[p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p

[M. Fioretti]

On Sat, May 16, 2009 14:18:12 PM +0100, Wittel, Andreas wrote:
> Hi Marco,
> 
> thanks for making me aware of POCLAD. I have not heard of this
> inititiative before, it sounds very interesting, similar to the core
> critique of 'The Coproration'. I would agree that corporations (or
> some of them) are too powerful, however this would not be my main
> concern. The core concern is that the power in large corporations
> resides in the hands of few people, the power to make decisions
> about future strategies, and the power to distribute the profits
> among those who work for the corporation.

A potential limit I see in putting this as main concern is that it
directly deals only with the good or bad which happens to people
*inside* a corporation. As a paradox, fully collective ownership of
Union Carbide by all its employees would have not necessarily done any
good to the people in Bhopal, if all those employees had decided with
equal voting rights that "we don't care of those guys, let's maximize
our own proficts".

Whereas if corporations are forced to remain not too big, with a
limited lifespan and prohibited from buying each other, as POCLAD (I
believe) suggests, they could both create much less problems
externally AND have much less incentives and possibilities to become
places where 90% of profits and power accumulate in the hands of <10%
of the people involved.

On a related note, I wonder if collective ownership can ever really
work or if it makes sense at all unless an organization is quite
small, surely much smaller than todays multinationals.

Ownership is good when it corresponds to real possibilities for every
owner to make informed decisions and real possibilities to make things
better with your own work, otherwise it may be more hassles than
advantages. Both conditions are very hard to achieve for everybody in
a big company.

Marco
-- 
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84