On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob La Quey wrote: >> >> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 7:56 AM, Martin Franco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>>> You imply that a business owner should take all the risks but at best >>>> break even, while only his employees make money? >>> >>> I meant to imply that there should be no business owner, that the >>> business should be owned by its employees, not by a single/few >>> individuals. >> >> My experience has been that very few people want to take on >> the responsibilities and risks of ownership. People want to >> share profits but rarely losses. In a world where all risk >> cannot be avoided one must come up with a mechanism for >> compensating the risk takers. How do you propose to do this? > > There is an implication that the business owners are taking risk.
Elsewhere I pointed out that risk is also not equitably distributed. But, no matter how inequitably distributed risk, exists and will not go away. Nearly everyone seeks to push risk off onto another. > The current debacle on Wall Street highlights that those people are not > expecting that there is risk involved. > > Risk is only for the small fry, dontcha know. I understand your sarcasm. It is an accurate critique of the system. But hard to cure. >> Profit = Resources retained for future use. Inequity of distribution >> exists in all known human systems. Inequity of risk also exists. >> Unfortunately classical Marxist analysis of all of these problems >> is superficial and impedes and real understanding of the problems. >> The Marxist systems have tended to degenerate into bureaucratic >> state monopolies of the worst possible kind. Anarchism, in the sense >> that you used it, has not ever been found to be persistent. A >> sustainable, equitable economy remains an open problem. An open >> problem not likely to succumb to old dogmas. > > I don't think such a sustainable, fully-equitable economy exists. I agree. But it might, though the chances are slim. So the problem is open. Perhaps we can all agree that the system could be more sustainable and more equitable. Even if we agree upon that it is highly likely that we will disagree upon how to make it so. >There > must be some inequity (originally spelled that inequitability--the Net > really is making me stupid) to drive motion in the economy. The goals > should probably be A) a bottom level that we consider a fair starting point > and B) the opportunity to rise from there without a lot of barriers. > > The problem currently is that we favor those who have already succeeded. > People who have already succeeded should have *fewer* protections from risk > rather than more. But one of the incentives to rise, and a powerful incentive it is, is so that people one cares for will have more protection from risk. So the puzzle is how to balance these tendencies. > Please note: this is different from "we should take their money." While I > am no Microsoft fan, I do not want to see them brought down. I *do* want to > see others helped up so that they can provide viable alternatives. Other than "we" favors the successful. A good example is the network effect, which acts as a powerfully conservative force once a network is in place. True of social networks as well as ones like the Internet. BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
