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Re: HOMESTEAD: Myth of Employee Ownership
ESOP law is not to blame. The law itself is flexible. It allows for
traditional top-down management philosophies to prevail. It also
allows for structured democracy to operate. That's why we invented the
Justice-Based Management model. (See
http://www.cesj.org/jbm/whatisjbm.htm)
The real problem lies in academia and its blindness to the empowering
moral philosophy of Father William Ferree (on Social Justice and Social
Charity) and that of Kelso and Adler (on Economic Justice). As long as
future leaders continue to be educated in the moral philosophies of
capitalism and socialism, their thought patterns will continue to
reflect autocratic, elitist principles and feudalistic behavior to
their fellow workers, not the structured democracy of Justice-Based
Management. I don't blame these leaders. I blame the moral systems
within which these leaders (corporate executive, labor leaders,
politicians, media, teachers, etc.) operate. Those who are serious
focus on changing social systems and the paradigms which guide the
architects of these systems.
Norm Kurland
Michael Bindner wrote:
The ESOP Law retains a bias toward hierarchism, so I agree. For
Employee-Ownership to be successful hierarchy must be smashed within
such firms and replaced with democracy.
At
11:30 AM 1/19/2004 -0800, Michael Bindner wrote:
>This is about what I would expect from Bruce, who I worked with in
my
>younger days on the staff of GOP Senator Roger Jepsen.
>
>What Bruce and the ESOP critics (as well as most ESOP
practicitions) is
>that these firms fail because they don't change their economic
>assumptions. Most continue to behave like hierarchical capitalist
firms -
>or else go to far the other way by placating Unions. If firms
change
>their assumptions and practice system like Value Based Management
or my
>own 21st Century Economics (aka Inter-Independence) their results
will
>differ greatly and they will beat out the capitalist firms which
Mr.
>Bartlet has spent his career defending.
But to say that is to concede Bruce's point, is it not? Namely, that
"employee owner!
ship" is not, per se, a panacea. In fact, it has to be
connected to a shift in values and without this, it is just another
financing scheme that really doesn't change anything.
The original ESOP law was flawed, to say the least. It wasn't really an
implementation of the Kelso-Adler thesis. It was a great first step,
but a
terrible end-point. Alas, for 30 years, its been treated as an
end-point
rather than a baby step. Hence it is too easy to use the ESOP itself to
discredit employee ownership. And the CESJ's penchant for
congratulating
themselves on their one victory and suppressing any real discussion has
worked to ensure that it will continue to be a small movement
celebrating
an ancient and partial victory.
John C. Médaille
"A dead thing can go with the stream...
but only a living thing can go against it."
-G. K. Chesterton
http://www.medaille.com/distributivism.htm
john@medaille.com
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