A radical (utopian?) position!
What we experienced with state enterprises and so-called “companies owned by the people” (VEB) was rather bad. As a matter of principle, we hate monopolies (not only state-owned ones). Privatization and state-ownership also disappointed us. Consequently, here is what I think:
We need shared enterprises for the solution of the great problems and for shaping our future:
- These enterprises should be free of competition and organized as co-operative societies. Or else they should be owned publicly.
- They must subscribe to the values “fairness” and “transparency”. There must be a hundred per cent guarantee that these values are also realized.
- A modern and reasonably controlled (self) management must see to it that these enterprises remain lively, innovative and capable of change.
- These enterprises should no longer be restricted by job protection, strike laws, bidding laws when contracts are handed out or other legal super-regulations that make no sense at all.
Note:
An enterprise with guaranteed fairness needs no job protection and no strike law.
As a general rule, public bidding renders catastrophic results. In the days when public bidding still worked, the bidding process was a camouflaged type of cooperation between “state-ownership” and “industry”.
Absolute transparency makes corruption almost impossible and you can do without public bidding.
As to the rest of economy, they should allow and promote free enterprise. Mind you, they should give free enterprise exactly the rules written down in the Bavarian Constitution (Bayerischen Verfassung). Including competition and all the reglations appropriate in a social market economy. But, please, make them modern.
Incidentally, the factors 2 to 3 will be as crucial for cooperative enterprises as they are for private enterprises.
It is also interesting that, especially in German medium-sized enterprises, there are companies that almost enjoy monopolistic status, and still they are efficient and customer-oriented. And they have highly motivated employees and extremely satisfied customers. 😉
Dogmatic class struggle and protection of acquired possessions have no right to exist in a fair and transparent economy. And the same is true for the current regulation mania of several legal branches on several levels that have lost all sense of reality. And to top it: social justice is only possible (if at all) through an “unconditional basic income”. Everything else will swallow us whole, both in terms of bureaucracy and cost.
Just like many more things will have to change in this world. For instance the meaning of the word ownership.
Because in many cases, like mobility, ownership is a synonym for wastefulness.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I already wrote a little about this twice. Private Versus State-Owned (Privat- versus Staatsbetrieb) and Public Bidding (Ausschreibung). Many thanks to my readers for all the comments!
P.S.1
Click here Drehscheibe for all the articles of my entrepreneur’s diary!
P.S.2
🙁 I will no longer set “more”, because it eats up the English translations – problem with wordpress and foreign language plugin
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