There was talk about renaming the Krugman thread for this purpose, but that seems to be going nowhere. Besides which, I feel the Krugman thread should be left to discuss Krugman while this thread can be used for more general economic discussion.
Discuss:
- The merits of competing theories.
- The role of the government in managing the economy.
- The causes of and solutions to our current economic woes.
- Comparisons between the economic systems of different countries.
- Theoretical and existing alternatives to our current market system.
edited 17th Dec '12 10:58:52 AM by Topazan
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Just because an innovation was technically the result of a team's combined efforts doesn't take away from a genius team leader/member's crucial importance in the innovation coming to being if said innovation was originally the result of an unusually revolutionary idea that the genius in question came up with.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, a company's collective senior management can decide for whatever reason they agree upon (well, the necessary majority anyway) that the company president doesn't have to be present at the company every single work day? And can even just make up their own names and/or variations for the office titles, e.g. making it so that besides the President, the CEO, and the Chairman of the Board, there's a "Senior Executive President" who is by default whichever individual is the majority shareholder of the company, outranks everyone else in executive authority, and doesn't need to be in the office at all, with the exception of a handful of meetings each year with the rest of the senior management, exceptionally vital or high-profile business deals, a public event of great importance, or some other occasion of such importance that does demand the presence of everyone who's anyone in the company ladder?
It all needs to be spelled out in the company's charter when it gets incorporated. Which can be changed easily or not depending on the exact structure of the company (a privately owned company whose ownership is limited to a small number of people is generally going to have an easier time doing it than a company publicly listed on the stock market whose shares are spread out among potentially millions of partial owners).
Also, even if that isn't how the charter's written, it may still happen to end up that way because of circumstances on the ground. Enforcement, after all, is pretty much on those involved in the company.
edited 6th May '16 11:31:23 AM by megarockman
And in a lot of cases it's reasonable for a president to not have to work every single day. If the company runs 7 days a week, the president is probably within his rights to have one or two days off. Or even take a vacation now and then. Everyone should have those rights.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
V
Should, but often don't. Even if they're on holiday, if something comes up, or someone feels like asking a question...
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
OK, so... say that we have a hypothetical typical president in a company named Alex, and in his company the CEO is the one who handles the day-to-day management. How would you describe an average work day for Alex?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
The law in the night
Calls, paperwork, meetings, business travels?
Inter arma enim silent leges
Probably something along those lines.
Anyway, @DeMarquis: while you are describing our economy as it exists now, I have serious doubts your points about the vast majority of the adult population being absolutely required to work in order to maintain society will be true a century from now assuming of course that industrial society doesn't collapse due to climate change induced super-famines, post-peak-oil resource conflicts, antibiotic-resistant pandemics, or any of the other crises that are slowly creeping towards us.
But, barring the breakdown of society, I am quite confident that machines will be capable of doing any job a human is capable of without any of the drawbacks of using humans over machines. That's a scenario that's going to require a drastically different sort of economy in order for it not to become something out of a Dystopian science fiction novel.
edited 6th May '16 2:32:27 PM by CaptainCapsase
Grr... <3
Names are flexible. I think () would accurately describe a typical president's day. But if you are dictator 4 life, you can give yourself any title you want, and do as little work as you want.
There would also be a lot of document review. Policy makers are professional readers.
edited 6th May '16 2:36:07 PM by war877
Well, in the case of a dictator, if you're incompetent (at holding power), there's always a subordinate waiting in the wings looking for a Klingon Promotion. That's not true of a privately owned company. Usually.
edited 6th May '16 2:37:56 PM by CaptainCapsase
Grr... <3
A majority shareholder is a dictator whether they pretend they aren't or not.
The Potato's Choice
Must-Read: Kevin O’Rourke: The Davos Lie
…sporting their best parkas and a variety of silly hats, and opining about the state of the world…. If there’s one thing that people agree about in Davos, it’s that globalisation is a Good Thing. And indeed, so it is, if the alternative is the autarky of the inter-war period…. If you are even slightly cosmopolitan in your ethical outlook, you should want this to continue. But it always makes sense to ask whether you can have too much of a good thing…. Who are the winners from globalisation, and who are the losers?… Developing economies with lots of cheap unskilled labour should export textiles and other labour-intensive manufactured goods to rich economies where wages are high. A second implication is that labour-intensive industries should go into decline in rich countries. A third implication is that this should lower the demand for unskilled workers, hence lowering unskilled wages and increasing inequality…. The debate has swung back towards the view that trade is important in explaining rising inequality, not only in rich countries, but potentially in developing economies such as Mexico as well….
I happen to think that inequality matters for its own sake, but even if you don’t agree with that value judgement you should still care about inequality, since it matters politically as well…. Unfortunately for Davos, globalisation’s losers are becoming increasingly hostile to trade (and immigration)…. Such attitudes are now beginning to influence politics in several rich countries…. Economists can tut-tut all they want about working-class people refusing to buy into the benefits of globalisation, but as social scientists we surely need to think about the predictable political consequences of economic policies. Too much globalisation, without domestic safety nets and other policies that can adequately protect globalisation’s losers, will inevitably invite a political backlash. Indeed, it is already upon us.
Must-Read: Daniel Gros: Is Globalization Really Fueling Populism?:
…grievances about the economic impacts of economic globalization are simply not that powerful. Instead, right-wing populist parties like the FPÖ, Finland’s True Finns, and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland are embracing identity politics, playing on popular fears and frustrations – from ‘dangerous’ immigration to the ‘loss of sovereignty’ to the European Union – to fuel nationalist sentiment.
In the southern European countries, however, the enduring impact of the euro crisis makes populist economic arguments far more powerful. That is why it is left-wing populist parties that are winning the most support there, with promises of, say, tax credits for low-paid workers. The most extreme case is Greece’s leftist Syriza party, which rode to victory in last year’s elections on pledges to end austerity. (Once in power, of course, Syriza had to change its tune and bring its plans in line with reality.)
Calling the rise of populism in Europe a revolt by the losers of globalization is not just simplistic; it is misleading. If we are to stem the rise of potentially dangerous political forces in Europe, we need to understand what is really driving it – even if the explanation is more complex than we would like.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
New question: What is a consortium, and how is it different from a traditional corporate group or a joint venture?
edited 6th May '16 4:18:24 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Grr... <3
This is all I know: A corporation must be incorporated. Which is a legal thing. A joint venture translates without loss of generality to: Together adventure. A consortium is a group of people who are planning a joint venture.
Who Am I?
@Captain Cap Sase: "I feel like you're describing the current economic system without even attempting to justify why it's a good option for human society."
OK, but who is going to buy the stuff produced, and how are they going to pay for it?
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Grr... <3
Are you asking about now? Or a hundred years from now? 'Cause a hundred years from now the answer might be everybody is going to buy whatever they want with starfleet credit. Unless whatever they want is more expensive than a private yacht. Even that might be pushing it only a hundred years from now.
And the reason being: Since the strength of industry no longer depends on employment numbers, giving everyone no strings attached credit does not destroy the economy.
edited 6th May '16 8:07:40 PM by war877
Therein lies the dilemma we will face in the coming centuries; how can we reconcile the obseletion of baseline human labor with economies as we know them? Extremely radical transhumanism is the only way I can see the "human" factor of labor remaining at all relevant going into the future, which requires both biotechnology and society's morals to keep pace with advances in artificial intelligence and automation.
post-automation is not post-scarcity; everyone can't have everything they want because resources are limited.
edited 6th May '16 9:23:47 PM by CaptainCapsase
The Potato's Choice
Perhaps the point is we need to get rid of economics as we know them, because they've easily been perpetuating much of what is causing our current disasters and downfall.
And I've seen Brad DeLong for example, complain there's a lack of means for economics to measure actual positive human happiness (since GDP doesn't do so) generated by economic output. And a lack of a means to have that accounted for probably helps feed the perpetuating boom-busts.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. - Douglas Adams
That is what I was getting at; we will need to rethink a great deal of what we know about economics in the coming century.
Jupiterian Local
Economics is not a singular, unchanging monolith. Economics is always changing and adapting to the situation at the time. "We will need to rethink a great deal of what we know about economics in the coming century" has been true for basically every century since the start of history.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
And the general inertia of the old system can be, and historically had been an major source of political upheaval. That's something that we cannot afford when the destruction of human civilization is a keystroke away in some cases so it's best to start thinking of these things now rather than later.
edited 6th May '16 10:12:57 PM by CaptainCapsase
V
Are you thinking of something like Buddhist economics?
Jupiterian Local
You're being needlessly alarmist. No one's going to fire the nukes because zomg robots took all da jerbs. These things happen gradually, over decades. It's not like hitting a wall, where suddenly we're in a post-work society all at once and no one knows what to do. We'll have plenty of time to adjust to events as they occur.
That said, we've already mentioned a single, fairly simply way to adjust to a post-work system. Just pay everyone a living wage regardless of whether they work or not. People who want to work more (and can find paying jobs) can do so, while everyone else can kick back and amuse themselves however they want while using their government stipend to pay their bills. Fund the stipend by taxing the productive minority (the people who own the automation equipment and the handful of folks still working real jobs) and you're pretty much set.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Industrializarion was sufficiently rapid to greatly destabilize society in the short term, one of the chief reasons being that culture simply could not keep up with the pace at which society was changed; when things settled down, society was changed for the better, and hopefully that's what will happen here, but humans over the course of history have a nasty habit of ignoring brewing crises until they are staring them in the face; that's something that could be disastrous in this context.
I'm not saying society will collapse because of automation, merely that, as with climate change, waiting to take significant action until the problem becomes too great to ignore, as has typically been the case throughout human history, will be disastrous.
edited 7th May '16 5:29:49 AM by CaptainCapsase
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Ah, world-building. Well, it's not always the case that a person in the position of CEO/President/Chairman only has those positions as a full-time job - it's certainly not unheard of (at least for, say, a Board member) to be serving on multiple boards at once and have other business interests not directly related to the company itself.
I've found wiki articles on the three positions you've described: President
, CEO
, Chairman
; wiki notes that corporate structure is rather loosely defined between CEO and President (the two are definitely close). My gut tells me that the one most involved in running the company should be the CEO, or perhaps COO (Chief Operations Officer).