Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
This is a really good article; lots of food for thought, and very compelling as something to jump off of. #followup
Highlights
id806977852
I believe that rather than attempt to indirectly alter a company’s behavior by trying to construct some kind of perfectly balanced market of private competitors, the government should, in most cases, just buy the company, keep its productive capacity intact, and then use its ownership rights to change its behaviors.
✏️ A thesis I want to get behind on 🔗 View Highlight
id806977845
Using selective public ownership in this way may seem like a radical proposition, but there is a precedent for it in the United States. The country’s postal logistics sector is dominated by three firms: UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service. If these were all private companies, the anti-bigness campaigners would surely be calling for them to be broken up. But because one of these companies—the USPS—is owned by the federal government and operates in a break-even manner, it’s not necessary. Whatever market power UPS and FedEx have is largely checked by the fact that customers can always turn to the USPS, which does not pursue the same kind of profit-maximizing pricing strategies as the other two.
✏️ An example of this thesis in play 🔗 View Highlight
id806978331
Even putting aside the impact this might have on quality, supply, and innovation, universal nationalization is a terrible idea. I say this as someone who thinks we should expand the Department of Veterans Affairs’ model for healthcare, believes the Department of Defense should build more and contract less, and firmly supports public education over charters and private schools. While the government should run some sectors of the economy, it is critical that significant parts be left to the rest of us.
✏️ A person making a counter-thesis… i think. 🔗 View Highlight
id806978359
The goal of an economy is human flourishing, which requires the freedom to speak, to associate, to play, love, and worship. But real freedom also requires basic healthcare, livable wages, and the absence of domination. The wisdom of the anti-monopoly movement is that you can’t have the first two without the third.
id806978373
An economy made for humans is one in which the people who build, work, sell, and negotiate do so from a position of meaningful dignity. Dignity requires the ability to say no, to turn away from a big corporation or a government employer. Freedom depends on decentralized power, on a web of industries that includes medium-size farms and producer-retailers, each making their own moral, aesthetic, and religious decisions.
✏️ I see… they’re saying that, yes we do need health and wages and being able to live, but it can’t come at the cost of serving one master (whether it’s corporate or government). There’s a sense of calling for decentralization.. of a web.. of power in the hands of the middle. 🔗 View Highlight
id806979904
We see this problem when finance runs so much of the economy and when a handful of employers dominate regional employment. When Amazon sets the terms for delivery drivers within miles of its warehouse, it undermines the freedom of every worker in that area. But the same is true when the government dominates employment. The union rights of workers then exist only by the grace of a good government, and any system that requires grace—instead of embedding power—will not remain a wholly free one.
✏️ Continuing that thought.. one master or the other; either will bring with it a sense of servitude.. of being at the mercy of a higher power. 🔗 View Highlight
id806980008
When people have been permitted to consolidate capital and leverage that power, we have seen how it leads to nursing-home deaths, poverty, and wage stagnation. The logic of investment overcomes community and seeks out ways to constrain the freedom of others. The government should not be so driven, the argument goes, and in many instances, the government can be more humane—but the logic of centralized power remains, and it too can overcome humanity.
✏️ It’s tempting to see government as the savior, when you paint it against the light of how corporations and capitalism has been mishandling things. Still, we have to consider what centralized power means in general. We have to think bigger. 🔗 View Highlight
id806980050
For human flourishing, we need local power. For more than 140 years, the co-op model has been at the heart of the progressive vision for a just economy, and for good reason. But this is a vision of private industry, not of nationalization. We need an economy with worker-owned and producer-owned cooperatives. And we also need medium-size companies with unionized workforces competing for employees.
✏️ The culmination of the counter-thesis.. local power. 🔗 View Highlight
id806980076
One of the grotesque errors of the 20th century was the belief that you could separate politics and economics, that power built in one arena would sit politely and not intrude into the other.
✏️ A question to ponder as well. Can you separate politics and economics? My gut gives firm no, and this is what we’re talking about here. 🔗 View Highlight