Socialism is GOOD for EVERYONE!

I hear you. I empathize. Truth is, the American worker needs to recognize that the employer needs to make a sustainable profit. There are different ways to get there, needs to be filled, but it does need to be a partnership.

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.

Now the rich man, feeling gypped

and sensing the obvious pattern, packs up his small technology firm and moves it to China. When he gets there, he realizes that he can save 70% off his labor costs, build a state of the art production studio and never pay property taxes (ever), get an instant business tax cut of 98%, and relish in the fact that Uncle Sam no longer has the legal authority to swipe benjamins from his checking account to give to the poor guy.

The top 10% already pay about 60% of all taxes paid. Hell what do you want? 80? 90?

So far so good

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.



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.

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...

There's many a slip twix cup and workers' paradise's lip, amigo.



Hence, we see that capitalism has the tendency to create inefficiencies because of its information asymmetries and more general principal-agent problems. Socialism has the benefit of correcting those issues, and thereby generating efficiency gains.

I thought about calling it "Economic Justice" but it just didn't have the same ring to it.

Beyond interesting, it's ironic that the NEOCOMS, libs, love to coo about giving to the underprivileged, poor or whatever term makes them feel superior, it has been well documented that conservatives give more in VOLUNTARY charity than they do!

Yet they continue to champion "redistribution of wealth."

We’re All Fascists Now II: American Tyranny
Posted By Michael Ledeen On February 14, 2009 @ 12:21 pm In Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Most Americans no longer read Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterpiece, Democracy in America, about which I wrote a book (Tocqueville on American Character; from which most of the following is taken) a few years ago. What a pity! No one understood us so well, no one described our current crisis with such brutal accuracy, as Tocqueville.

The economics of the current expansion of state power in America are, as I said, “fascist,” but the politics are not. We are not witnessing “American Fascism on the march.” Fascism was a war ideology and grew out of the terrible slaughter of the First World War. Fascism hailed the men who fought and prevailed on the battlefield, and wrapped itself in the well-established rhetoric of European nationalism, which does not exist in America and never has. Our liberties are indeed threatened, but by a tyranny of a very different sort.

Most of us imagine the transformation of a free society to a tyrannical state in Hollywood terms, as a melodramatic act of violence like a military coup or an armed insurrection. Tocqueville knows better. He foresees a slow death of freedom. The power of the centralized government will gradually expand, meddling in every area of our lives until, like a lobster in a slowly heated pot, we are cooked without ever realizing what has happened. The ultimate horror of Tocqueville’s vision is that we will welcome it, and even convince ourselves that we control it....

...As Tocqueville grimly predicted, modern totalitarians have thoroughly mastered this lesson. Nazis, Fascists and Communists have passionately preached sermons of equality, and constantly paid formal homage to the sovereignty of the people. Hitler proclaimed himself primus inter pares, the first among equals, while Mao and Stalin claimed their authority in the name of a classless society where everyone would be equal. And, while Communism was brought to power by violent coups or by military conquest, Fascism was not installed by violence. Hitler and Mussolini were popular leaders, their authority was sanctioned by great electoral victories and repeated demonstrations of mass public enthusiasm, and neither of them was ever challenged by a significant percentage of the population. The great Israeli historian Jacob Talmon coined the perfect name for this perversion of the Enlightenment dream, which enslaves all in the name of all: totalitarian democracy.

These extreme cases help us understand Tocqueville’s brilliant warning that equality is not a defense against tyranny, but an open invitation to ambitious and cunning leaders who enlist our support in depriving ourselves of freedom. He summarizes it in two sentences that should be memorized by every American who cherishes freedom:

The…sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.

As I said last time, we’re in for a hell of a fight. Or so I hope.

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.

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.

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...

I know you believe that to be absolutely true, but I think it is probably wildly overstated.

My admiteed limited but Actual experience suggests to me that socialized worker dominated businesses are not very efficient, either.

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.

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.