In any thread regarding socialism, one critical element must be noted. Capitalism is plagued by imperfect contracting, primarily that of the nature caused by information asymmetries, which have the inevitable tendency to cause adverse selection and moral hazard problems.So far so good
However, the same is not true for socialism inasmuch as an integral component of socialism is autogestion. (Workers' self-management.)
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.
This autogestion has the tendency of minimizing principal-agent problems. For instance, if we were to consider the available data on worker-owned enterprises, we might look to the work of researchers Logue and Yates in Cooperatives, Worker-Owned Enterprises, Productivity and the International Labor Organization
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.
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, 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 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.