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
I did say "the Republican Party", not the conservative movement, which, as you point out, represents cultural and social forces that aren't going anywhere, no matter what else happens. But the fragmentation of their most convenient and well resourced enabling organization would have a huge impact on US politics.
I'll take another 2 generations of progressivism, thank you very much.
Lost in Space
Would you take another Great Depression to get that? Not that it looks like we're headed for one, but I'm not sure it's worthwhile to put half the country in bread lines to get meaningful change.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Captain of the Dead City
They're not saying they'd make that trade, they're saying that it would be a silver lining that would come out of it.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
I've been laid off before, have no desire to be so again. But if it comes, I think there will be consequences this time, for the people partly responsible for it.
Unless they can delay the worst until after the elections, then whoever wins will take the blame.
Move Over, Shareholders: Top CEOs Say Companies Have Obligations to Society
The Business Roundtable said Monday that it is changing its statement of “the purpose of a corporation.” No longer should decisions be based solely on whether they will yield higher profits for shareholders, the group said. Rather, corporate leaders should take into account “all stakeholders”—that is, employees, customers and society writ large.
It is a major philosophical shift for the association, which counts the chief executives of dozens of the biggest U.S. companies as its members. The group, led by JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon, is a powerful voice in Washington for U.S. business interests.
The Business Roundtable’s old statement of purpose espoused economist Milton Friedman’s decades-old theory that companies’ only obligation is to maximize value for shareholders.
“Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the new statement says. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.”
A company’s position on the question of corporate purpose can influence issues as diverse as worker pay and environmental impact. It plays a central role in discussions about stock buybacks, corporate spending and how companies respond to activist investors agitating for moves meant to boost returns.
Lost in Space
Gee, guys, nice to see this sentiment emerge after GE has been accused of a massive accounting fraud derived from its desperate push to please shareholders.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
CEO's have been saying similar things for a very long time.
It's a symbolic gesture at best, though it is different from their previous mission statements of "shareholder first". Whether this is actually going to result in any sort of policy change remains in doubt.
It won't, because there's no actual enforcible consequences if they don't change their tune. They're going to keep on exploiting people for their own benefit.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Lost in Space
Yeah, but which people? I'd be fine if they switched to, say, exploiting investors to please their employees.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2019 at 1:40:52 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Oh, bother.
You can't really exploit investors like that, since they can always take their money elsewhere.
Employees otoh cannot just up and quit their jobs most of the time.
If a corporation wants to use investor money to benefit the employees, it's only going to happen if the investors agree it's a good idea. No exploitation, merely cooperation.
Edited by M84 on Aug 20th 2019 at 1:45:22 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
how about we make the employees the shareholders? that way the only way for a big business to survive in such a system is to pay their workers properly
Bumbleby is best ship. busy spending time on r/RWBY and r/anime. Unapologetic Socialist
Like reflections in the glass!
Did someone say "let them seize the means of production"?
half-Jokes aside. That is a good idea, but I highly doubt most of those in power (in this case the shareholders/investors) are gonna relinquish their power so willingly. So that has to likely be started and enforced by the goverment and lawmakers.
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 19th 2019 at 3:04:53 AM
Lost in Space
Shareholders represent people who have contributed their capital into the business and earned a stake in it thereby. While there is nothing wrong with employee-owned businesses in the abstract, I don't think all of (for example) GE's workers together have enough money to buy all of its stock. You can't build a billion dollar company from scratch by asking the people you hire to pitch in their life savings.
One of the basic tenets of capitalism, an idea that has gone unchallenged in its fundamental aspects since long before capitalism was ever written down as an formal concept, is that a person with money may give some of that money to another person to help fund their business in exchange for a portion of the ownership of that business.
Someone has to get the business off the ground. If, after that, it becomes valuable enough that its employees can earn their own stakes in it and buy it from its investors, great. But that's not going to work in most or even many cases.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Plus, there is this little matter of US case law, which historically has protected the property rights of shareholders at the expense of just about everything else. Even if a US corporation wanted to sacrifice shareholder interest for the greater good, their own shareholders would sue them, and likely win. You want to get serious about "societal interest", then we need to pass some laws first.
That said, Germany provides a very successful model of labor-management policy, called "Co-determination" which allows employees to elect non-voting representatives as members of their employer's board of directors. It seems to work well.
Lost in Space
I can't speak to Germany's model. I will say that, while I believe that capitalism has serious flaws, it has been wildly successful at increasing the market power of nations and at reducing the cost to produce goods and services. Though many have tried and will no doubt continue to try to find competing systems, I'm profoundly skeptical that anything they'll come up with will beat capitalism at its core competency.
What I think will defeat capitalism in the end is its own quest for efficiency. In improving productivity, it will eventually improve it so much that human labor is removed from the equation. At that point, it will fail because its own customers, the people who earn wages from their labor, will no longer be able to consume the goods it produces. That or it will become so corrupt that it lives entirely to enrich its own masters and no longer has any obligation to compete, since the workers will all be effectively slaves.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2019 at 9:21:38 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Or it'll 'fail' because in its quest to create a model of planned obsolescence that ensures continuous profits it'll hollow out the Earth for raw materials and kill entire ecosystems to meet fourth quarter profits. And so, in a ravenous quest to enrich the richest, it will drag the entire human species into a consumerist death spiral.
At which point it can always claim it's because people eat too much meat.
...This is starting to sound eerily familiar.
Edited by math792d on Aug 20th 2019 at 10:49:53 AM
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Lost in Space
Well, yeah. Cooperative ventures can address some of the problems with that system, but not all of them, because a sufficiently rapacious corporation can simply out-compete them. You need regulation of some sort to address the inequities that occur when one party is willing to exploit the system to the maximum extent possible and another is not.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Captain of the Dead City
You kinda need all the corporations to be co-ops in that sort of system. Or a regulatory body who can keep the worst corporations in line.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
Lost in Space
As I said, a co-op cannot raise capital without ceding ownership.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
It cant, unless coop's were the only investment opportunities we allowed to exist.
Lost in Space
Even if stock investments were banned, why would anyone put money into a co-op? It's not out of the goodness of their hearts. Maybe they could sell bonds, but what is missing here is that these are basically "post-capitalism" reforms that assume we no longer need an investor class. I find this extremely dubious.
Regardless of whether a mandatory co-op system addresses inequalities in our own national economy, it doesn't do squat about the fact that we'd soon be out-competed by nations that don't adopt such a system.
There's a reason why predatory capitalism has been so successful: it works (at delivering short-term profit). You have to address that elephant in the room before you can do anything meaningful to reform it.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 20th 2019 at 10:55:40 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Right, bonds (ie, investors are loaning money to the coop, expecting to be paid back with interest). Were shares of ownership not available anywhere in the world, then the investor class would use bonds as their way of increasing their capital (counting debt owed as capital). A little bit like when "ursury" was illegal, and so investors found loopholes to use.
I'm not sure I agree, cooperatives work even in our capitalist society. Consider for a moment that the survival rates for coops are higher then for traditional businesses. They also have higher satisfaction rates then traditional businesses as well. That tells me that coops do have areas where they have advantages over traditional business models.
To me, advantaging coops seems to be a valid way to try and replace capitalism. Especially if you allow bonds without ownership/control implied.
Hardcore Republican voters won't abandon Trump or the party for anything short of them suddenly declaring that they love immigrants and socialism. Their cultural entrenchment is far too deep.
What could cause the party to collapse to the point where it is no longer electorally viable is for such horrible economic chaos to come from the policies of its elected officials that middle-of-the-road voters abandon it. However, we've already had one of those in the Great Depression, and it didn't kill the GOP. It gave us thirty or forty years of progressive economics, to be sure, but conservatism clawed back on the strength of those cultural issues above.
At its core, the GOP represents the forces of economic privilege (wealthy businessmen and tycoons) attempting to preserve their fortunes against the "rabble", and recruiting said rabble by appealing to racism, religious bigotry, anti-government paranoia, and anti-intellectualism. None of those things are going away, even if they lose a few elections.
Edited by Fighteer on Aug 16th 2019 at 10:26:33 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"