The True Kingdom of Heaven: Democracy in the workplace

[nitro]

The problem isn't Capitalism, it is in King Capitalism. If instead you had Democratic Capitalism, where corporate structure is democratic instead of hierarchical both in power and profit, where everyone shared in profits in addition to a base salary, and every worker had voting power over even major concerns of the corporation, nearly every ill on the planet would disappear. It must be law, or it won't work. Small businesses don't need to do this, but every corporation over 50/100 employees would have this structure forced on them.

Instead, people obfuscate and want new Kings to make things right again. Whether it is King Jesus, or more earthly kings Trump & Clinton. They are two sides of the same coin. The only thing they should be doing is instituting new laws that Democratizes the workplace.

Everything else is a Rube Goldberg machine that is a band aid on a fatally flawed structure.

 

[peilthetraveler]

Would not work. You can't have some tattoo'd walmart worker voting on how walmart should be run. He's going to say stupid shit like "Lets give all people who do my job a $100k per year raise and lets raise prices to pay for it!"

I mean, to someone uneducated and ignorant it makes perfect sense. But the reality is, nobody will shop there anymore and everyone will be out of a job in a year.

It's a little like people that think we can just raise taxes and that equals more income. It doesn't.

 

[nitro]

Would not work.

As Richard Wolff has pointed out in another video I posted, that was what the Kings of old used to say: "Democracy won't work. You will have all these uneducated people making all sorts of bad decisions. Someone has to be on top." We know that is false - there are no more Kings in the civilized world anymore with any power. If Democracy works so well in the everyday world that is far more complex than a corporation, it can be made to work inside as a corporate structure.

You can't have some tattoo'd walmart worker voting on how walmart should be run. He's going to say stupid shit like "Lets give all people who do my job a $100k per year raise and lets raise prices to pay for it!"

That is false. The base salary is stable, tied to some real inflation metric. What is voted on and shared is the profits, and that is also voted on by the workers and management, in some equal weight vote or slightly favoring management (I have to think it through what the correct system is). In this scenario, the CEO will never be voted by the workers to take the slice of the profit of say more than a reasonable multiple of what they make, 10x 20x instead of the obscene multiples we have now where some clown that can't wipe his own ass makes 400x what the average worker makes in the same corporation. Same for other management.

I mean, to someone uneducated and ignorant it makes perfect sense. But the reality is, nobody will shop there anymore and everyone will be out of a job in a year.

It's a little like people that think we can just raise taxes and that equals more income. It doesn't.

In fact it is the other way around. Almost every university you go to it is not uncommon to find lots of socialists there because they have studied it extensively and come to the same conclusion worldwide. The most modern scholarly critique of [Neoliberalist] Capitalism (which is what we have today) is Piketty. Of course, the most famous by a mile is The Communist Manifesto.

 

[java]

The board of directors votes and most companies have profit sharing plans and anybody who wants to participate in the profits can simply buy a piece of the company publicly listed stock on a public exchange. How much more do you want?

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

What a surprise. Nitro is a Marxist.

 

[nitro]

The board of directors votes and most companies have profit sharing plans and anybody who wants to participate in the profits can simply buy a piece of the company publicly listed stock on a public exchange. How much more do you want?

A profit-sharing plan is a step in the right direction, but doesn't address many of the problems:

• First and foremost, it punishes the lowest earning workers, since these programs only match the participating employee contribution. If you can't afford even a single mishap in your life, as it is documented in the US that something like 50,000,000 people in the US can't handle even one misstep in their income stream without huge economic pain, then how on earth are they going to contribute to some plan that takes working money out of their budget?
• In addition, these profit sharing plans have the added problem that the employer has discretion to determine when and how much the company pays into the plan. The amount allocated to each individual account is usually based on the salary level of the employee. That doesn't work for obvious reasons.
• The base salary has to be a living wage. The sharing of the profits are for achieving those goals that are nearly impossible with only a living wage e.g., rising costs of being able to function in society like an education, health care, rising rents, daycare for families where both parents must work, etc.
  
• It also doesn't solve the problem that if a corporation can find better laws and/profit motives elsewhere, it can get up and move and destroy workers lives and entire cities. It doesn't solve the problem of having all the important issues aligned of all the stake holders, including the environment.
• Finally, it doesn't address the problem of democratization the corporate organization. It still leaves a very few people making decisions in a king like structure. That, as we have witnessed for four hundred years of King Capitalism, lead to huge disparity in income inequality and the destruction of and destabilization of societies.
• The board of directors is a communist organization. Read the title of this thread.

 

[nitro]

Many of the issues of our current King Capitalism systemic problems are explained here:

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Nitro, just because you may be a Marxist doesn't mean you can't make trenchant observations. I actually agree with you on the issue of dividing the spoils of our capitalist system. I would phrase it differently, but we agree its not equitable for virtually all increases in the country's wealth be grabbed by those at the very top. But I see it mainly as an issue of corporate governance. As much as I hate to advocate for the government to regulate salaries, the current system has gone off the rails. Maybe we legislate a maximum CEO to entry level salary multiple. That would give them an incentive to raise entry level salaries.

We need a law that if the government bails your company out, the top execs all get fired, no exceptions, and they are referred for criminal investigation.

We know traditional Bush republicans will never go for this kind of stuff. That's a big reason we are done with them.

 

[nitro]

Nitro, just because you may be a Marxist doesn't mean you can't make trenchant observations. ...

May I ask, and I realize I am stepping over my limits so you obviously don't have to answer, but I would like to ask you:

• What level of education did you finish?
• Have you ever lived outside the US for any extended period of time?
• Have you read the Communist Manifesto? Do you understand why it was written? Have you studied the French revolution?
• Please define the difference between Socialism and Communism.
• What is the relation of these economic systems and systems of governing a society like Democracy? Is Marxism an economic system or a system of structuring a society? Neither, maybe it was a critique?

 

[nitro]

Nitro, just because you may be a Marxist doesn't mean you can't make trenchant observations.

I actually agree with you on the issue of dividing the spoils of our capitalist system. I would phrase it differently, but we agree its not equitable for virtually all increases in the country's wealth be grabbed by those at the very top. But I see it mainly as an issue of corporate governance. As much as I hate to advocate for the government to regulate salaries, the current system has gone off the rails. Maybe we legislate a maximum CEO to entry level salary multiple. That would give them an incentive to raise entry level salaries.

Corporate governance is just code word for democratize the corporate structure. As a Trump supporter that you are, you certainly must be aware that incremental steps rarely work. Evolutionary steps is fine when the system is in equilibrium [being careful that the system is not on a false stability]. It is a disaster when it is unstable - the only thing that gets it out the rut is revolution. Your proposals barely register as evolutionary.

I don't want to legislate CEO pay by the government. I want the companies workers to vote on it. Hence the title of this thread. So the board proposes a range, 8x to 1,000,000x the lowest workers wage. All the workers vote. The only law that the government might impose is the lower bound. I propose 8x, but it can be set as the government pleases. BTW, "pay" includes every conceivable perk. Guess what the CEO is now going to pay his lowest paid worker.

We need a law that if the government bails your company out, the top execs all get fired, no exceptions, and they are referred for criminal investigation.

We know traditional Bush republicans will never go for this kind of stuff. That's a big reason we are done with them.

That is fine. Doesn't contradict anything I am proposing.