Download or read book Democratizing the Corporation written by Isabelle Ferreras and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although contemporary Western societies refer to themselves as "democratic," the bulk of the population spend much of their lives in workplaces that have more in common with tyranny. Gigantic corporations such as Amazon, Meta, Exxon, and Walmart are among the richest and most powerful institutions in the world yet accountable to no one but their shareholders. The undemocratic nature of conventional firms generates profound problems across society, hurting more than just the workplace and contributing to environmental destruction and spiraling inequality. Against this backdrop, Isabelle Ferreras proposes a radical but realistic plan to democratize the private firm. She suggests that all large firms should be bicamerally governed, with a chamber of worker representatives sharing equal governance power with the standard board representing owners. In response to this proposal, twelve leading experts on corporate behavior from multiple disciplines consider its attractiveness, viability, and achievability as a "real utopian" proposal to strengthen democracy in our time.
Download or read book Firms as Political Entities written by Isabelle Ferreras and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-25 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aimed at political sciences students and teachers, Ferreras presents the new idea of 'economic bicameralism' to redefine firms as political entities.
Download or read book Democratizing Finance written by Clifford N. Rosenthal and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2018 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades before Occupy Wall Street challenged the American financial system, activists began organizing alternatives to provide capital to “unbankable” communities and the poor. With roots in the civil rights, anti-poverty, and other progressive movements, they brought little training in finance. They formed nonprofit loan funds, credit unions, and even a new bank—organizations that by 1992 became known as “community development financial institutions,” or CDFIs. By melding their vision with that of President Clinton, CDFIs grew from church basements and kitchen tables to number more than 1,000 institutions with billions of dollars of capital. They have helped transform community development by providing credit and financial services across the United States, from inner cities to Native American reservations. Democratizing Finance traces the roots of community development finance over two centuries, a history that runs from Benjamin Franklin, through an ill-starred bank for African American veterans of the Civil War, the birth of the credit union movement, and the War on Poverty. Drawn from hundreds of interviews with CDFI leaders, presidential archives, and congressional testimony, Democratizing Finance provides an insider view of an extraordinary public policy success. Democratizing Finance is a unique resource for practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and social investors.
Download or read book Democratizing the Corporation written by Isabelle Ferreras and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worker representation is the first step toward democratizing the economy Although contemporary Western societies refer to themselves as “democratic,” the bulk of the population spend much of their lives in workplaces that have more in common with tyranny. Gigantic corporations such as Amazon, Meta, Exxon, and Walmart are among the richest and most powerful institutions in the world yet accountable to no one but their shareholders. The undemocratic nature of conventional firms generates profound problems across society, hurting more than just the workplace and contributing to environmental destruction and spiraling inequality. Against this backdrop, Isabelle Ferreras proposes a radical but realistic plan to democratize the private firm. She suggests that all large firms should be bicamerally governed, with a chamber of worker representatives sharing equal governance power with the standard board representing owners. In response to this proposal, twelve leading experts on corporate behavior from multiple disciplines consider its attractiveness, viability, and achievability as a “real utopian” proposal to strengthen democracy in our time.
Download or read book Democratizing Innovation written by Eric Von Hippel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.
Download or read book Democracy Inc written by David S. Allen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He argues that such values, including winning, efficiency, and profitability, actually limit democratic involvement by devaluing discursive principles, creating an informed yet inactive public. Through an examination of professionalization in both the press and the law, corporate free speech rights, and free speech as property, Democracy, Inc. demonstrates how corporate values have warped our understanding of democracy and the concept of citizenship."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Renewing Democratic Deliberation in Europe written by Jean De Munck and published by P.I.E-Peter Lang S.A., Editions Scientifiques Internationales. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is not merely a political and legal system; it depends on social and economic commitments as well. Democracy is not only realized through elections; it requires civic participation through permanent dialogue. This volume addresses this central, yet often overlooked, issue in a series of essays by renowned scholars from Europe and the United States, reviving a concept that dates back to the foundation of the European Union: social dialogue as a fundamental part of the construction of the union. Having neglected the social dimensions of its institutions, the European Union is currently in deep crisis. European democracy is confronted with a radical new situation and new definitions of work and family, as well as of growth and economic achievement, must be embedded in European public policy. The contributors to this book identify social and civil dialogue as key institutional processes that will help overcome the current crisis. Civic participation can no longer be limited to representative institutions as we know them; a new combination of deliberation, bargaining and social experimentation is required. This book maps out the complexity of this vital issue and its implications for the future of the European democratic project.
Download or read book Corporations Are Not People written by Jeffrey D. Clements and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision marked a culminating victory for the bizarre doctrine that corporations are people with free speech and other rights. Now, Americans cannot stop corporations from spending billions of dollars to dominate elections and keep our elected representatives on a tight leash. Jeffrey Clements reveals the far-reaching effects of this strange and destructive idea, which flies in the face of not only all common sense but most of American legal history as well. Most importantly, he offers solutions—including a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United—and tools to help readers join a grassroots drive to implement them. Ending corporate control of our Constitution and government is not about a triumph of one political ideology over another—it’s about restoring the republican principles of American democracy.
Download or read book Democratizing Finance written by Fred Block and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if our financial system were organized to the benefit of the many rather than simply empowering the few? Robert Hockett and Fred Block argue that an entirely different financial system is both desirable and possible. They outline concrete steps that could get us there. Financial systems move the worlds savings from investment to investment, chasing the highest rates of return. They run on profit. But what if investment went to the enterprises or institutions that provided things that the majority of people would prioritize? Democratizing Finance includes six responses that seek to amend, elaborate, and challenge the arguments developed by Hockett and Block. Some of the core arguments put forward by other contributors include calls for the rapid elimination of private financial entities, the dilemmas of the politics associated with financial reforms, and the fate of parallel proposals advanced in the US in the 1930s.
Download or read book What Then Must We Do written by Gar Alperovitz and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with our economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming. But just what is this thing called a new economy, and how might it take shape in America? In What Then Must We Do? Gar Alperovitz speaks directly to the reader about where we find ourselves in history, why the time is right for a new-economy movement to coalesce, what it means to build a new system to replace the crumbling one, and how we might begin. He also suggests what the next system might look like—and where we can see its outlines, like an image slowly emerging in the developing trays of a photographer's darkroom, already taking shape. He proposes a possible next system that is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else entirely—and something entirely American. Alperovitz calls for an evolution, not a revolution, out of the old system and into the new. That new system would democratize the ownership of wealth, strengthen communities in diverse ways, and be governed by policies and institutions sophisticated enough to manage a large-scale, powerful economy. For the growing group of Americans pacing at the edge of confidence in the old system, or already among its detractors, What Then Must We Do? offers an elegant solution for moving from anger to strategy.
Download or read book Democracy at Work written by Richard Wolff and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, and who, are we working for? A thoughtful assessment on our current society from “probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist” (The New York Times). Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve. One key cause for this intolerable state of affairs is the lack of genuine democracy in our economy as well as in our politics. The solution requires the institution of genuine economic democracy, starting with workers managing their own workplaces, as the basis for a genuine political democracy. Here Richard D. Wolff lays out a hopeful and concrete vision of how to make that possible, addressing the many people who have concluded economic inequality and politics as usual can no longer be tolerated and are looking for a concrete program of action. “Wolff’s constructive and innovative ideas suggest new and promising foundations for much more authentic democracy and sustainable and equitable development, ideas that can be implemented directly and carried forward. A very valuable contribution in troubled times.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hope and Prospects
Download or read book The Making of a Democratic Economy written by Marjorie Kelly and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven principles for a just and sustainable system, accompanied by true stories of “the people creating the institutions of the next economy” (Kat Taylor, cofounder, Beneficial State Bank). The extractive economy we live with now—designed by the 1 percent for the 1 percent—enables the financial elite to squeeze out maximum gain for themselves, heedless of damage to people or planet. But in this compelling book, Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard show that there is a new economy emerging, focused on helping everyone thrive while respecting planetary boundaries. At a time when competing political visions are at stake the world over, this book urges a move beyond tinkering at the margins to address the systemic crisis of our economy. Kelly and Howard outline seven principles of what they call a Democratic Economy: community, inclusion, place (keeping wealth local), good work (putting labor before capital), democratized ownership, ethical finance, and sustainability. Each principle is paired with a place putting it into practice: Pine Ridge, Preston, Portland, Cleveland, and more. Included are stories not just of activists and grassroots leaders but of the unexpected accomplices of the Democratic Economy. Seeds of a future beyond corporate capitalism and state socialism are being planted in hospital procurement departments, pension fund offices, and even company boardrooms. The future remains uncertain—but Kelly and Howard help us understand how to nurture and grow those seeds into an equitable, ecologically sustainable economy that benefits all of us, not just the billionaires. “As champions of worker and community ownership, Kelly and Howard remind us that economic democracy is essential to political democracy and a viable human future.” —David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World
Download or read book Democratizing the Global Economy written by Kevin Danaher and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Writing. In Democratizing The Economy, dozens of top-notch activists and educators examine the mounting protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, why these lenders have finally generated such heated opposition and what the global justice movement proposes replacing them with in order to build a democratic global economy. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Democratizing Inequalities written by Caroline W. Lee and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-01-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opportunities to “have your say,” “get involved,” and “join the conversation” are everywhere in public life. From crowdsourcing and town hall meetings to government experiments with social media, participatory politics increasingly seem like a revolutionary antidote to the decline of civic engagement and the thinning of the contemporary public sphere. Many argue that, with new technologies, flexible organizational cultures, and a supportive policymaking context, we now hold the keys to large-scale democratic revitalization. Democratizing Inequalities shows that the equation may not be so simple. Modern societies face a variety of structural problems that limit potentials for true democratization, as well as vast inequalities in political action and voice that are not easily resolved by participatory solutions. Popular participation may even reinforce elite power in unexpected ways. Resisting an oversimplified account of participation as empowerment, this collection of essays brings together a diverse range of leading scholars to reveal surprising insights into how dilemmas of the new public participation play out in politics and organizations. Through investigations including fights over the authenticity of business-sponsored public participation, the surge of the Tea Party, the role of corporations in electoral campaigns, and participatory budgeting practices in Brazil, Democratizing Inequalities seeks to refresh our understanding of public participation and trace the reshaping of authority in today’s political environment.
Download or read book Just Giving written by Rob Reich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The troubling ethics and politics of philanthropy Is philanthropy, by its very nature, a threat to today’s democracy? Though we may laud wealthy individuals who give away their money for society’s benefit, Just Giving shows how such generosity not only isn’t the unassailable good we think it to be but might also undermine democratic values. Big philanthropy is often an exercise of power, the conversion of private assets into public influence. And it is a form of power that is largely unaccountable and lavishly tax-advantaged. Philanthropy currently fails democracy, but Rob Reich argues that it can be redeemed. Just Giving investigates the ethical and political dimensions of philanthropy and considers how giving might better support democratic values and promote justice.
Download or read book Reforming Intelligence written by Thomas C. Bruneau and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-04-20 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These days, it's rare to pick up a newspaper and not see a story related to intelligence. From the investigations of the 9/11 commission, to accusations of illegal wiretapping, to debates on whether it's acceptable to torture prisoners for information, intelligence—both accurate and not—is driving domestic and foreign policy. And yet, in part because of its inherently secretive nature, intelligence has received very little scholarly study. Into this void comes Reforming Intelligence, a timely collection of case studies written by intelligence experts, and sponsored by the Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR) at the Naval Postgraduate School, that collectively outline the best practices for intelligence services in the United States and other democratic states. Reforming Intelligence suggests that intelligence is best conceptualized as a subfield of civil-military relations, and is best compared through institutions. The authors examine intelligence practices in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, as well as such developing democracies as Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, and Russia. While there is much more data related to established democracies, there are lessons to be learned from states that have created (or re-created) intelligence institutions in the contemporary political climate. In the end, reading about the successes of Brazil and Taiwan, the failures of Argentina and Russia, and the ongoing reforms in the United States yields a handful of hard truths. In the murky world of intelligence, that's an unqualified achievement.
Download or read book Financial Markets and Financial Crises written by R. Glenn Hubbard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991-08-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warnings of the threat of an impending financial crisis are not new, but do we really know what constitutes an actual episode of crisis and how, once begun, it can be prevented from escalating into a full-blown economic collapse? Using both historical and contemporary episodes of breakdowns in financial trade, contributors to this volume draw insights from theory and empirical data, from the experience of closed and open economies worldwide, and from detailed case studies. They explore the susceptibility of American corporations to economic downturns; the origins of banking panics; and the behavior of financial markets during periods of crisis. Sever papers specifically address the current thrift crisis—including a detailed analysis of the over 500 FSLIC-insured thrifts in the southeast—and seriously challenge the value of recent measures aimed at preventing future collapse in that industry. Government economists and policy makers, scholars of industry and banking, and many in the business community will find these timely papers an invaluable reference.
