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Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Ships of Socialism in a Sea of Capitalism

My favorite liberal economist, John Quiggin, asks whether we would be better off without corporations.  My comment...

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According to Coase, more or less, corporations are ships of socialism in a sea of capitalism.  Why, exactly, would it be better to replace this form of central planning with a different form?  What, exactly, would public ownership fix?  

Would public ownership somehow improve steering?   Is Equinor steered by more voters than Exxon?  Personally I'm pretty sure that there's more than enough evidence, such as Boaty Mcboatface, that the more voters participating the lower the common denominator.  

Make a list of 100 random books and have different groups of people use voting to rank the books.  All else being equal, the trashiest book will be highest ranked by the largest group of people.  As Youtube proves, with democracy garbage quickly floats to the top... ie PewDiePie.  In order for cream to quickly float to the top, replace voting with donating.  

All corporations should be steered by donations.  Then corporations would be ships of capitalism in a sea of capitalism.