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Comment by 6cd6beb | Hacker News Reader

"It's ok to be greedy/selfish" is a clickbait title for the statement that you look out for yourself first and foremost whether you admit it or not, and you want things innately.

In a well regulated capitalist environment, those drives are yoked in a way that the paths through which you become rich and powerful and sexy are the same paths through which you improve the lives of others around you.

In a poorly regulated one you get dupont and enron, but show me a silver-bullet government theory and I'll show you an unrealistic fantasy.

>A mindset of "greed is good" and "it's okay to be self" does not even try to understand the difference between "need" and "want"

You're assigning that. Honestly I don't think most of Ayn Rand's critics have read her books.

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The "well regulated capitalist environment" of which you speak is the fantasy. It has never existed.

What could exist is a world based on economic democracy, where no one becomes rich or powerful and everyone has to work together because society is structured to prevent anyone from taking power for themselves.

An economy where the stock corporation is replaced by the worker cooperative -- still an independent business operating in a free market of goods and services, but governed democratically by its workers -- would be much closer to that reality. No one would be able to amass much personal power. And any power amassed would always be held in check by the democratic structures that granted it. A world like that would do a much better job of preventing the accumulation of personal wealth way beyond need.

An economy that strangles the one overarching thing it needs for its very success.....incentive.

You don't need "get tons of power" as an incentive. Most people are plenty motivated by the "make enough to live a good life" and "have meaningful work". Plus, in a democratic socialist economy, the average worker would have much more incentive to get creative than they do in the current economy. Because they own the business and directly reap the benefits of their innovations. In the current economy, the average worker has very little incentive, by comparison, to innovate new efficiencies. They won't benefit. At best they'll get a promotion or a bonus, and not even that is guaranteed.

You're just using different words to describe socialism, which I frankly don't think needs any further arguments against it besides pointing at it's attempted implementations.

No, that's not socialism. Socialism is "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole" (from dictionary.com). dbingham is proposing something different - vesting the ownership and control of enterprises in the workers at those enterprises, not in society as a whole.

I think the closest to this, in current practice, is the German model, where workers have at least a say in the direction of their enterprises (not sure about ownership). It seems to be working out really well for them.

Can you name an example?

I can't give you a specific example. The kind of thing I was talking about is called a "work council" (or, let's see if I can get German in here without mangling it, "Betriebsräte").

It is, technically, a form of Democratic Socialism - you could also call it Free Market Socialism, but it hasn't been tried anywhere. Only state socialism has been tried.

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