This paper will discuss two problems that have plagued the literature on the Ward-Domar-Vanek labor-managed firm (LMF) model, the perverse supply response problem and the Furubotn-Pejovich horizon problem.
Lord Eustace Percy’s “Unknown State” Lecture
May 2, 2018 by
Lord Eustace Percy was a Conservative public servant but was better known as a serious thinker, indeed, as the “Minister of Thinking.” There is a remarkable and much-quoted passage in his 1944 Riddell Lecture The Unknown State.
English and Swedish Versions of Swedish ESOP Report
February 20, 2018 by
In September 2017, my long-time associate, Chris Mackin, and I did a speaking tour on ESOPs in Sweden hosted by the filmmaker, Patrik Witkowsky, the to-be-lawyer, Mattias Göthberg, and the labor-oriented think tank, Katalyst. Afterwards, Patrik wrote a report, here translated into English, introducing the ESOP idea to a larger Swedish audience and describing the US experience.
New Work for the Visible Hand of Business
January 1, 2018 by
This is an essay about the late Richard Cornuelle’s essay “New work for invisible hands” in a commemorative volume of Conversations on Philanthropy.
Talk: Neo-abolitionism and Marxism
November 28, 2017 by
These are the slides for a talk given in Munich in November 2017 at a conference on the Russian Revolution. The basic argument is that much of what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century still sounds radical today. The reason is that Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution set back the Left for a century and a half.
Talk: A Tale of Two Invalid Contracts: Coverture and Employment
November 28, 2017 by
These are the slides for a talk that focuses on the parallel inalienable rights arguments against the now-outlawed coverture marriage contract and the yet-to-be-outlawed employment contract.
Review-Essay on Elizabeth Anderson’s “Private Government” book
October 23, 2017 by
In her recent book Private Government [2017], Elizabeth Anderson makes a powerful but pragmatic case against the abuses experienced by employees in conventional corporations. The purpose of this review-essay is to contrast Anderson’s pragmatic critique of many abuses in the employment relation with a principled critique of the employment relationship itself.
Alexis de Tocqueville
February 8, 2017 by
Little-known proponents of workplace democracy:
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Knowledge and Institutional Change
January 5, 2017 by
This paper attempts set forth systematically some of the knowledge questions that determine certain strategies for institutional change.
Voucher Privatization with Investment Funds
January 5, 2017 by
This paper has been cited many times as the representative critique of voucher privatization with investment funds.