What makes that entire setup capitalist is that it's privately funded and owned, as opposed to being subject to democratic control.
New and innovative initiatives are more often started from the mid- to low-levels of the company (three or four new lines of business have been started this way), and for the past year or so those initiatives are encouraged to become startups. The baby businesses are essentially put in an incubator where they have an initial budget and cash provided by the company but are encouraged to be individually profitable, report on their finances, are given coaching and regular meetings with startup business advisors, etc. And if they provide services back to the company, they're supposed to bill teams for those services. (The company still provides salary and benefits to the employees who start businesses within the company; there's some accounting magic to adjust which department budget actually pays for these.)
Examples of internal businesses started include:
* delivery of cafe drinks and food (with a delivery charge paid for by the receiving employee)
* conference room ownership and maintenance: these can now be permanently rented by teams, and the business that "owns" them is responsible for decorating, cleaning, providing technology services, etc.
* balloons, party supplies, swag, and desk toys, purchased either by the employee or their team
And businesses started with a focus outside the company include:
* providing detailed retail sales and product category data to suppliers and manufacturers
* tools to identify and encourage employee networks (who knows who, what skills does each employee have, who may provide an introduction to another employee)
* tools for polling and identifying employee sentiment
* self-organization consulting, training, mentoring, and software
* company tours (at $10 per visitor)
B) Why is democracy a prerequisit for socialism?
Diffuse power spread amongst many small power centers resists central control.
In a two-party system, there are two flavors of propaganda and people can choose which political machine they want picking the candidates. In a one-party system like we've seen with the great Socialist states of the 20th century or with American party primaries, leadership control over elections is even more blatant.
In the American system, for example, the existence of third party or non-Machine candidates acts as a pressure valve that ensures no real change can happen, since the major parties can divvy up the successful rhetoric and defuse it with their own loyal candidates, while anyone else who gets elected will be in too small a number to form an effective legislative caucus.
The result of individual elections isn't important. What matters is how the system functions in aggregate.
The polarizing antagonism between our political parties is a symbiotic relationship that keeps either one from having to own the consequences as both continue to feed off their common host. The party that gets elected determines which group of ultra-rich interests gets preferential treatment in looting the economy.
Good choices do not get handed to you on a silver platter any more than anything else in life. That doesn't change the fact that in a democracy, if enough people get together and FUCKING VOTE instead of sitting at home gazing at their navels and feeling sorry for themselves, they can change the world.
BTW, love him or hate him, Donald Trump is the poster child for democracy in action. He did not get to be president because some shadowy Powers That Be decided to make him president. He got to be president because he convinced tens of millions of people to FUCKING VOTE for him.
If you would like to support a good candidate, you should consider donating to Ross Barkan for NY State Senate: http://rossbarkan.com/
You certainly left me with that impression when you wrote, "We get to choose between corporate feudalism and outright fascism. Great choices we have there."
> Ross Barkan
... is a Democrat. So now you're asking me to donate to a corporate feudalist?
(BTW, if you want to respond to that, I suggest you look up my donation record in the FEC database before you do.)
Bernie Sanders is also a Democrat, but look at the kind of games party leadership played against him to make sure their preferred candidate got the nomination. Don't pretend you don't understand the difference between running under a party and being part of party leadership.
I happen to have a productized campaign contributions and expenditures database at my fingertips, so maybe I'll take you up on the offer to check. What state are you in?
EDIT: Your donations are probably to candidates in California, and we don't have that normalized and loaded yet.
Is not running AFAIK.
> Bernie Sanders is also a Democrat
No, he's an independent.
> Suppose we had Elizabeth Warren as a candidate instead?
Elizabeth Warren already holds elected office and is not up for re-election this cycle.
> Your donations are probably to candidates in California,
Don't make assumptions.
> we don't have that normalized and loaded yet.
And what exactly do you expect me to do about that?
I appreciate the fact that you are actually trying to move the needle, but you need to focus. Words matter.
"[Voting] only matters if voting actually functions as the root cause of election victory, but in practice it is merely an illusion of choice."
Don't confuse a data point with a recommendation. Data points are always in the past. Activism can only be effective in the future.
Your example had flaws I attempted to point out, but you are going to such great lengths to find any reason to misunderstand and mix up my statements that I find it both uncharitable and uncanny.
Are you somehow claiming Bernie did not run against Hillary in the democratic primary, and that party leadership did not attempt to sabotage his campaign in favor of their preferred candidate? Why did you suddenly switch from past tense to the present to claim a misunderstanding instead of addressing my point directly?
But it was still a choice. And people's votes still mattered. (And BTW, tens of millions of people still purport to be happy with the outcome.)
A choice between staying in an abusive relationship and killing yourself does not meet the criteria for an uncoerced choice, especially when it is being offered by the people with whom you are in an abusive relationship. Not killing yourself doesn't imply you consent to being in an abusive relationship. You'd have to be trying really hard to consider that a choice except in the most literal unhelpful sense.
Even our legal system (mostly) understands that you can't have a valid contract without consideration on both sides.
"in practice it is merely an illusion of choice"
I think it's a real choice, not an illusion, and that therefore votes matter. You may not be happy with any of the options, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a real choice, votes matter, and the outcomes of elections really can and do change the course of history, for better or for worse.
As an aside, if you are not happy with the choices, you can do something about that too, but effecting that kind of change does require more work than merely voting.
We don't need to agree on the definition of choice, but as long as political machines are allowed to keep playing these games, we're going to keep voting into an effectively captured playing field, and our decline as a society will continue.
The difference between slow decline and quick decline is important, but we still lose.
Illusion of choice strongly implies that the choice does not matter in reality. Yet you go on to say this:
> One is obviously worse than the other, but neither are for the benefit of the American people.
If X predictably scrapes me up very badly but Y mortally wounds me, can you please explain how is choosing X over Y "an illusion of choice?"
Edit: let me abstract out the question to avoid digressions. If X bad but Y is worse, can you please explain how is choosing X over Y "an illusion of choice?"
Our two-party system functions as such a fork, multiplied by 100 million. Whether you think the Republicans or Democrats represent the queen or the rook is where Pick-Your-Own-Propaganda becomes a more effective tool than the easy-to-spot state-sponsored propaganda used in single-party socialist regimes such as the USSR or PRC.
In one sense of the analogy, you are correct: people who aren't filthy rich are deluded if they think their choice of presidential candidate will substantially improve their economic predicament. In a more important sense, you are wrong: Trump isn't a symbolic link pointing to the same establishment that was behind Clinton.
Put another way-- this was not the year to code up a random boolean generator to pick your candidate for you. Sometimes making the correct choice between two bad options is extremely important, even if the less bad option was set as a trap for you. Now we're living through the most expensive civics lesson as to why.
It's like trying to beat the house at gambling. Individual losses are possible, but the house wins anyway.
Don’t confuse being unhappy with the choices on offer as there being no real choice. That one election has consequences still being felt today all around the world.