Richard Wolff: Replace Capitalism
youtu.be
youtu.be
In fact, this is antithetical to Startups, which can only exist in capitalism.
This is overtly political post to a full-hour video with no summary, but I guess it would be "we'll make communism work this time"
The alternative he proposes is not communism. At least, not in the top-down governmental-controlled sense of communism tried in Russia, China and the like. He's not suggesting the end of large companies, small companies, or companies with outside investors (shareholders). There is no reason why startups could not exist or flourish if organised along the lines he suggests. In fact, startups would probably be the best place to try implementing his ideas, to show if (that?) they can work.
Neither is it overly political. He has a go at Republicans and Democrats alike. Maybe a bit more so at Republicans, but they do make themselves easier targets w.r.t. rampant 1%-centricism.
This is extremely political, the fact that he is too extreme for democrats only underlines that.
I'm a libertarian and I don't spam HN with pro free-market links because it doesn't belong here.
He's proposing a change in the way that they are governed, such that the employees democratically decide the direction of the company, rather than have that dictactorially imposed by the ruling class^W^Wboard of directors. Giving the workers more control over the direction of a company is certainly something that adherents of "pure" non-state-controlled communism would be aligned with, but using democracy to achieve his ends is something that will confuse many who find it hard to separate political and economic worldviews.
His points about how capitalism /as we currently practice it/ seems to be inherently unstable - 11 significant downturns in the 70-odd years between the Great Depression and our current major crisis - seem valid. Rather than throw capitalism out entirely, he seems to be trying to find a clever hack that would make it less volatile.
FWIW, I don't think his proposal is right. I'm not sure exactly what I think is wrong with it yet, but I think he's got an interesting idea which is worthy of discussion. And his insight into the 180 year history of how and why we got to where we are now is incredibly thought-provoking.
So, I thought, rebut rather than downvote.
(It appears not many other people agree. That's fair enough. Meh.)
You can start your own company now and run it like a collective. If I sacrifice years of my life to start a company, I should get to decide how that company operates. We debate systems like healthcare because they are government run (or could be). Private companies shouldn't be completely organized and run by the government. We have the freedon to run a company in any way that we want. He is proposing taking away those freedoms.
If you look at history, terrible economies have led to terrible people like this getting into power. I still can't believe he's proposing a 94% tax rate over $200K or essentially capping max potential earnings. The world is a different place. If this were to ever happen, any intelligent person would start businesses elsewhere. The Internet has made this much easier.
The occupy movement isn't a good thing to get behind. It was a collection of hippy rich kids that wanted to smoke pot and get into drum circles. I never took it seriously and neither did 99% (yes this is intentional) of the population.
I might take him seriously if he started his own worker collective to prove that it's an actual working model. Talk is cheap.
Especially from someone that has been stuck in academia for the past 10+ years.