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Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

> I've argued we should combine this with a move towards a worker owned economy

While I'm sympathetic to this ideal, I don't think it works. All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making. Democratic processes should be reserved for governing shared resources, like water and air, where independent decision making has pathologies, and independent hierarchical systems are good for optimizing efficiency and value for all other goods and services. We just have to ensure there's competition and fairness for good outcomes.

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> All you'd do is add all the inefficiencies of politics into business-level decision making.

While I'm sympathetic to that line of thought, I feel like it ignores the reality that most business-level decision making is already inefficient and political. Where is the competition and fairness when a sustainable business is bought out, prices increased and development halted to wring out every bit of value, and then sold off for parts to competitors when no profit is left? There are so many common business practices that are actively hollowing out the free market.

> While I'm sympathetic to that line of thought, I feel like it ignores the reality that most business-level decision making is already inefficient and political.

Far less than it would be under the proposed system. There's effectively a dictator after all.

> Where is the competition and fairness when a sustainable business is bought out, prices increased and development halted to wring out every bit of value, and then sold off for parts to competitors when no profit is left?

I never said it didn't have pathologies of its own, which is why I said that we have to ensure there's competition and fairness. Arguably, anti-competitive laws have not been properly enforced for quite some time.

You're aware that all publicly traded companies are run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders?

The only change here is who limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved.

> run by a democratic system where the voters are shareholders

The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote".

Would you rather corporate governance be more like a political democracy, where no matter if someone has 30% of the shares or 0.0001%, they get the same vote? Or, perhaps the other way around, you'd like to change a political democracy to:

> limiting who allowed to own shares to people work are directly involved

where suffrage is limited to people who work and contribute to society?

> The more shares you hold, the greater your voice, when it comes to corporate governance. It's not at all the same as the typical idea of democracy as "one person, one vote".

"One person, one vote" is not how the presidency works in the USA.

Beyond that, you seem to trying setup some strawman positions rather than engaging in a discussion about anything anyone actually said.

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