Talk:Economic democracy/Archives/2018

Adding a section on workplace democracy

Hi wikepedians,

I'm looking through this article and noticed that there is a lot of information on the economic faults that economic democracy intends to address. But I noticed that this article on economic democracy is also lacking a section on the various theoretical reasons for democratizing firms or perceiving firms as political institutions. Is this something that has been left out for a reason or should I feel free to add to it? Recommendations for theorists on this front would be appreciated. Tropdotism (talk) 03:51, 11 March 2018 (UTC)tropdotism

First time editing on wikipedia, probably doing this wrong

Hey this is just an opinion and I'm sorry to be critical of all the hard work of whoever wrote this but I just feel like this article gives too narrow a viewpoint of what most people mean by economic democracy.

For example there are a lot of people who advocate for "workplace democracy", "worker self-management", "workers' councils" or basically some form of democratic economic system don't agree with this statement at all:

"Proponents of economic democracy generally argue that modern capitalism periodically results in economic crises characterized by deficiency of effective demand as society is unable to earn enough income to purchase its output production. Corporate monopoly of common resources typically creates artificial scarcity, resulting in socio-economic imbalances that restrict workers from access to economic opportunity and diminish consumer purchasing power.[3][4]"

And I even think that a lot people who do support both economic democracy and the "under-consumption" explanation of economic crisis probably would not necessarily claim that the reason why they support economic democracy is that they think it would spur effective demand.

I'm not against people putting in reasons why people support economic democracy among which is that supporters of under-consumption theory feel that it would help eliminate economic crisis. Maybe you could also link to articles such as "artificial scarcity", "underconsumption", "effective demand" rather than having these explanations necessarily be part of the article.

I'm just personally bothered by the fact that the concept of under-consumption is woven throughout the entire article and that it seems to be primarily about the opinions of David Schweikhart when nearly the entire radical left for hundreds of years have appealed to the idea that economic decisions should be made democratically and not by bosses.

As a radical leftist the term "economic democracy" is in my opinion useful to me for describing a system in which economic decisions are voted on directly or made by some form of delegate or representative who can be removed and controlled by the people that elected them.

I'm worried that if I use the term "economic democracy" people are going to look it up on wikipedia and think what I'm primarily arguing for is to have more effective demand lol.

There is a similar article describing "workers self-management" that I think maybe gives a better explanation of what I personally mean by economic democracy but I just sort of like economic democracy as given that most people know what democracy and economic means it helps explain things.

And also for example "worker self-management" like "workers' councils" often gives off the impression that proponents of those systems are excluding homemakers, students, the retired, disabled, unemployed, etc. This isn't true- most proponents of worker self-management and workers' councils as far as I know advocated for those groups to have their own councils or engage in self-management as well it's just that these terms were misleading.

Maybe this article could list different general types of proposals for economic democracies and how they would generally work? I don't know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crying Snowflake (talk • contribs) 02:20, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I think you're right! This article has definitely gotten too big and may be dominated by people who are just quoting their favorite thinkers. Don't be afraid to cut a few things that are repetitive or proposing a wholesale restructuring to the article. Tropdotism (talk) 02:55, 24 April 2018 (UTC)tropdotism