On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 12:22 PM, Natalie Golovin <[email protected]> wrote:
Damage to the environment is an externality that can be addressed (nothing is perfect) through taxes & subsidies.
agreed, to a point. The very purpose and goal of profit-maximisation pushes corporations to undercut them though, and now they have clearly captured the state apparatus. I believe that externalities need to be internalized, hence we need a new type of structure, market-oriented, profit-making, but not profit-maximising.
Capturing/measuring the costs is often difficult and relies on current technologies and legal structures.
true, but many people have been working on solutions, they need more political power to push them through, so now they can only be applied on small scales
Poverty & inequality are in different categories and no “system” can eradicate them.
must disagree with that one; they can be eradicated and a more just and sustainable system is within the realm of possibility; we don't need perfection, but we can do much better than today
Scarcity of resources and risk-taking play major roles in allocation, and choices become skewed as decisions are controlled by govt policies, religion, culture & personal ethics. Consider the simple example of providing HIV drugs to poor populations. Lengthening lives results in the infection of many more individuals unless the culture “buys in” to prevention like condom use. Profits pay for the returns to risk in bringing a product to market. Once a product successfully hits the street, competitors are encouraged until a dynamic equilibrium is reached and in the long-run profit is roughly equivalent to the interest rate plus depreciation. Today we have nothing close to that due to cartels, monopoly behavior, collusion, FED manipulation of interest rates, insufficient or over-regulation & favoritism etc. etc.,, all now made more complex on a global scale.
we can agree on this ..
Short Run vs Long Run & Individual vs Group considerations also interfere with desired results. Granted, things are a horrible, F’ed Up mess and there’s lots of criminal behavior going on, but you can’t blame it all on “seeking profits” Prices and profits are just signals.
they are not just signals, because they are embedded in a particular system, and this skews any signalling power they may have; also, price is a poor, 'single' signal; we can do better; think about the stigmergic nature of peer production where transparency allows global mutual coordination of a multitude of players, without pricing at all; my argument is that this can be transferred to material production, through collective open book management
*From:* Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> *Sent:* Thursday, November 24, 2011 7:13 PM *To:* P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [P2P-F] Product Maximizing Corporations (was: "corporateperson")
natalie: ideology aside, do you have any evidence for the efficient allocation of resources,
are you aware of the damage being done to the environment, on rising inequality, on persistent povery and hunger in the world?
in actual fact, corporations are the engine of systematic misallocation of resources, and precisely because of the profit maximisation logic,
I recommend reading peter barnes' capitalism 3.0 (but especially his new upcoming book), and kelly's divine right of capital,
Michel
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 4:48 AM, Natalie Golovin <[email protected]>wrote:
As to examples..I believe Kaiser Permanente is a model for cost-savings in the health care industry and also highly rated in patient outcomes It's essentially a not-for-profit Co-op of Doctors. As to general corporations, I don't see anything wrong with profit as a concept that motivates efficient allocation of resources. The problems arise from the time horizons & how the profits are dispersed.
-----Original Message----- From: mrc Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 11:07 AM To: P2P Foundation mailing list Cc: Patrick Anderson Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Product Maximizing Corporations (was: "corporateperson")
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On 11/23/2011 05:30 PM, Patrick Anderson wrote:
Michel Bauwens wrote:
much better is to change the DNA and not make them profit maximizers
It *is* possible to change the DNA (or 'goals') of corporations
do you know any who'd let their legal advantadges derived of their "corporation" status ?
(i'd like to know more about in comparision with the cooperative or association status for example) some examples
i.e. get to use an account from our bank accounts sharing world network for fundraising for your project.
i.e.2. get to use our legal number for doing your construction work if you invest what you get from that job in a 'nice' project (aproved without too much burocracy by us) (we won't tax you much)
i.e.3. is there an activists' activities insurance 'bigsomething' ? one that we could use for granting projects developments (i.e. some works for the state i.e. software implementations in the public administration is taken by i.e. novell(SUSELinux) and then passed from them, after taxing it, to a local subcontracted companies because the state papers asks you for having a big economic activity and insurance) (that was a real case that happened to 'me' while trying to get those jobs for other more free local free software communities. ended with: novell getting the job, people at schools misusing opensuse linux, it could go wrong so probably after no more free software proposed by the local goverment )
i.e.4. flash moneylender (i.e. at some cases you need to show you have 5000 $ for setting up a cooperative, you could withdraw that money the day after, but you need to show that)
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