tough to get right, and I'm not sure its adequate. Still haven't come up with a better one, though. I agree that the primate thing isn't totally neat and tidy. I am not going to agree with a flat and literal use of the word "better" here, like I will with Diabetes/malnutrition(contingent upon medical care if you want another rabbit hole). In fact, it is likely better that baboons are stressing each other to death instead of being eaten by predators more frequently, ie, starving bears. I guess we should say the situation is different instead, and with its own set of resultant problems. Which is why in #101 I would have been forced to admit that using them as a comparison will "suffer from the problem that they're at best merely illustrative of humanity rather than as examples thereof."

 

[timtofly]

Humans are the only animals who seemingly understand "survival of the fittest", but refuse to act on it, by removing the weak, and letting the fit survive. If evolution produced empathy, it seemingly committed suicide, with that one outcome.

 

[onejayhawk]

Humans are the only animals who seemingly understand "survival of the fittest", but refuse to act on it, by removing the weak, and letting the fit survive. If evolution produced empathy, it seemingly committed suicide, with that one outcome.

True. Almost all animals have some sort of dominance testing, often in the form of martial challenge. Even herd animals, which protect the young of others, will have trials for mating rights.

On the general subject of Capitalism, Adam Smith did not advocate it or consider it a good system. It was more the least of evils.

BTW Did you ever find a right winger to post opinions on the OP?

J

 

[Sommerswerd]

Humans are the only animals who seemingly understand "survival of the fittest", but refuse to act on it, by removing the weak, and letting the fit survive. If evolution produced empathy, it seemingly committed suicide, with that one outcome.

The whole concept of monetary compensation seems to directly contradict this statement.

 

[onejayhawk]

The whole concept of monetary compensation seems to directly contradict this statement.

He has a point. Fairness and equality are not found in nature. That man uses them is a good thing, but it is possible to overdo a good thing.

J

 

[Senethro]

Humans are the only animals who seemingly understand "survival of the fittest", but refuse to act on it, by removing the weak, and letting the fit survive. If evolution produced empathy, it seemingly committed suicide, with that one outcome.

Uhhhh, no. If empathy causes fitness, then empathy will be selected for. Fitness is whatever works.

 

[Traitorfish]

True. Almost all animals have some sort of dominance testing, often in the form of martial challenge. Even herd animals, which protect the young of others, will have trials for mating rights.

On the general subject of Capitalism, Adam Smith did not advocate it or consider it a good system. It was more the least of evils.

BTW Did you ever find a right winger to post opinions on the OP?

J

Smith didn't consider capitalism a "system" at all. He described what he understood as the natural laws of commerce. The idea that capitalism is a "system", one way or organising society among several, originates with its critics, above all with Marx.

 

[Lexicus]

The idea that capitalism is a "system", one way or organising society among several, originates with its critics, above all with Marx.

What do you mean exactly by 'above all' here?

 

[Traitorfish]

What do you mean exactly by 'above all' here?

Marx was the first to flesh out a theory of capitalism as an historically-distinct form of social organisation. Previous theorists, while appreciating that they were witnessing something new, continued to think of capitalism as a new way of arranging ancient and basically timeless elements. Anyone who frames capitalism as a coherent "system" and not just a convenient way of saying "markets, but these ones go to eleven" is in some measure of debt to Big Karl.

 

[Lexicus]

Marx was the first to flesh out a theory of capitalism as an historically-distinct form of social organisation. Previous theorists, while appreciating that they were witnessing something new, continued to think of capitalism as a new way of arranging ancient and basically a-historical elements.

But a historically-distinct form of social organization is precisely a "new way of arranging ancient and basically a-historical elements." Capitalism's constituent elements are very ancient: we have had money, markets, profit, and so on for millennia. As I learned it most of the critics of capitalism who predated Marx focused on capitalism as a political system, ie, the disproportionately great power of capitalists within a market economy, whereas Marx was one (but not the first one!) who said "nope, we've gotta tear this whole thing down and here's why".

 

[Sommerswerd]

He has a point. Fairness and equality are not found in nature.

A quick Google search seems to demonstrate this claim to be false... so I wonder whether you are basing your agreement on gut-instinct, partisan leanings/biases, or some concrete knowledge/study of the underlying science?

 

[Traitorfish]

But a historically-distinct form of social organization is precisely a "new way of arranging ancient and basically a-historical elements." Capitalism's constituent elements are very ancient: we have had money, markets, profit, and so on for millennia.

Marx's argument was that they're really not: that they appear ancient, but the human relationships they embody are essentially modern. That's what distinguished capitalism from mere mercantilism, what made it a coherent and distinct economic system, a distinct type of society, rather than just a society in which certain commercial practices figured more prominently than in others.

As I learned it most of the critics of capitalism who predated Marx focused on capitalism as a political system, ie, the disproportionately great power of capitalists within a market economy, whereas Marx was one (but not the first one!) who said "nope, we've gotta tear this whole thing down and here's why".

Marx was far from the first to argue that capitalism had to be torn up root and branch; even Marx was arguing that before he'd sat down and worked out the theory. Marx's innovation was arguing that overthrowing capitalism was not merely morally but historically necessary, that capitalism wasn't just unjust, but that it was a dead-end.

 

[Lexicus]

Marx's argument was that they're really not: that they appear ancient, but the human relationships they embody are essentially modern.

I think maybe we're saying the same thing in different ways. Money is ancient. Private property is ancient. Wage labor is ancient. Investment, profit, and business enterprise are ancient. It's quite obviously not these elements themselves, but the way they are arranged, that is "new" and unique to capitalism.

That's what distinguished capitalism from mere mercantilism, what made it a coherent and distinct economic system, a distinct type of society, rather than just a society in which certain commercial practices figured more prominently than in others.

Capitalism is a type of society in which certain commercial practices figure more prominently than others. It's also many other things, of course.

Marx was far from the first to argue that capitalism had to be torn up root and branch; even Marx was arguing that before he'd sat down and worked out the theory. Marx's innovation was arguing that overthrowing capitalism was not merely morally but historically necessary, that capitalism wasn't just unjust, but that it was a dead-end.

I'm not sure what "historically necessary" really means, but I would change that to "historically inevitable." In many ways, he argued it was he opposite of a dead-end: it would, by its own internal laws of motion, transform into something else.

 

[Cutlass]

I think maybe we're saying the same thing in different ways. Money is ancient. Private property is ancient. Wage labor is ancient. Investment, profit, and business enterprise are ancient. It's quite obviously not these elements themselves, but the way they are arranged, that is "new" and unique to capitalism.



Capitalism is a type of society in which certain commercial practices figure more prominently than others. It's also many other things, of course.



I'm not sure what "historically necessary" really means, but I would change that to "historically inevitable." In many ways, he argued it was he opposite of a dead-end: it would, by its own internal laws of motion, transform into something else.

Commerce and trade are ancient. What Marx recognized but Smith did not is actually something which didn't commonly exist during or before Smith's lifetime. And that is the ownership of the means of production through capital accumulation, and the reinvesting of capital for the purpose of generating more, in an essentially endlessly perpetuating fashion.

Previous to the 19th century, a family may own a business, and may even pass that business down the generations. And a partnership business may exist. But a business that was owned in part by many was a rarity, and had limited lifespans. A company may be formed for a business venture, but it was then dissolved when the venture was complete. Some may have existed longer, but was very much the exception rather than the rule. The ongoing capitalist business venture really only arose with industrialization and railroads.