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Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

joanwestenberg.medium.com

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Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#291

Post by indymike »

js8 wrote: post #240
indymike wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think capitalism is being misused in this sentence, and that is making it hard for people to make sense of. Capitalism is simply an economic system where the means of production are privately owned. Growth is not a requirement or even feature of capitalism. Being able to own companies, property and hold currency are all features of capitalism. If you are trying to say "infinite growth is unsustainable" that stands…

> Capitalism is simply an economic system where the means of production are privately owned. Just a nitpick, there is another condition, which is that the labor is traded on the free market under capitalism. I can imagine a society where everything is done in cooperatives where the workers are also the owners (they have shared private ownership).

The natural state in capitalism is that a worker owns their own means of production - their time. If one wants to trade their time into a collective, that is their time to trade. Slavery breaks this, and one of the more interesting facets of the American civil war was that the North (anti-slavery side) was much more efficient than was the South (which favored slavery), even in agriculture.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#292

Post by lazide »

stainforth wrote: post #289
oseityphelysiol wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the argument, but what’s the upside of the US approach? Germany is on par or better in society happiness (couldn’t find a metric to confirm that). Why do so many people feel the empty need for soulless growth of these monster companies?

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - Steinbeck

Very true - but it isn't just Americans, or even mostly Americans (by birth) playing this game, at least in tech.

I've worked with plenty of Indians, Germans, Chinese (fewer hard chargers though - they tend to stay in China more recently), French, Czech, Russians, all here to, for lack of a better phrase - to get paid. More than 'native born' Americans, that's for sure.

Even for 'native born' Americans, they almost all moved to the bay area (or the office/city they are in) from another state, sometimes half way across the country, and almost none grew up in the area the business or office is in. People who are ambitious will move to the opportunity.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#293

Post by Matticus_Rex »

A12-B wrote: post #166
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing this argument misses is that much of economic growth comes not from increasing consumption, but from making that consumption more efficient.

But the result is more consumption, because you spend the money saved on inefficiency on more consumption. If coca cola produces 1m bottles of coke in 1 year and finds a way to produce that many in half a year, they're not going to produce 1m bottles a year anymore, they're going to produce 2m bottles a year.

Probably not, no. They're already selling as many as they can at the current price -- there's no shortage of Coke out there. They might lower the price and thereby sell more (though they're unlikely to sell twice as much without more than halving the price), but that's not necessarily a bad thing; it means people are having to do less to get the same amount of Coke.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#294

Post by dv_dt »

cillian64 wrote: post #276
dv_dt wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I've been looking at how worker-owned cooperatives can be formed and work. The entry moats for tech businesses is low enough, and tech worker wealth is high enough that it really should be possible - or even common. One difficult part is that for the structure not to decay in the same way you're describing, you need truly shared ownership coupled with democratic decision making and that might be slower an…

I’ve been thinking about the same. Starting a company with good intentions is all well and good but the founders won’t want to or be able to run it forever, and then it seems like your options are either selling to a big company or going public. I’m interested to know more about experiences and practicalities of handing ownership to the employees in a tech company.

As far as I can tell the most public examples are both larger and smaller than what I feel would end up where a tech coop company would end up. Larger because examples like Mondragon corp is just much larger and much more stable than a starting coop would be. Smaller because much coop organization and literature is oriented to something like a coffee shop or restaurant.

A direction might be putting together financing as a coop to purchase an ongoing company that a single founder is maybe ready to turn over or sell - lifestyle companies ready to turn over are maybe an interesting category for this kind of transition.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#295

Post by vorpalhex »

eternalban wrote: post #290
vorpalhex wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usury in a basic definition means lending money with interest, and the collection of that interest. [1] Lending money involves risk. The only way to offset risk is with potential gain - ie, interest. You're not going to loan someone a few million, knowing you might lose it all, and having no expected gain. If you don't have loans of any kind, you basically don't have a market. You can't form most kinds of businesses,…

> Usury in a basic definition means lending money with interest, and the collection of that interest. [1] Good. This is fine. So we strike various other non-sequitors from your original reply: > Not even attempts at communism have survived removing dynamic markets. Free markets, profit making, private property, incorporation for making profit (by providing goods and services) are all entirely orthogonal to the very s…

Your own source:

``` We need not assume that interest rates were "economic" in the sense of being within the ability of most cultivators to pay. Abject need was the motive for agrarian debt. A key financial dynamic of ancient civilizations was precisely the problem of debt arrears (including unpaid tax collections) mounting up beyond the ability of many borrowers to pay. This is what led to the royal amargi, andurarum and misharum "Clean Slate" proclamations of Mesopotamia during 2400-1700 BC, cancelling agrarian debts (but not commercial obliga- tions, that is, the placement of money with tamkaru-merchantsto finance their trade ventures). ```

(Sorry for the long quote)

It then goes on to list the common interest rates of borrowing money for various markets which includes a listing for Mesopotamia. Just because they engaged in debt cancellation doesn't mean they didn't practice usury - quite the opposite, indicates they practiced it quite a bit.

Practically, the anthropological origins of usury prohibitions have very little to do with non-usury markets. Even those groups which you listed practice usury - they simply put those who practice it into secondary (or lower) social groups.

The reference to communism attempts isn't a non-sequitor since depending on the particulars of their brand of communism they either want to limit usury to only a national/popular entity or get rid of it entirely. When discussing non-usury based markets they are basically the closest modern examples we have - and it's worth noting the only surviving self-labeled communist country with a functioning economy is China, who allows usury!

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#296

Post by eternalban »

vorpalhex wrote: post #295
eternalban wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usury in a basic definition means lending money with interest, and the collection of that interest. [1] Good. This is fine. So we strike various other non-sequitors from your original reply: > Not even attempts at communism have survived removing dynamic markets. Free markets, profit making, private property, incorporation for making profit (by providing goods and services) are all entirely orthogonal to the very s…

Your own source: ``` We need not assume that interest rates were "economic" in the sense of being within the ability of most cultivators to pay. Abject need was the motive for agrarian debt. A key financial dynamic of ancient civilizations was precisely the problem of debt arrears (including unpaid tax collections) mounting up beyond the ability of many borrowers to pay. This is what led to the royal amargi, anduraru…

> Just because they engaged in debt cancellation doesn't mean they didn't practice usury - quite the opposite, indicates they practiced it quite a bit.

Well that is the whole point! Mesopotamia invented usury, among other long standing contributions, including the Zodiac, and various mod 60 constructs. And that amazing civilization totally collapsed.

Btw, Debt cancellation ("jubiliee") is the cause celebre of the economist I cited in my OP. If you are interested in the topic, Michael Hudson is your man.

https://michael-hudson.com/2018/08/and-forgive-them-their-de...

> Practically, the anthropological origins of usury prohibitions have very little to do with non-usury markets. Even those groups which you listed practice usury - they simply put those who practice it into secondary (or lower) social groups.

This is a fair point and one never underestimates the hypocrisy of mankind. That said, the point remains that it is interesting that something in the collective memory of the region zeroed in on usury as a "sin".

> The reference to communism attempts isn't a non-sequitor since depending on the particulars of their brand of communism they either want to limit usury to only a national/popular entity or get rid of it entirely.

As CCP has demonstrated, Communism is apparently an extremely plastic concept. /g My objection to your OP was and remains this: removing usury from the political-economy regime does not mean "communism".

> it's worth noting the only surviving self-labeled communist country with a functioning economy is China, who allows usury!

I don't know about you my fellow human, but I place very little value in the pronouncement of highly placed individuals, protected by their police states, regarding their ideals and aspirations.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#297

Post by jeofken »

vharuck wrote: post #115
jeofken wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same wrong incentives apply to individuals. It’d be better just not to tax people’s wages and also not bail failing companies or careers out, but let people and business find their own balance.

I'm not sure which careers you think have been bailed out. Politicians talk about saving certain professions (e.g. coal miners), but those bailouts end up being for the company. Do you have a different example?

I replied to a comment that wanted the government to demand money from innocent people to bail out people with obsolete careers, and the comment meant this was virtuous vs bailing corporations out, while in fact demanding money to bail out inefficiency is not virtuous regardless.

It’s better not to demand money from people and instead let them be free - the money you don’t tax will end up being spent on more goods and services, like how the average Swiss lives better than the average Norwegian, even if CH has no ports or natural resources, but instead has economic freedom

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#298

Post by grumple »

lnsru wrote: post #259
Ekaros wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take a natural monopoly. Like electric grid. Can these companies really grow forever? At some point they should have build transmission lines to everyone that they can profitably afford to. Then they can either expand to some other field or keep paying 5-20% to their owners as dividends each year... I don't see later option as bad one. Clearly they can provide service and invest to keep it running or even to op…

Assuming country is healthy with steady growing inhabitant number and this natural monopoly also grows naturally with it.

Populations will stabilize, relying on future population growth is just a pyramid scheme.

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#299

Post by js8 »

indymike wrote: post #291
js8 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalism is simply an economic system where the means of production are privately owned. Just a nitpick, there is another condition, which is that the labor is traded on the free market under capitalism. I can imagine a society where everything is done in cooperatives where the workers are also the owners (they have shared private ownership).

The natural state in capitalism is that a worker owns their own means of production - their time. If one wants to trade their time into a collective, that is their time to trade. Slavery breaks this, and one of the more interesting facets of the American civil war was that the North (anti-slavery side) was much more efficient than was the South (which favored slavery), even in agriculture.

Labor is not capital (means of production), it's not being "owned", since one cannot accumulate it. That analysis is deliberately obfuscating problems with capitalism, which stem from capital accumulation. (And if anything, it is slavery that turns labor into actual capital.)

Re: Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

#300

Post by indymike »

js8 wrote: post #299
indymike wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural state in capitalism is that a worker owns their own means of production - their time. If one wants to trade their time into a collective, that is their time to trade. Slavery breaks this, and one of the more interesting facets of the American civil war was that the North (anti-slavery side) was much more efficient than was the South (which favored slavery), even in agriculture.

Labor is not capital (means of production), it's not being "owned", since one cannot accumulate it. That analysis is deliberately obfuscating problems with capitalism, which stem from capital accumulation. (And if anything, it is slavery that turns labor into actual capital.)

You missed the point.
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