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We need to demonstrate that cooperatives/LLPs/self-organizing systems, and all the other alternative non-hierarchical organizational systems can be more efficient, more motivated, more rewarding, more flexible and more socially oriented.
The problem is that none of these will make a difference if the motivation behind them remains exploitative.
There's no reason why a traditional market economy can't be run in a socially sustainable way. Increase progressive taxation, especially on unproductive speculation, fund innovation and sustainability, move money towards effective social programs - and so on.
The measures have been tried, they work, and there's no reason they couldn't work again.
What really needs to be changed is the motivation of the players. The Anglo-Saxon disease is based on the principle of fuck-you, and with the right culture fuck-you is just as likely to take over a non-hierarchical corporation as a hierarchical one.
Nothing will improve until the fuck-you narrative is debunked and replaced with a more culturally sustainable and inclusive ideology.
Until then elites will continue to see workers, customers and shareholders as resources to be exploited, and not as equals to be respected.
Which is why the requirement is for a framework within which it is to my advantage to cooperate with you/ work WITH you rather than to compete with you/ work FOR you, because we are "both on the same side".
That's what an "Open" Corporate like the UK LLP and its (non-Corporate) US relative, the LLC, enables, and why the structures I advocate are emerging.
Because they WORK.
They do so by bringing the different stakeholders together "inside the box" rather than leaving them as "costs" to be exploited outside it.
A non-hierarchical "Corporation" is still a Corporation, and it suffers from the fundamental faultline of all Corporations - whether or not "For Profit" - between the interests of the "Principal" Owner, and the "Agent" ie the management, whether they structure themselves hierarchically or not.
Production/revenue sharing between Capital provider/ Investor and user of Capital changes all that. It brings them on to the same side, takes the motivation of "self interest" and turns it around so that our self interest is actually served better by working WITH each other openly, transparently and cooperatively. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
LLPs are an answer - one of many - if the desire is there to be ethical in the first place.
If it's not, they do nothing to force ethical behaviour.
And conversely, lots of people succeed in trading ethically despite the incentives built in to the system to do otherwise.
Bu then there's nothing to stop the Chinese widget makers clubbing together in their own "People's Corporate", nicking our widget design and selling the widgets directly to our customers on the Net....
My thesis is that a Cooperative of service users, working with a Cooperative of service providers, is actually both an ethical and an optimal structure, and that those enterprises that do not use the structure will be at a disadvantage to those that do.
I guess we'll have to see if I'm right... "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
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