Quote: Originally Posted by
editec 
Here we go..in a few rare cases for period lasting what? months? That might have existed.
But anywhere you see socialism lasting for any period of time, what you see is that the working class is exploited WORSE than in most modern capitalist mixed economies.
Surely you cannot deny that is true, Agna.
Months? This is a microeconomic analysis regarding the efficiency of worker-owned enterprises; I did not even comment on full-fledged socialism. Regardless, I'm not sure what justifies the latter comment about socialism; I certainly can't say that there was widespread exploitation of workers in Aragon and Catalonia during the Spanish Revolution, for instance. I hope this isn't another inappropriate reference to the Soviet Union.
Quote: Originally Posted by
editec My wife actually works for a flat managment cooperative. There are no leaders, there are merely associates who take on responsibility for this task or that department.
They spend an AWFUL lot of time in meetings where issues get hashed out, assignments made and so foth.
That doesn't surprise me. There's no one-size-fits-all model for a functioning enterprise...except for the fact that there's no one-size-fits-all model for a functioning enterprise, which might be called a model itself. That being said, effective utilization of democratic management techniques will generally yield efficiency gains...and I'm skeptical as to what anecdotal evidence can say to general policy issues.
Quote: Originally Posted by
editec So what I am telling you with the benefit of knowing somebody who actually walks the walk that I suspect to you is entirely theoretical talk, is this...
It isn't. I've traveled through the Basque region, which is the home of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, the largest corporation in the Basque region and the seventh larges in Spain. The MCC, of course, has existed for more than twenty years, and the worker-owned enterprises which preceded its formation as a corporation have existed for more than fifty.
Quote: Originally Posted by
editec There's many a slip twix cup and workers' paradise's lip, amigo.
Speaking of a "workers' paradise" seems to border on utopianism. Since free market capitalism primarily suffers from utopianism in its advocates' disregard of principal-agent problems and asymmetric information, I wouldn't be especially inclined to embrace a utopian ideal myself. Hence, noting obvious problems with worker-owned enterprises is to commit the perfectionist fallacy if your purpose is to completely discredit them.
Quote: Originally Posted by
editec I know you believe that to be absolutely true, but I think it is probably wildly overstated.
It's not overstated. As I've mentioned previously, principal-agent problems cannot be minimized in a hierarchical firm with conflicting interests amongst workers, managers, owners, and investors. Capitalists are aware of the resulting difficulties that may occur as a result of this (i.e. shirking), which is why efficiency wages remain one of the most prevalent compensatory mechanisms utilized in the capitalist firm.
Quote: Originally Posted by
editec My admiteed limited but Actual experience suggests to me that socialized worker dominated businesses are not very efficient, either.
Yes, but your limited experience may be related to an anomaly and cannot effectively analyze the efficiency of worker-owned enterprises in the same manner that Logue and Yates's analysis of ESOP's and parastatals can.
Quote: Originally Posted by
editec FWIW, efficiency isn't ALWAYS a good marker of good business, anyway.
Sometimes inefficiencies are just the cost of working in a fair employment situtation.
Yes, I'm quite aware of that. I wouldn't have specified efficiency gains as beneficial if they had the deleterious effect of imposing negative social opportunity costs on a disenfranchised population or citizenry. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Consider the abstract again:
Quote:
A survey of empirical research on productivity in worker-owned enterprises and cooperatives finds a substantial literature that largely supports the proposition that worker-owned enterprises equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership. The weight of a sparser literature on cooperatives tends toward the same pattern. In addition, employee-owned firms create local employment, anchor jobs in their communities and enrich local social capital.
Hence, workers' self-management is regarded as not only having the effect of equaling or exceeding the productivity of conventional enterprises, they also bring considerable social benefits to the table, placing their value above that of traditional capitalism in that regard.