Herb Gintis critique of progressive economics | 69 comments (69 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Herb Gintis critique of progressive economics (none / 0)

But it seems obvious why commercial corporations are so ubiquitous - they are like armies. What appears to be inefficient brutality is intrinsic to their success. It occurs to me that one of the handicaps of coops is that they are in a lot of ways purer market organizations than corporations. Corporations derive a great deal of power from the class cohesion of managers across multiple industries and even nations.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 08:04:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Yes, the norm always seems ... (4.00 / 3)

... obvious, but at one time fiefdoms were ubiquitous and commercial corporations rare or non-existent ...

... the entire historical period in which they became ubiquitous has a common feature that is unlike all the periods before that when they were not, and which we know is a temporary feature which will not be true for most of the rest of this century.

Whether that is a coincidence or a dependence is something that will be put to the test.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 08:38:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Yes, the norm always seems ... (none / 0)

Well, one thing economists don't seem to get is that modern multinational corporations are very different to the industrial corporations of the 1700s or even 1900sin terms of control, sources of capital, organization etc. The ground is shifting under our feet even if it doesn't seem like it. The process of metrics for example, changes white collar work in those companies into something much more akin to being on the line.

And what I'm taking from Gintis is not that the current mode of economic organization is secure, but that the easy answers "progressives" have come up with may not be all that adequate. I could have read that passage from Klein and just nodded last year, and now I'm wondering whether it really has any substance.

Here's a good counter-argument.
http://www.iese.edu/en/files/6_40628.pdf

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 09:28:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 1)

... of progressives have less substance to them than they first appear to have ...

... is an awfully easy critique.

And much of the changes to what corporations "can do" are not changes in the organization or intrinsic capacities of corporations, but rather a matter of regaining permission to do things that at one time had been revoked, up to and including the one time revoked but increasingly regained right of hire and operate a private army.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 09:56:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 0)

What i had in mind was the emergence of professional management that migrates between companies, and the ability of top management to walk out of the company with vast fortunes not based on any investment of their own, the imposition of systems such as 6Sigma and the measurement of white collar work, the internal financialization of even industrial companies, the shift of stock ownership to mutual funds and other investment vehicles, the deep and ongoing involvement in the political process via professional lobbying and in shaping public culture via marketing

These companies don't look like 1850s manchester textile companies.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:21:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 1)

But almost all of that was present in the 1929 radio companies, in only superficially different guises. The one obvious exception being that upper management was tied to their companies, by virtue of being coterminous with the owners.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:54:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 0)

if that were the only difference, it would be a big one.

by rootless2 on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 10:24:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (4.00 / 2)

The ability of top management to walk out of companies with huge fortunes is no new capacity, but an old capacity regained, combined with the separation of formal ownership and executive control that underlay the 1920's Wall Street stock market boom.

I have no idea why 1850's Manchester textile companies would be considered state of the art for 1850's corporate development, when so much of the development of the corporate form and the separation of formal ownership and executive control is occurring in the railroadification of the US.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 12:20:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 0)

Really? I thought it would be obvious why 1850s Manchester textile factories would be brought up in a discussion about left economics.

by rootless2 on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 01:30:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 0)

Oh, Gintis critiqued left economics as well as progressive economics?

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 04:05:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (none / 0)

maybe you could clear up the difference between "progressive" and "left" for me?

by rootless2 on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 05:02:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The critique that the easy answers ... (4.00 / 2)

Hopefully not, since clearing up the difference requires pretending away the ambiguities in the terms.

right vs left is clearly a political dimension, with the ambiguity cleared up when its made clear what political arena and what time period in that political arena we are talking about. "left economics", as "right economics", is economics in service of the political requirements of the left coalition as opposed to economics in service of the political requirements of the right coalition.

progressive is vis a vis conservative or traditionalist, with the ambiguities being judged as progress against what criteria and progress of what, so "progressive economics" is a double entendre at least, possibly a treble entendre, with one reading "progress in understanding the material provisioning of society", and a second reading "economics that is useful to those who consider themselves political progressives" (with multiple criteria possible for political progress meaning that the second meaning could easily be two or three partly contradictory meanings).

And of course, liberal vis a vis authoritarian is ambiguous in terms of who is being liberated from what authority, so that those who are freeing commercial corporations to exercise power over citizens can imagine themselves as "liberating" the owners of the corporation from state authority, even as the citizens being oppressed by corporate power may themselves wish to be liberated from corporate authority.

Near as I can tell without investing more effort than was available to me today, Gintis is not meaning "progressive economics" in the sense of progress in the discipline of economics away from an uncritical application of a traditional toolkit under a traditional unit of analysis toward being a science of the material provisioning of society, but is meaning the much easier "progressive economics" in the sense that it is a synonym for "left economics", which is a falling off a log analysis, since placing a social science at the service of the immediate political ends of some political faction implies that there will be less there than meets the eye.

My comment was just an arch reminder that reading "progressive economics" as being synonymous with "left economics" implies that what Herb is aiming at is the intrinsically easier target.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue May 31st, 2011 at 02:27:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Herb Gintis critique of progressive economics | 69 comments (69 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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