Re: Defeating The Top 1%; Request For Criticism

From: Andy F (aft627_at_aol.com)
Date: 06/15/04 

Date: 15 Jun 2004 15:50:34 GMT

Eric Atkinson wrote:

>The Tragedy of the Commons Problem
>
>Sorry it took a while to reply, but I had to look-up a book called
>Bionomics in the library which describes this problem much more
>clearly, and I wanted to pass that explanation on here. Therefore,
>I'll paraphase this problem as Rothschild described it, and as you
>described it as well, as follows:
>
>First, the larger the community ownership, the weaker the bonds of
>mutual obligation. Therefore, the more likely it becomes that somebody
>will abuse that community ownership, for it contradicts
>specialization, or employee ownership, which is required for
>efficiency in a world of limited resources.
>
>For example, if you go to a cafeteria with friends, you'd stick to
>your own personal food budget if you were alone, but let's say your
>boss decides to have the company pay for everybody's meal, thus
>creating community ownership of the food. The problem then becomes
>that everybody selects the most expensive items, going well over what
>they would normally spend if they had to pay for it themselves.
>
>Therefore, without the self-control that grows out of self-interest,
>out of employee ownership, illogical eonomic behavior pervades. In
>short, assets (wealth) rust away because the employee's don't own
>those assets and have no incentive to maintain them or improve them,
>so "everybody just pretends to work" as the Russians used to say; that
>is, they say to themselves "we'll all get an equal share no matter how
>hard we work, so why work hard". As such, their actual work is well
>below their actual production possibilities, thus creating an
>inefficient use of limited resources.
>
>Furthermore, this type of community ownership naturally promotes crime
>since people will steal assets when a system isn't properly rewarding
>them for their effort.
>
>Finally, extremely complex goods and services, such as micro-chips,
>can't be produced under this type of community ownership because of
>it's inability to create highly sophisticated and decentralized expert
>organizations, for central planning is the opposite of such
>decentralized planning. Therefore, the Russians couldn't easily create
>a company like Intel and its suppliers. Why? Mainly because would not
>be properly compensated and capitalized for their enormously complex
>technical task. Hence, the Russians, lacking this decentralization of
>specialization that puts investment and profit where investment and
>profit are due, were afraid that smart bombs would come raining down
>on them because they couldn't easily produce computer chips. Why?
>Because sophisticated engineers and scientists can't "pretend to work"
>and only "get an equal share", for they need massive investments (a
>highly unequal share) contained within massively decentralized
>organizations (again also highly unequal) to create computer chips.
>Thus, central planning simply wouldn't do, for it was far too slow and
>costly. Hence, the Russians, being sensible people, switched to a
>market-based economy so they wouldn't fall behind.
>
>That's the "tradgedy of the commons" problem and I first started
>thinking about this problem years ago, when Rothschild first explained
>it to me in his beloved-by-Wall-Street book, "Bionomics".
>
>Then, years later, it struck me one day the "tragedy of the commons"
>problem, when combined with this statement, from another famous
>thinker, "to keep the left hand from knowing what the right hand is
>doing" (Matthew 6:3), actually resulted in two groups within the
>commons: the customer group and the employee group. Furthermore, that
>the customer group's ownerhip of assets actually consisted of two
>parts: (1) their personal items, such as their home, car, cloths, and
>so forth, plus (2) what I call their secret entrepreneurial
>aspirations, their desire "to keep the left hand [their employee
>group] from knowing what the right hand [their customer group] was
>doing".
>
>In short, as every employee knows, it's very difficult to keep a
>secret from your employer about what you are doing. Why? Because your
>employer controls practically all organizational, human, and technical
>resources at your disposal, so they're going to know what you are
>doing, period. Unless! ... of course, you have secret assets and
>secret employee-accomplices who are together engaged in the pursuit of
>even-more specialized employee group profits for themselves, but
>outside their current employee group's knowledge.
>
>Therefore, although I have since interpreted this left-hand,
>right-hand saying combined with the "tradgedy of the commons" problem
>to mean a great many and multiple things (which are still left unsaid
>here), the main thing it means is that people need a secret means, an
>"outside the box" means, to obtain organizational, human, and
>technical resources in pursuit of NEW specialized employee profits for
>themselves; that is, to pursue their entreprenuerial aspirations, in
>secret. Therefore, the customer group ownership of which I speak, in
>addition to one's personal home and so forth, is a secret extension of
> each employee's ownerhip rights used to finance the development of
>new niches within the customer group. Said another way, after you
>deduct one's personal items, which are substantial, that will still
>leave a residual amount of ownership rights over assets within this
>50% customer share, and those rights are secretly assigned.
>
>This results in a new kind of chess match between employee groups and
>customer groups. For example, imagine playing a chess game where you
>could see some of the pieces, but not all of them, for some are in
>secret. Ambushes would unexpectly occur, as if by magic, to push the
>production possibilities curve even further, more rapidly, more
>unexpectedly, to new heights of innovation because people where
>allowed to do powerful things in secret; that is, without letting the
>left hand, their employee group, know what their right hand, their
>customer group, was doing. What do you think?
>
>
What exactly do you mean by a 'customer group?'
  

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