If Worker Co-Ops could raise Capital, then they would conquer the entire world.

Hmm, Maybe I’m being dense, but couldn’t they sell bonds to raise capital?

Unlike stock, bonds don’t give the holder direct control. The bond holder does not control the co-op, cannot buy or sell or divide it, cannot take it over and oust its leadership. The most the bondholder can do to express dissatisfaction is to sell his bonds.

And as some have noted, that’s also true with the vast majority of (small) stockholders. Only the Bain Capitals benefit from being able to take over and buy/divide/sell companies, the small stockholder is in essence like a bondholder. An economy without stockholders would greatly reduce the impact of Big Capital to screw with things. And maybe, thus reduce its scope and power.

-stewartm

It really is a misreading of history to think that because top groups have power, and because they oppose challenges, that they must inevitably win.

The broad historical criteria seems to be, that the power of elites to oppose unwanted change depends on how much power they can wield. The amount of power they can wield in turn depends on their economic circumstances, and if they’re losing that (since they are the ones most shielded from want) things have to become pretty damn bleak for everyone not so fortunate (again, think, the Depression). Nobody said that this kind of change was going to be fun; it’s not.

look at the Civil Rights, Feminist, and Gay Rights movements for a start.

I don’t think these have anything much to do with establishing a more economically democratic society and thus are of limited relevance. The Civil Rights movement’s success was helped mightily (I believe) by the Federal government spurned by the needs imposed by the Cold War–it was an embarrassment to our claim to the new Third World countries that we were better friends to them than the Soviets, who could correctly point out that our conversations with our new Third-World friends couldn’t take place at a lunch counter in Alabama.

As for the feminist and gay rights movements, these were not a challenge to the fundamental economic system, but a result of them. They arose from the West moving from a agrarian to an industrial then post-industrial society. In these women were fully the equal of men in performing most work, while children became economic liabilities rather than assets. In turn, this resulted reverting more towards its biological origin of something for pleasure and bonding rather than procreation per se. Ergo, contraception, the pill, pornography, and non-procreative forms of sexual expression previously tabooed in a culture seeking to maximize children become allowable.

I will admit, though, that if you can manage things to evolve the way that allowed the gay rights movement to have so much success (where the only way to stop it would be to make major changes in the trajectory of the whole infrastructure of the culture, something even the elites don’t really know how to do)–well, that would be ideal. To make democratization of workplace they can’t stop because they don’t want to stop it or can’t really figure out even how to begin to stop it because it involves trends in the infrastructure so fundamental you can’t easily alter them.

-stewartm

Because in order for an economic system to “take off” it must by definition have ALL of those things BEFORE it even begins. Starting an economic system is hard, but STOPPING an economic system is almost impossible (they can’t even stop Heroin, and that shit KILLS you.)

As a ‘cultural materialist’, I’m in sympathy with you.

But really, I go further. I believe we do have an economic system in our DNA, and it’s the small-scale socialism that hunter-gatherers practiced, and their political system, where personal autonomy is maximized, coercion is minimized, and interdependence rather than “independence” is stressed. Find a way to recreate that in a state-level system and you’ll have unbeatable appeal; it would appeal to everyone but the sociopath.

Even then, it will be a struggle, because all state-level political systems and economies evolved to gratify those very sociopaths.

-stewartm

I had in mind research by the Harvard [conservative] economists led by Alesina [spelling] that demonstrates over time that very large scale systems commonly break up in history.

I would buy that, but not because of bigness. It’s just that historically, large-scale systems have always been autocratically ruled, and devolve into plunder economies (either based on plundering their neighbors, like Rome, or plundering their own populations, or plundering their ecological infrastructure). Because they are governed by autocratic elites who are shielded by wealth and status from the consequences of the unsustainability of their system, the system is allowed to continue with no essential reforms until the point of no return.

On that happy note, I’ll leave it to anyone to draw modern inferences.

-stewartm

If you accept your view, then there is no reason ever to attempt change. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is an all to easy “Out” for people who don’t want to try.

No, that’s not true at all. For one thing, you have to do something, even if it’s not likely to succeed.

But my view is indeed bleaker. It’s that change only occurs when the elites become so threatened and so frightened for either the loss of their wealth and/or their very lives that they’re willing to make concessions. Or, at least some of the elite are willing to break ranks and make concessions. I submit to you that’s really what happened in the 1930s and what allowed change.

And, to some extent, the Cold War and a hypothetical ideological enemy forced them to continue those concessions. That is, until the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism, and the supposed triumph of capitalism, they lost that fear. They believed that “We can now get away with ANYTHING!” (rubbing hands together). That’s precisely how they have behaved since.

-stewartm

But not all capitalists share the same objectives and they can and are played against each other.

Yes, several examples come to mind.

For instance, while conservatives tell us that they’re pro-free market and pro-private enterprise, they’re all to happy to crush these very things when it suits a larger agenda or is a threat to their power. Just like they’re happy to throw their supposed allegiance to states rights and local governance out the window when it runs counter to what they want. Their only consistent true principle is to maintain and extend the power of the oligarchs.

Examples I can think of right off the bat involve instances of the Drug War, Ed Meese’s War on Pornography, and now the War against Abortion Providers. Ed Meese tried to shut down pornography using the “local standards” interpretation (take a porn case to the most conservative Bible-Belt jurisdiction one can find) but his war failed with the internet and with Big companies like Time-Warner finding porn profitable. Recently, Republican legislatures are passing laws to make it essentially impossible for any abortion clinic to operate within their state.

And this is just social issue stuff. What if a worker-owned business really started to make inroads into the oligarch’s profits? Wouldn’t you think that they’d move to put it under impossible constraints in order to shut it down and go out of business?

-stewartm

Not having read the book, apologies if the question is already answered.

But your approach seems to hearken W. E B. Du Bois’s reply to Booker T. Washington regarding Civil Rights; that a focus on bringing about small-scale local economic changes w/o regard for changes in the larger political arena is doomed to failure. As soon as the PTB recognize your gains as enough to constitute a threat, they will use their political clout to crush you and take from you everything you have gained.

Your approach seems to assume that the PTB actually respect things like private ownership (for everyone but them) the “free market” and rule of law and fair play. They don’t. Capitalist and free-market ideology is just a fig leaf to cover naked aggrandizement, and they are happy to violate their own “principles” when it serves their purpose.

-stewartm

I would for today include John McCain as a somewhat good Republican, for this.

Of course, that means it has no chance of passing.

-stewartm

I would submit to you, however, that it is un-American to allow many of our citizens to be uninsured, that it is un-American to shunt money away from a strong military

Man, if he thinks that the US health care system is bloated and inefficient, he should start taking a look at that “strong military”. I’m of the opinion that if:

a) the government took and did itself some of the task it now contracts out to for-profit entities (goodbye, Xe!)

and

b) were really ruthless with its contractors and suppliers, then we could halve Pentagon spending. Certainly our near-WWII spending levels aren’t justified by the paltry amount of weaponry we receive.

The good thing about this is that you de-fang to an extent the military-industrial complex (you minimize their profit margins and ability to lobby).

-stewartm

Congress get Free Socialized Healthcare and they don’t live as long as us.

Why is that? Two things come to mind:

a) Type A personalities

b) Probably a lot of excessive alcohol consumption compared to the US average.

-stewartm

MATH & SCIENCE!! STANDARDIZED TESTS!!! FUCK LANGUAGE, THE ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES!!! GOTS TO KEEP UP WITH THOSE ASIANS!!!1

I have a history degree as well. In my case, it just doesn’t earn me a paycheck.
But your point is well-taken.

But it gets worse. I worry that we produce *too many* science grads, not too few. Not that math and science grads are bad things, it’s just nowadays you get too many entering the field for the wrong reasons–to make a buck. Too many get PhDs in a science field with the goal of not becoming practitioners, but using that as a stepping-stone into a management career. They are often lousy scientists for that reason.

What I’m seeing in today’s job market is “degree inflation”–requiring ever-higher degrees to qualify for jobs that don’t require them. We now are requiring AS degrees or even BS degrees for jobs that people with high school education could (and did) competently do. We require BS and MS degrees for jobs that people with AS degrees or vocational school training could do. We require PhDs for jobs that MS and BS people used to competently do.

Not that the jobs are harder now and require more education–that’s BS–they don’t. You can teach someone with a high school education a lot, if you’re willing to train them. Moreover, a bright person even with a degree outside the field can pick up the trade and possibly achieve a lot more expertise than displayed by many with advanced degrees. As for managerial jobs, they don’t require advanced technical knowledge at all (indeed, it’s quite impossible to be truly an expert about everything) but instead require a knowledge of the vocabulary and concepts.

If I had my druthers, our schools would be producing a lot fewer scientific PhDs, but a lot better ones, people who knew their topics inside and out, backwards and forwards, and who were comfortable (and rewarded) for remaining technical experts and teachers rather than sitting behind management desks all day. The BS/MS graduates would compose the bulk of actual practitioners, while techs could have AS/vocational school/high school backgrounds.

-stewartm

Thanks, good for corroboration.

My anecdotal evidence is important, still, because it directly opposes the neoliberal lie that “the jobs are out there, Americans just don’t have the right degrees”. What I’m seeing are BS and MS science graduates with biochemistry, biology, chemistry, biotechnology degreees–you know, all the hot new skills we’re told that Amurika needs to compete?–take high school jobs. Jobs that may be tangentially associated with their skillsets, but are far beneath what they’re capable of doing.

And if graduates with *these* supposedly “hot demand” skills are languishing, how ’bout what’s going on for everyone else?

-stewartm

We have kids graduating college with degrees in philosophy and history. There’s not much market for that.

1) How many? Not many.

2) My anecdotal evidence is seeing people with BS and MS science degrees take positions in labs that require only a high school education.

We have kids graduating college who have no critical thinking skills and can’t think farther ahead than to the next party.

The Bushes and Romneys and other children of the elites will do just fine, sir. It’s the rest of them that is a problem.

(And knowing someone who actually has attended privileged schools, that’s exactly the behaviors that these types exemplify. But *THEY* have no problems getting jobs).

Which brings us to the Big Lie:

Point is: the jobs are out there

If the jobs were truly out there, I wouldn’t be seeing people with masters of science degrees working shift work that only required a high school degree (and of course, by doing so bumping out those with associate or high school degrees). There just ain’t enough jobs, period.

-stewartm

What Summer’s really trying to say is that R&R’s real mistake was being caught

-stewartm

Tank Wall Street, so the retirement plans of boomers disappear. Do everything you can to cause boomers to sit in the jobs that they’d like to retire from.

I’m all for tanking Wall Street and the banks, but only because:

1) the Romneys and Koches have a LOT less money to buy US politicians;

2) the Boomers’ retirement plans going up in smoke forces the issue of strengthening (read, DOUBLING) Social Security and Medicare rather than weakening it). It also awakens some deluded middle-class Boomers into seeing that Wall Street is their enemy, not their savior.

Of course, #2 can’t happen even if needed as long as the 1 % have lots of money to buy Congress. So we have to bankrupt Wall Street first.

-stewartm

Yeah, we live in an era where blithering idiots like Ferguson are officially hailed as savants, and “nuts” like Krugman and Keynes are ignored.

-stewartm

There’s plenty of openings for non-tenured history teachers at many junior colleges and trade schools. He wouldn’t do much harm there.

He’s still do harm with his “counterfactual history” that sez that Germany winning WWI wasn’t a big deal and in fact the guys who brought you Best-Litovsk would have ushered in a grand era of European peace and harmony.

(Anyone else saying “WTF?” on that?)

-stewartm, his history competes with his economic theory