If I ever make the history books for business and economics, it will be for, as far as I know, the only original idea I came up with:
The symbiotic relationship between small and large business. Riffing on Drucker, small businesses are innovators and large businesses are conservators. Innovators introduce the new. Large businesses lower the price of the new. The Conservators "steal" the idea once it is perfected enough from iteration at the specialty level to warrant the application of the economies of scale to lower the price and widen access to the product, to the point everyone has access to what was once few, lousy, expensive and slow to come by. Conservators make the innovation more better cheaper faster.
As an aside, IPR is ridiculous in this reality-based scenario since the innovaor is constantly changing the idea, and the conservator "steals" the idea and sells it into a market the innovator could never reach. Symbiotic.
Henry VIII was once one of the richest people on earth. Today virtually every american has what Henry VIII had. We did not get as rich has Hank, the costs were lowered to where we all have access to those goods and services. It was that period of economic freedom that got us here.
Conceptually, big business is benign. It has been hard for me to reconcile the role of the conservator in realtity, with my theory. Name a big biz does not depend on subsidies and special regulations in order to survive? Where would Walmart be without food stamps keeping their employees alive? Where would Costco be wthout imminent domain seizing private ptoperty to open a temporary tax advantage for the local authorities who tax both big and small until the small disappear, and there is only big? How can a small ISP maintain the records required for all ISPs? Only huge need apply.
My research into cooperatives has convinced me the proper economic structure for "big business" is the cooperative. It is a funny thing, cooperatives seem to be borne of a socialist bent, and where the cooperative takes socialism seriously, they fail (such as the food co-op on Shattuck in Berkeley). The ones that get biggest while succeeding would be called more anarchic, and anarchy looks conservative to liberals.
My favorite big businesses are REI, PCC and coop apartments. We have Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, but there are others that make more sense, as in buying cooperatives rather than provision cooperatives.
In any event, cooperatives give us all of the all of the benefits of the large business, but none of the aggregation of power unto the extremely few. Eliminate the legal protections of the corporation, I agree with that, and they will go away. But progressives are calling for the state, which they control, to add more control to corporations. No, don't amend it, end it.
We need not overthrow anything, just stop protecting unnatural social structures.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
The symbiotic relationship between small and large business. Riffing on Drucker, small businesses are innovators and large businesses are conservators. Innovators introduce the new. Large businesses lower the price of the new. The Conservators "steal" the idea once it is perfected enough from iteration at the specialty level to warrant the application of the economies of scale to lower the price and widen access to the product, to the point everyone has access to what was once few, lousy, expensive and slow to come by. Conservators make the innovation more better cheaper faster.
As an aside, IPR is ridiculous in this reality-based scenario since the innovaor is constantly changing the idea, and the conservator "steals" the idea and sells it into a market the innovator could never reach. Symbiotic.
Henry VIII was once one of the richest people on earth. Today virtually every american has what Henry VIII had. We did not get as rich has Hank, the costs were lowered to where we all have access to those goods and services. It was that period of economic freedom that got us here.
Conceptually, big business is benign. It has been hard for me to reconcile the role of the conservator in realtity, with my theory. Name a big biz does not depend on subsidies and special regulations in order to survive? Where would Walmart be without food stamps keeping their employees alive? Where would Costco be wthout imminent domain seizing private ptoperty to open a temporary tax advantage for the local authorities who tax both big and small until the small disappear, and there is only big? How can a small ISP maintain the records required for all ISPs? Only huge need apply.
My research into cooperatives has convinced me the proper economic structure for "big business" is the cooperative. It is a funny thing, cooperatives seem to be borne of a socialist bent, and where the cooperative takes socialism seriously, they fail (such as the food co-op on Shattuck in Berkeley). The ones that get biggest while succeeding would be called more anarchic, and anarchy looks conservative to liberals.
My favorite big businesses are REI, PCC and coop apartments. We have Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, but there are others that make more sense, as in buying cooperatives rather than provision cooperatives.
In any event, cooperatives give us all of the all of the benefits of the large business, but none of the aggregation of power unto the extremely few. Eliminate the legal protections of the corporation, I agree with that, and they will go away. But progressives are calling for the state, which they control, to add more control to corporations. No, don't amend it, end it.
We need not overthrow anything, just stop protecting unnatural social structures.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
3 comments:
Like the Cooperative Mondragon in Spain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
http://www.solidarityeconomy.net/2013/09/25/things-are-different-when-a-university-is-owned-by-faculty-staff-and-worker-coops/
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/4139-hajoon-changs-bad-samaritans-the-myth-of-free-trade-and-the-secret-history-of-capitalism
The "Free Trade" in that book is a straw man. It misdefines free trade, then goes on to blame the effects of corporate cronyism on free trade. Alexander Hamilton was one of the bad guys, no proponent of free trade. Free trade is unilateral, competition is to strive with, not to fight with. The argument in the article is a progressive hash.
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