Loomio
Thu 29 Jun 2017 5:28PM

Thoughts?

KB

Kenneth Baumann Fri 30 Jun 2017 3:24PM

Seems like the standard lecture by Dr. Wolff. The bonus here is the Q&A at the end.

BM

benjamin melançon Tue 4 Jul 2017 12:15PM

Good stuff, as usual! The talk being at Google made me more aware than usual that the examples and terminology tend to be for physical goods producing corporations, with an occasional mention of 'services'. And it's not just the tech world that may find this approach doesn't resonate; as Prof. Wolff acknowledges in answering the questioner from China, capitalism's productive center has moved out of the US and other places where it grew up. Even while acknowledging that fact, and keeping the Marxian emphasis on production (though given the importance of marketing, sales, cleaning, and other support services to producing the experience that is intertwined with goods and services in a modern, Seth Godin-esque economy, perhaps this distinction should be de-emphasized), it would be good for more workers in the US to see their experience reflected in stories about the economy.

Slightly related, i've been talking to tech audiences about reclaiming economic rents. In particular, who should control the power, money or not, that comes from having a monopolistic position in a sector with strong network effects. This opens up the question of value, and where it comes from, in a way that is useful to thinking about economic control in the US.

Many platform businesses (Google, Facebook, Uber or Lyft, AirBnB) are natural monopolies in that network effects are very strong: the more people on the platform, the more value that the platform has to everyone on it. Google, to pick just one sector, has almost as large a share of the mobile OS market as Microsoft had (and still has, for now) of the desktop OS, and the more users the more developers building tools that work on it. A social network obviously derives its utility directly from the people on it. A ridehailing service needs both drivers and riders on its platform; a distributed room-letting service needs both people who have rooms and people who need rooms.

In any such case i don't think it should be workers alone who control what is done with this power, this capture of value (whether realized in monetary form or not), and am advocating for platform cooperatives in this context. Just as decisions affecting millions of workers, customers, and community members shouldn't be made by a few dozen people empowered by a the corporate form, the worker cooperative form seems the wrong approach when it would mean, say, a few thousand workers controlling a communication network, transportation network, or shelter network relied on by millions.

Once we start asking the question "who should be in charge of this?" in various contexts, however, it's sure to support worker cooperatives in most instances and other assertions of democratic control in the rest.

MG

Matt Grantham Tue 4 Jul 2017 2:36PM

The natural monopolies you refer at the moment have neither worker cooperatives or democratic control though you seem to be referring to them in a positive light Is the capitalist marketplace democratic in your vision of things?

Not to mention there are cooperatives where the members are both producers and consumers

JR

John Rhoads Tue 4 Jul 2017 5:32PM

@mlncn You are referring to the phenomena of a very large company with a huge market share being run by just a handful of people which we see often in the tech sector (millions of users and 10 employees). Although this scenario is more lopsided than the standard/traditional company, it will become more pronounced as automation progresses. However, it still doesn't mean an employee-owned coop is not wanted here. More importantly it stresses the need, as Wolff points out often, of democratizing not only the workplace but the consumer side as well. The big push is to democratize not only the production side but the consumer side. At the moment workplaces are not democratized and the consumer side is inferred to be democratic merely by how one spends his/her dollars. The dollar-vote scheme needs to end. In place needs to be real voting and real discussions about needs and resource management. In the end, democratizing the economy will be complete when businesses, consumers and resource planning will merge and become one via democracy and science. The next really big big game changer in the tech sector will be a platform/app that will address just that. The tech giants have an opportunity here and am baffled why they are not going Gung-Ho on it. They are scared to lose control and wealth. It's a pride thing I'm sure but it will not last.

BM

benjamin melançon Tue 4 Jul 2017 6:56PM

@mattgrantham To be clear, i described natural monopolies based on network effects without a value judgement (in economics jargon, that is in fact called a 'positive' statement, heh). Then i ask who should be in charge of rents flowing from network effects, and at no point is the answer capitalists! Given the Democracy at Work context of this group and Wolff's statements and affiliation, that enterprises should be democratically controlled by workers is taken as baseline. The value judgement (normative statement, in economic jargon) is that we the people should take control of rents flowing from network effects, and i further suggested that those who are most affected by the operations of a venture should be in control, which for a small business would be the workers but for any natural monopoly should be a larger slice of society.

I am familiar with hybrid coops and we are considering forming https://drutopia.org as one, but it's really hard for us to decide how different classes of membership should share power. The cooperative principal of one member, one vote ultimately makes the most sense and so no reason to have different classes of members. The Black Star Co-Op is accepted as a worker coop because it has democratic self-management for the workers, but it's technically a consumer cooperative: http://www.blackstar.coop/cooperate/ That's the model i personally find most intelligible for platform cooperatives also.

JR

John Rhoads Tue 4 Jul 2017 7:39PM

BTW, Loomio/Enspiral and it's founding members are involved in other groups on Loomio which you may find helpful - search on Alana Irving and Matt and Rich Bartlett. Also Nathan Schneider and Michel Bauwens are regulars here among others. If you look around Loomio, you will find some really relevant groups and content. My new favorite besides D@W is Commons Transition. A few other mentions here are P2P Foundation, The Internet of Ownership and Platform.coop.

BM

benjamin melançon Tue 4 Jul 2017 8:03PM

Yes, Loomio and Enspiral are pretty great but Loomio as a tool, a couple of the makers have made clear to me, is never meant to scale to mass democracy. The Platform Coop community isn't tackling this head-on yet, and i hope we do, but i hope we can learn a lot from worker cooperatives and maybe the handful of more democratic unions out there.

JR

John Rhoads Tue 4 Jul 2017 8:08PM

My take on scaling is more like the idea of modularity. Create a local system that works and then replicate it. That's how I see scale happening. We are accustomed to thinking top-down when it's much simpler than that. Instead of one giant monolithic system, it's a collection of lots of little ones. Another quick link is to the Sociocracy people which have a good idea on scaling. In other words, Loomio instances will be unique and local and eventually scale. What eventual hierarchical system gets employed is unknown at this point but the meat and potatoes is local.

MG

Matt Grantham Tue 4 Jul 2017 9:15PM

Positive light came from the term natural monopolies A euphemism in my opinion

BM

benjamin melançon Tue 4 Jul 2017 9:44PM

Not going to say that even brief contact with studying economics doesn't leave a person impaired, especially in ability to communicate, but look at it this way: any sector considered a 'natural' monopoly (electricity distribution, Internet tubing, social networks) are sectors that even standard capitalism-friendly economics has to acknowledge cannot be left to the private market.

One could argue that apparently oil refining is a natural monopoly, but here the case is stronger i think that it is a euphemism, and there's nothing natural about the monopolistic achievements of Standard Oil or its ever-merging descendants. Again, though, even from a a pro-capitalism economic perspective any honest economist is either looking at what unnatural conditions or unnatural practices are giving rise to monopolies and seeking to remove those conditions or stop those practices, or that same hypothetical honest economist acknowledges a sector will tend towards monopoly and therefore advocate for removing it from the private market and put people in charge.

There are Marxian and other economists who argue that all industries tend toward monopolistic practices in capitalism, and there's some evidence for that, and that does indeed serve to condemn capitalism. I tend to think that much of the time it's inequality, not markets, at fault, but markets without inequality wouldn't likely be called 'capital'ism.

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