Wealth distribution

**Montmorency** · 01-29-2014, 13:29

Why are you so opposed to changing the system?

Huh?

Are we looking for an ideal system for maximum and thus ipso fact ice cold efficiency or do we aim for fairness?

An efficient system would obviously move the world toward your ideals of fairness more than an inefficient one...

When the company gets too big, democratic processes become different and more difficult. And less democratic. Then just don't let companies become too big.

Sometimes, size - IOW centralization of production - is preferable. How about simply giving the state more stake in a company as it grows past some threshold?

Will the decison making process become harder? Perhaps. So what? Can't labourers elect their own CEO? Why not?

How many positions would be elected? Just executive ones? Is your solution to the hiring issue to have one person start a company and then hire another into the company and then democratically "elect" applicants or existing workers into every conceivable position? That's untenable. The point is, you can't undermine efficiency so much without literally collapsing the system. I understand that you'd be fine with a de-globalized society, but the cost of a transition to a 'simpler' standard of living would involve the deaths of hundreds of millions or even billions...

In big companies, if all workers are co-owners or stakeholders then it makes sense for them to all have a say in electing executives, but in a small company with no genuine executives to speak of it isn't quite right for an investor to start a small business and then immediately have his workers kick him out on a whim and appropriate his entire investment, whether to continue the business by their own standard or to just sell off all the assets and split the profits. That would clearly be another sort of vulture capitalism, or even just plain chaos.

You didn't really address my modified proposal, so how about this - hiring and firing remain much the same as they are, though perhaps more modularly: in a small business of 20 employees, everyone gets some say on an applicant chosen by the chief, and in a big company the workers in one department or project, for example, get some say on applicants into their area; firing would be similar - the boss can't fire someone without the majority of people in the small business, department, or project, etc. agreeing to the decision, but the boss does have a special veto that, for example, prevents co-workers from just firing that one guy nobody likes but is actually a good worker.

You need to change your aim.

My aim is sustainability, clearly.

Excellent. You put wealthy people with way too much non-democratically legitimated power on the same line as professional criminals. That's a very correct comparison and a correct analysis. What do we do with scum? We put them in jail. Instead of putting the poor in prison, we have to put the white collar criminals in jail. Not giving them a free pass like we do now.

Since prison should be geared more towards rehabilitation than "revenge", how exactly should white-collar criminals be treated? Anyway, the white-collar 'underground' persists precisely because they are powerful. So, in a place like Italy say, how do you prevent the Mafias from getting even more actual control over state and economic affairs, once your reforms would be implemented?

Do you want a true meritocracy or not?

Meritocracy is a convenient buzzword, but it does not work like the ideal some have. Anyway, I said that education should be improved everywhere, which you plainly agree with - so I don't see what your problem is.

One million to pass on is not so much? Tell that to the son of a drug addict and a prostitue living in a ghetto.

Obviously that would be taxed. What would happen in the example of the single mother that I gave? No assets directly passed on to the grandparents, just a rise in the minimum of support to them?

For the "no inheritances" thing to work, you would definitely first have to build the capacity to maintain a minimum standard for everyone or almost everyone, and just as importantly a public trust in that capacity. Referring back to an earlier point, this would entail that your reforms be introduced progressively over decades, and not all at once. "One step at a time".

Screw your "elite" schools. They are nothing more but a tool to institutionalise inequality.

These are public schools we are talking about. So, close down public schools just because they outperform other public schools (and private ones)? That's incredibly backwards.

A much better ambition would be an "and" "and" story. Whoever gives you the idea that that isn't possible, lies.

'Do everything at once' isn't a question of possibility, it's a question of pragmatism. Sure, we could try that - we'd fail. It's almost always - in any situation - to take things one step at a time.

**Tuuvi** · 02-06-2014, 07:31

I work in a retail store for $8.35 an hour, I understand wanting to have a stake in the company I work for and having more of a say on how it is run. But at the end of the day making corporations "democratic" does not make a lot of sense to me. My employment is a contract between myself and my employer. I'm selling my time and labor to them for monetary compensation.

A company doesn't exist to provide services to its employees like a government provides services to its citizens. It exists to provide services to its clients/customers in the hopes of making a profit. The workers are the ones who are providing services to the company.

CEO's wield a lot of power and authority, but technically they are employees like everyone else. The business is the one paying for the CEO's services, so it has every right to pick the person it believes will do the best job, not the workers. CEO's can and do get fired for poor performance just like regular employees. A couple of years ago the company I work for, JCPenney, hired Ron Johnson from Apple to be CEO. Ron Johnson was the executive responsible for making Apple's retail stores a huge success and he was supposed to help JCPenney make a turnaround. His ideas sucked and JCPenney's revenue tanked. Eventually the Board of Directors lost faith in Ron Johnson and they gave him the sack. His term as CEO only lasted about a year and a half, if I remember correctly.

Of course companies have a lot of power over their employees, and that's one of the main topics of this thread, so my post needs to address this point. But it's getting late so that will have to wait.

**HopAlongBunny** · 02-09-2014, 03:29

We put scum in jail; but not those scum.
The recent recession, bail-outs, slaps on the wrist demonstrate all to clearly that "justice" comes in differing forms for different classes.
The system certainly does not use "One law to rule them all"; so a better starting point might be to clarify the role of the justice system, and perhaps make explicit the exceptions.

**Seamus Fermanagh** · 02-09-2014, 04:59

Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

We put scum in jail; but not those scum.
The recent recession, bail-outs, slaps on the wrist demonstrate all to clearly that "justice" comes in differing forms for different classes.
The system certainly does not use "One law to rule them all"; so a better starting point might be to clarify the role of the justice system, and perhaps make explicit the exceptions.

Step One: Celebrities who have not physically or sexually harmed another person pay a fine and damages and go home. Tired of the hoopla over low level bull excrement.