Daily Writing: Concordance and the Middle Way
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
- Edward Abbey
Recently I was doing some research on Heraclitus. I'm particularly interested in the idea of enantiodromia and the concordance of opposites that is suggested in Heraclitus' writings. In the course of that research I ran across this article at The League of Ordinary Gentleman.
Being a sucker for bowler hats, I subscribed to their RSS feed. I also noticed an article there entitled Thieves which I read and liked. The concepts of Third Way economics and distributism strike me as offering a kind of concordance:
Essentially, distributism distinguishes itself by its distribution of property (not to be confused with redistribution of capital that would be carried out by most socialist plans of governance). While socialism allows no individuals to own productive property (it all being under state, community, or workers' control), and capitalism allows only a few to own it, distributism itself seeks to ensure that most people will become owners of productive property.
I also like the ideas of game theory advanced by John Nash, particularly that a mixture of cooperation and competition produces the best results for everyone when there is transparency of motives and goals. Socialism and communism put too much emphasis on cooperation, while plutarchic capitalism favors too much competition and necessitates consumerism via the "growth for the sake of growth" ideology that Abbey attributes to cancer. I think that the coop business model is a good one when the coops compete against each other in a free marketplace.
As I pondered all this, I thought about a job I had in college at the Longaberger Company. There were a few elements of that business which were particularly innovative:
1) Employees who made baskets were paid per-piece with a set daily quota. If they made their quota in 3 hours, their shift was over. They all drew chips each day to determine what they'd be making, and were allowed to trade. In this way, they could specialize and get very good at making a certain basket.
2) Employees elected their supervisors from a pool of qualified peers. This ensured (in theory) that the hardest workers were rewarded and that everyone had the greatest respect possible for their boss. I'm unaware of any other such democratically run businesses, though I'm sure they exist.
3) Dave Longaberger was committed to improving his employee's lives. Dresden, Ohio is the closest I've come to a true company town. At least Dave was a benevolent dictator. His goal was to provide all his employees with access to dental and medical care, child care and the other services they needed most. His plan was to hire doctors and dentists to allow the employees access during their shift breaks or before/after work. Because there was no choice of providers, I'm not certain that this was the best solution. I'm also not sure if this was implemented before his death, or if his children have continued with his vision.
Now, the Longaberger Company was not worker-owned, but I believe that at least #1 and #2 above would be good policies to have in a coop. The most obvious advantage to worker-ownership is that employees are self-motivated. They stand to gain or lose based on how well their company performs. Merely putting in your hours for a paycheck and doing the minimum amount of work is a losing proposition.
I think that distributism is a more sustainable form of economy than the one we have now (and I'm using the word sustainable in a purely economic and non-ecological sense for now- ignore that the roots of economy and ecology are the same for the moment). In general, I think that a trend toward localism is needed to counterbalance the globalism of the past two decades. The concentration of capital in the hands of a few is poisonous to democracy as we are witnessing now.
In an ecological sense, I think that distributing both food and energy production are likewise the solutions to sustainability.
My thoughts on all these issues are still pretty runny and only half-gelled. I put off writing this yesterday in the hope of a little more clarity. If and when it comes, it will be down in the comments.
