The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter, as said by someone but who probably wasn’t Winston Churchill. Dunno why it’d be any different within a workplace versus politics. (Of course there’s also the idea that democracy is the worst except for all the others, which… I suppose. It’s certainly better than what the fascists and the tankies come up with although that’s not saying much.)
Also, this has certainly been tried although admittedly not in a holistic manner. The Nordic model is basically this blended with more traditional ownership structures. A mixture of the welfare state providing major services with privately owned enterprises alongside co-ops and “democratised workplaces.” And… it’s fine. Has some nice qualities when compared with contemporary socio-economic structures but the political process can muddy the waters and make things inefficient through perverse incentives. Not that similar perverse incentives don’t exist elsewhere, but y’know…
It’s like you said, the best option out of a bunch of flawed ones. We’ve not found the “perfect” governing system yet, but here in the Netherlands things are quite good. We’re slow to change, but when we do it often has quite good, long lasting impacts.
In my personal opinion our system is better than most.
Well, seems to work at least better than the alternatives that have been tried thus far. And, well, we’re running out of viable alternatives to try…
We didn’t try a social democracy with worker owned coops / democratized workplaces yet.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter, as said by someone but who probably wasn’t Winston Churchill. Dunno why it’d be any different within a workplace versus politics. (Of course there’s also the idea that democracy is the worst except for all the others, which… I suppose. It’s certainly better than what the fascists and the tankies come up with although that’s not saying much.)
Also, this has certainly been tried although admittedly not in a holistic manner. The Nordic model is basically this blended with more traditional ownership structures. A mixture of the welfare state providing major services with privately owned enterprises alongside co-ops and “democratised workplaces.” And… it’s fine. Has some nice qualities when compared with contemporary socio-economic structures but the political process can muddy the waters and make things inefficient through perverse incentives. Not that similar perverse incentives don’t exist elsewhere, but y’know…
It’s like you said, the best option out of a bunch of flawed ones. We’ve not found the “perfect” governing system yet, but here in the Netherlands things are quite good. We’re slow to change, but when we do it often has quite good, long lasting impacts. In my personal opinion our system is better than most.