User:Tropdotism/sandbox

Working Edit of Economic Democracy
This is an edit to be done on the Alternative Models headings. Sections within this heading include Worker Self Management, Social Control of Investment, The Market, Economic Democracy as Part of an inclusive democracy.

The Workplace as a political entity to be democratized

Workplace democracy has been cited as a possible solution to the problems that arise from excluding employees from decision-making such as low-employee morale, employee alienation, and low employee engagement.

Political theorist Isabelle Ferreras argues that there exists “a great contradiction between the democratic nature of our times and the reality of the work experience.” She argues that the modern corporation’s two basic inputs, capital and labor, are treated in radically different ways. Capital owners of a firm wield power within a system of shareholder democracy that allocates voice democratically according to how much capital investment they place in the firm. Labor, on the other hand, rarely benefits from a system to voice their concerns within the firm. She argues that firms are more than just economic organizations especially given the power that they wield over people’s livelihoods, environment, and rights. Rather, Ferreras holds that firms are best understood as political entities. And as political entities “it is crucial that firms be made compatible with the democratic commitments of our nations.”

Germany and to a lesser extent the broader European Union have experimented with a way of workplace democracy known as Co-determination, a system that allows workers to elect representatives that sit on the board of directors of a company. Common criticisms of workplace democracy include that democratic workplaces are less efficient than hierarchical workplace, that managers are best equipped to make company decisions since they are better educated and aware of the broader business context,

Creating a widespread distribution of productive assets

One of the biggest criticisms against capitalism is that it concentrates economic and, as a result, political power in few hands. Theorists of economic democracy have argued that one solution to this unequal concentration of power is to create mechanism that distribute ownership of productive assets across the entire population. In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, John Rawls argues that only two systems could embody the main features of his principles of justice: liberal socialism or a property-owning democracy. Within property-owning democracy Rawls envisions widespread use of worker-owned cooperatives, partial-employee ownership of firms, systems to redistribute one's asset after death to prevent the accumulation of wealth, as well as a strong system of asset-based redistribution that encourages workers to own productive assets.

Operating under the idea that making ownership more widespread leads to more equitable outcomes various proposals of asset-based welfare and asset-redistribution have been conceived. Individualistic and liberal asset-based welfare strategies such as the United Kingdom's Child Trust Fund of the United States Individual Development Account aimed to help people save money so that it could be invested on education, home-ownership, or entrepreneurship. More expirmental and left-leaning proposals include worker owned cooperatives, ESOPS, or Roemers coupon socialism.

Additional edits of Economic Democracy Article - deletions
Sometimes the problem with an article is not that it lacks information or sources but that it has too much and goes deep into detail on topics related to the article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a place to store reading notes. While I have tried to write as parsimoniously as possible I think this article could benefit from some cutting.

I cut the following paragraphs from the deficiency of economic demand section. In chapter 3 of his book, "Community Organizing: Theory and Practice", Douglas P. Biklen discusses a variety of perspectives on "The Making of Social Problems". One of those views suggests that "writers and organizers who define social problems in terms of social and economic democracy see problems not as the experiences of poor people, but as the relationship of poverty to wealth and exploitation". Biklen states that according to this viewpoint: [C]orporate power, upper class power, uneven distribution of wealth and prejudice cause social problems... [T]he problem is not one of poverty, but of enormous wealth. The problem is not one of gaps or cracks in an otherwise fine system but of a system which perpetuates prejudicial views concerning race, sex, age, and disability. The problem is not one of incompetence but of barriers to education, jobs, and power. Accordingly, as long as there is a deep gulf between social classes, both in terms of wealth, power, and outlook, traditional social programs will act merely as palliatives to oppression and not as a way of ending large scale human misery. This perspective is, above all, eclectic. It embraces Marx's criticism of social class inequality but is not only a social class analysis. It is anti-racist, but it is not only a theory of race equality. It favors democratic distribution of power but is also an economic theory. It can be called a social and economic democracy perspective.

Removed this quote from the cooperatives section

It is not necessary to opt for either the consumer or the producer but to link them both in one complex organization. The [Mondragon] founders have thereby shown that it is possible to devise a system that respects the rights of both producer and consumer, both sides of the economic question. too much detail

Removed this section from the food cooperatives section - too much detail for a topic that exists in a different article.

Tim Calvert believes that dollars are the most important vote to make, and others tend to agree. Citing members of People’s Co-op and Alberta Cooperative Grocery, Romona DeNies of The Portland Alliance states, "Co-ops are the antidote to the centralization of power. People forget they have power as consumers to make choices. We can’t be completely disentangled from the corporate world, but we can try to provide a local model of living further from it. No one is getting rich off your money at a co-op. But that’s the economic value of shopping here. In return, you support a viable alternative to the vicious cycle of bottom lines and end profits".

As World Trade Organization representatives negotiate issues of competition, agricultural subsidies, and protectionism among developed nations, the American farmer resembles third-world farmers who must compete with subsidized agricultural giants like Monsanto Company. Lee Lancaster says, “Underneath our unique aspects, we have the same structure and principles. Welfare of our respective neighborhoods is of vital concern to us. Food co-ops were started to provide local, organic produce. Now with those things more mainstream, the demand is going up, and our share of that market is declining. We have to reevaluate."

Further, Lancaster claims that the traditional independence and decentralization of U.S. cooperatives have restricted their impact on the food industry through economies of scale. Proposing more collaboration, he asks:

Removed this sentence from the section titled "the market.' It is a restatement of the idea that free markets allocate goods efficiently and reduces the article's reliance on Schweikart.

Schweikart claims that centralized planning is inherently flawed, and schemes for decentralized non-market planning are unworkable. He argues that the historical record confirms that central planning is both inefficient and conducive to an authoritarian concentration of power, a lesson he says is to be drawn from the Soviet experience.

--> Peer Review
''I had written some suggestions in the 'Comment' section next to each article but I actually don't know what happened. I don't think they got published correctly.''

''I feel your article is pretty well though out. The language you're using is understandable and easy to follow. However, just a few comments. Both in the paragraph about Ferrera's claims and those of Rawls, I believe you could look into some contrasting thoughts to their statements. Eventhough both authors try to prove a specific point, as a reader it is always important to have a more objective look and sometimes that means comparison.''

''I also believe that you could, perhaps, be more illustrative with your examples. Specifically in the paragraphs of Workplace as a political entity. In this same section you can include previous ideas to Ferrera's, this might be useful just to know what others are saying about it: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199330102.001.0001/acprof-9780199330102-chapter-2 // http://jarche.com/2012/01/democratization-of-the-workplace/''

''Lastly, I would encourage you to deepen the section "Critiques" in the original Wikipedia article. There is but a few lines there and I believe you can successfully contribute to this.''

Week 6 - Potential articles to edit
These are articles related to the class that I feel I can contribute to

Sortition - this article is quite comprehensive in its scope; I don't think it needs new content. I feel that its formatting is a bit hard to read and it focuses too much on the disparate things that thinkers have said about sortition. I could make a lot of progress editing and consolidating the "Political proposals for sortition" and "Advantages and disadvantages" section.

Economic democracy - this article takes an economic approach to economic democracy, primarily focusing on the inefficiencies of capitalism. Although it does mention the moral reasons for advocating for a system of economic democracy, it does not explain them in detail. I think that the work of Ferreras may be able to give a political science/ethics insight as to why economic democracy is normatively desirable.

Economic bicameralism - This is a article that does not exist yet. I think that Ferreras' idea of economic bicameralism may be worth exploring in its own light. The big struggle with this topic is that only Ferreras uses the term. Is there another term that is going around in the literature? Has this idea recieved significant support and criticism to merit a wikipedia article?

Week 5 - Add to an Article + Blog
This week I contributed to the Sortition article, specifically the Disadvantages section on "Voting confers legitimacy." I discussed how limited participation creates deep legitimacy questions for lottocratic government bodies. I made this edit because the section previous only believed that voting was the means through which legitimacy could be granted to a system. I wanted to include the idea that the fact that deliberative bodies tend to ignore participation makes them face a legitimacy concern.

In this edit, I cited Cristina Lafont. I noticed how difficult it is to cite arguments in political theory. Proving that an argument is made is difficult because it is hidden in a dense political theory article. Unlike scientific claims or historical claims, it is tough to point to a clear and definite source to back up a claim. How then should we approach giving supporting sources for ideas? Should the source be traced back to whoever first made the claim, the person who articulated it best, or to the person who has a comprehensive literary review? Another concern that came up was how detailed should these articles be. I used Lafont to support the idea that participation was neglected in deliberative bodies, wholly ignoring the nuances of her argument. Did I cite incorrectly?

Week 4 Blog
In the past week, we have read articles that rail against the status quo of representative democracy from multiple angles. Jason Brennan's Against Democracy and Achen and Bartel's Democracy for Realists, both painted very grim, data-driven pictures of voter ignorance and irrationality. Too few voters know key general facts about party platforms, who is in power, and what those in power are capable of. As I have looked through the vast collection of information on Wikipedia and the broader internet in particular, I feel that the problem is not that information is particularly inaccessible. Information is more free than it has ever been yet, statistically very few people choose to empower themselves with the knowledge to understand and shape their political process. The problem may be that people have not been able to benefit from gaining this knowledge. Perhaps the current political system doesn't reward political knowledge, perhaps the status quo is not so bad that people feel no reason to mobilize politically. I don't know why it is that very few people know key facts about their government. Maybe democratizing the ability to care about this information is just as important as democratizing information itself.

Article Review
Since many of our readings focused on lottocracy as an alternative to representative democracy, this week I chose to review Sortition. The article runs through the history of sortition, its modern applications, current literature calling for sortition, and its advantages and disadvantages. I found the article to be comprehensive, covering all the bases I could think of. One aspect of the article that was distracting was the elaborate, author by author, Proposals for Sortition section. It went through each author's position rather than synthesizing the literature. I found that the article was generally unbiased. The history section said little about historical opposition to sortition, but this might be harder to find. In the Talk section of the article, I see that Sortition had merged with demarchy and allotment in 2015. I was pleased to find a Yale student from 2015's class had made significant alterations to this article. Over half of the conversation is dedicated to fixing links and citations. It appears that amongst the editor community Wikipedia is meant to connect people to other sources. I also left a comment to include descriptive diversity as one of the advantages of sortition.