Business is not inherently less wasteful than government. I know the myth, but the truth is, business is has plenty of inefficiencies. Those who take what they want do pretty well for themselves, but perhaps not as well as those who have everything handed to them.
There is a saying in business, “The best man for the job,” which of course means that business doesn’t discriminate at all, it is a completely egalitarian, merit-based system where the strong survive and thrive. At least, that’s the sub-text, the implied fantasy.
Every year, those in the American nobility die and leave borderless kingdoms to their spoiled children. It happens so often that we have come to expect it. For some reason, it never dawns on most people that there is something inherently wrong with this.
I’m not talking about the local plumbing supply store owner handing the keys to his son, either. Pick up a Forbes when it publishes one of its lists of the wealthiest people. Look them up, one by one, and see how many of them earned their place, and consider the implications for the dozens who didn’t.
I am always perplexed by Anarchists. I think their polar ideological opposite is the communist, because communists see private enterprise as corrupt, therefore it must be abolished completely. I’m not a communist, and I’m clearly not an anarchist. Instead, I see both systems as being necessary for keeping the other in check so that the rest of us can just live.
If government doesn’t have business to regulate… well, just look at communist countries. They put a microscope on every single person, and the populace is subjected to impossibly harsh scrutiny. And in countries where private interests have control, like America, the citizens are subjected to a PR campaign that glosses over the abuse and leaves us wanting more, more, more.
In neither instance does the population have recourse. The system is strongest when citizens acting as customers and voters are allowed to freely choose what they feel is best for them.
But how does this solve the problem of nepotism? Perhaps the internal workings of business would work better if the employees voted for who ran the company. Maybe it’s time democracy penetrated the last stronghold of aristocracy.
Perhaps the internal workings of business would work better if the employees voted for who ran the company. Maybe it’s time democracy penetrated the last stronghold of aristocracy.
ReplyDeleteWorkers should control the workplace. In fact, they should own it (the only real way to control it) and every "employee" should be an associate of the business for which they work.
We have to end capitalism and the current statist system of private property to achieve this for all workers. Some worker-owned businesses exist even now, of course, but under anarchy wage slavery and traditional workplace hierarchies would be seen as simply invalid and illegitimate.
Why is it that everyone seems hell-bent on solving all these various problems? Why is there such a need among people for Utopia?
ReplyDeleteWho said anything about utopia?
ReplyDeleteswift's right. Improving the world is hard work. We should just take what is given to us and bow to our corporate overlords. Since perfection is impossible, why bother to try to improve?
ReplyDeleteNot everyone would see what you've listed here as problems to be solved. Wouldn't it be tyrannical to try and solve those problems against their will?
ReplyDeleteDismantling the tyrannies we face is certainly a noble cause. But at what point do you realize that the giants are just windmills?
Windmills like "socialism" and "the oppressive state?"
ReplyDeleteSome of us don't have our heads up our asses. Some of us study history like it were a calling, not a class. Some of us have observed the reality of "socialism" working, resulting in higher average incomes, higher life expectancies, and happier people.
Maybe you are more concerned with defending the established nobility, but some of us realized long ago that the rich would take care of themselves just fine. Oppression doesn't happen at the top, it happens at the bottom, and your miopic perspective exposes you as an elitist asshole (and probably nothing but a wanna-be at that).
I certainly concur with the opening line. Business can be inefficient. Absolutely. The only caveat in that "most" of the time, the market weeds out the bad apples. Whereas with government we can "kick the bums out" but not necessarily the inefficient behavior. It's structurally embedded.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nikkolas - up to a point. I believe workers should indeed be intergrated better and be made to feel as if they're part of something meaningful. It's a challenge I will face soon enough.
However, they can't "own" anything if they don't provide the capital and accept the risk involved with ownership. It's basic stuff. Why should I make someone an owner and enjoy equal profits if I take all the risk?
Power and profits is all proportional to what you put in.
TC, what you're describing is why I don't oppose private ownership of the means of production. I would rather live in the system Nikk is suggesting than the current one, but my ideal system would maintain private ownership while giving ultimate control of the purse strings to an authority elected by the employees.
ReplyDeleteGranted, I would imagine a common part of a small business owner's contract would stipulate that the employee will remain employed only as long as they support you, the eomployer, as the authority. But eventually, a company would get so large that a concerted decision to replace incompetant leadership could easily gain traction. It would essentially result in a de facto "strike" until the employees acknowledge the owner or the owner's role as decision maker was replaced.
I think this would work a lot better than unions, which I really despise. Talk about nobility...
I can certainly see that logic because it's impossible to knock off bad leadership.
ReplyDeleteI hate unions with all my heart too.
Bret I must be your polar opposite...
ReplyDeleteYou posted - "I’m not a communist, and I’m clearly not an anarchist. Instead, I see both systems as being necessary for keeping the other in check so that the rest of us can just live."
I of course think that BOTH are part of the oligarchy and it must be eliminated completely.
I see "capitalism" far too often mistaken for free-enterprise when in fact it in it's current state is actually anti-competitive cronyism and I agree it is just as bad as socialism/communism/state-religion fusion...
I also am not an anarchist nor a state-religionist.
Corporate personhood is part of this problem (and not a small one) - the corporate structure is part of the power structure for the oligarchy. Only a fool would think that the "government" or simple "corporations" are actually in charge, there is a power structure above that.
@Bret: You mean like National Socialism working? You know, the Socialists have killed millions of people directly in the past century in an attempt to bring about Utopia, right? I'm sure the killing fields of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Ming (to name a few) are well documented and easily studied. All of these movements were Socialist movements.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, we are living in the kind of system you seem to want Bret. There are over 10,000 Federal laws on the books and yet corporate cronyism is worse than ever. We are stuffed with laws and regulations that can only be enforced at the discretion of the regulators because there are simply too many. And yet, even the regulators themselves fail to do their job and instead spend all day watching porn.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the rich and what they do. What I want is for everyone to leave me alone to succeed or fail on my own merit. Instead I am beset by tyrants, large and small, who want to take my money (and regularly do) and use it for their own supposed benevolent purposes.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the rich and what they do.
ReplyDeleteOf course not, because you anticipate becoming one of them, so once you attain billionairehood, you expect to be able to express your tyranny on others like they do. This is always why assholes don't care about what happens at the top: they think they'll get to do it.
Also, thank you for conceding defeat by mentioning Hitler. It makes it so much easier to just ignore you when you make such stupid arguments.
Ginx,
ReplyDeleteInstead of asserting people are making stupid arguments based on projections answer the assertion: Did socialism directly kill more people or not?
I think he makes a subtle point: How many (more) laws do you want in place to subdue our vices and to subsequently enhance our virtues?
swiftfoxmark2 you posted...
ReplyDelete"You mean like National Socialism working? You know, the Socialists have killed millions of people directly in the past century in an attempt to bring about Utopia, right?"
You are aware that National Socialism is not actually "socialism"? and in fact for the select (and that is where the issue is of course) there was far more room for "business friendly" free-enterprise than even what we see now here with the oligarchic control of "capitalism" (a form of fascism). It is a lot easier to present a point if we have full understanding of the issues and where we intend to stand on the issues.
Bret considers my position part of the "right" so he is constantly getting into positions where he is unable to support them.
Our current position under "capitalism" is actually more accurately described as fascism not socialism, but because we flirted with actual socialism with FDR we have a strange combination of the two, something I bet the ruling class gets a chuckle about all the time.
Just because we have the current situation does not change the words nor does it change the strange anomalies in history like Hitlers Germany a government that went into at least three stages, Fascism, National Socialism, and a Dictatorship of whim...
And for the record the "rich" don't bother me, it's the oligarchy power structure not all of the "rich" are part of that oligarchy.
Everyone should have the opportunity to make themselves wealthy from their efforts, it is the corporate personhood that makes the abusive power possible and THAT suppresses small business.
Hm. 2.5 rating for the article. 15 comments. If it leads to a debate then the article did its job, no? Five star!
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting observation on these comments: even though I did mention Hitler, he is by far the least 'evil' in terms of body count. Yet Bret seems to consider him the most evil by singling him out when I threw his name around. To be fair, though, it could just be because National Socialism isn't technically Socialism in the traditional sense. However, many of it's ideas came from Socialism, it merely relegated it on a national level, rather than an international one (hence, National Socialism).
ReplyDeleteI probably used an extreme example by singling out the more brutal dictators, but let's look at the end economic results of the Socialist countries. If you look at Cuba, that country has recently said that Socialism failed. China has abandoned parts of it's command and control economy in favor of more free market alternatives, and even in Europe where many industries are being deregulated. I hear France has excellent private roads, for example.
I agree that the greater the size of the organization, the more inefficient it becomes. However, government is the largest 'corporation' in the world. What other institution manages trillions of dollars a year? Even the largest companies don't come even close to the size of the United States Federal Government. And the logic that Bret presents is to make them bigger?
I think when faced with the choice between government and corporations, Bret considers the state as the lesser of the two evils.
ReplyDeleteAs for Hitler, he's playing with Godwin's Law although I think the law stipulates that in a thread it won't be long Hitler's name used as an ad hominen and not necessarily as part of a legit discussion.
I don't think there's any doubt that most of the most violent terrorist activity and state murders come from the left side of the coin.
Left and right have little or no meaning to me. They mean one thing today to people in America, but they mean different things in different countries now, and they meant different things in the past. Trying to play a "the left/right is this way" game is nothing but an attempt to demonize people with whom we have minor disagreements.
ReplyDeleteI have no interest in arguing with people who compare all forms of government to Hitler, Especially people who support rape, right swiftmark?
There's no fixing stupid. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just throwing out my opinions and watching fools accuse me of being a mass murderer.
I think when faced with the choice between government and corporations, Bret considers the state as the lesser of the two evils.
ReplyDeleteThen you missed the point, because I'm saying you don't have to pick one or the other, and that the best systems have both. I hate false dichotomies.
I also wouldn't consider either an "evil," just that each is a form of organization. An organized group achieves more, be it good or bad. It should be our goal to keep both aimed at doing good, not lowering our standards to a point where we think we have to be an anarcho-capitalist who hates the government or a command economy communist who wants to abolish private ownership.
People who rely on false dichotomies are either severely retarded or... wait a second. Nevermind.
not lowering our standards to a point where we think we have to be an anarcho-capitalist
ReplyDeleteThere can be no such thing as "anarcho-capitalism", just confused people who think they're anarcho-capitalists.
I also wouldn't consider either an "evil," just that each is a form of organization.
They are NOT merely forms of organization, they are forms of oppression and hierarchy, and that makes both the state and the corporation extremely evil.
The state is might makes right and nothing more, and that violation of peace and harmony and non-aggression leads to only chaos and violence. Corporations are nothing but state created fictitious "persons" and couldn't continue to exist without the state. Abolish the state, and it's bastard child, the corporation, will cry for it's mommy and then fall to its knees and die a well deserved death.
Kill the state and you kill two evils with one libertarian stone.
swiftfoxmark2...
ReplyDeleteHave to call you on this one... "To be fair, though, it could just be because National Socialism isn't technically Socialism in the traditional sense. However, many of it's ideas came from Socialism, it merely relegated it on a national level, rather than an international one (hence, National Socialism)."
Historically there was a split in the "party" where the ideas shook out into phases... The NSDAP was unique in that the "name" socialism was never actually part of the government...
The NSDAP was never actually socialist as we use the definition now it was actually nationalist populism if we wanted to give it a title.
The first wave was building support (this would later cause problems) and they garnered the support of big business (where the fascism came into play, and contrary to popular thought fascism is not inherently racist nor is it necessary to fit the definition). The original platform of the NSDAP included the "suppression of large stores" what we call "big box stores" now. The weaving of racial politics alone makes this unique but unknown to most Americans there were many of Jewish and non-Aryan background in the German Army and the SS had African, Arab, Indian, and Persian volunteers. Also you would be fascinated with the Zionist/NSDAP/Hitler connections in the beginning, of course it all devolved into a dictatorship by a drug addled bat-shit crazy old man.
This is all FAR more convoluted than you would think - why is it important?, well if we are going to talk about "governments" and their philosophies then we need to be accurate.
NSJ
ReplyDelete"Abolish the state, and it's bastard child, the corporation, will cry for it's mommy and then fall to its knees and die a well deserved death."
Rather than a bastard child wouldn't you call the current corporate structure more a form of new-monarchism?
BGA, you're right. It is a false dichotomy. I just thought I read you say that in the past. Apologies.
ReplyDeleteNikkolas, man's nature dictates we NEED the state on some level as an arbitrator and protector of basic rights and civil behavior.
Left to our own devices I'm not convinced we can pull it off. I wish we could.
However, I agree the "contract" between the state and the individual is now skewed in favor of the government. Anyone who believes we actually can control and make meaningful changes with our votes is delusional. Especially if you believe the real power base lies elsewhere.
Nikkolas, man's nature dictates we NEED the state on some level as an arbitrator and protector of basic rights and civil behavior.
ReplyDeleteReally, T.C.? So you and the vast majority of your fellow citizens would suddenly start behaving like vicious animals and criminal thugs if the local cop wasn't there to stop you? You would have no means of arbitration without Big Daddy Government to do it for you?
Your argument against anarchy is as cliched as Bret's. The State does all the things you're presumably worried would occur in its absence; It steals, kidnaps, false imprisons, its agents commit rape, and it murders on a monumental scale.
And there is no way to keep the state small and restricted (the fallacy of minarchism); we tried that in the US, and look where it got us!
To be honest, I don't know Nikkolas. Part of me wants to believe we can be as you assert. Another part of me is less so convinced. I don't doubt what you've said about the state. After all, it's made up of men; wretched creatures that we are.
ReplyDeleteYou can call me a bare minimalist when it comes to the state.
I don't know if the state has actually "stabilized" our penchant for war or worsened it.
In other words, I see the state as a referee arbitrating between men.
ReplyDeleteAnything beyond this point they've conditioned to have us believe we need them for our own good. That, I reckon, leads to coercion.
Really. Do I need the government legislating against things like cannabis, tobacco and sugar?
Is it right they take tax money and give it to corporate bums? Is it normal they require several permits for ONE project? They get in the way way too much.
It's amazing. We have high poverty rates in Montreal. And when people want to mobilize and bypass the state to get things done they get stopped. No wonder people are frustrated and decide to do nothing.