Across the whole spectrum of human endeavors, there are helping relationships wherein some helpers (e.g., doctors, teachers, social workers, advisors, managers, or organizers) try to help their counterparts (e.g., patients, students, clients, workers, and so forth) to help themselves. But there is a fundamental “helping self-help conundrum” in the very idea of helpers giving external assistance to others to become more autonomous, i.e., to become independent of external assistance.
How to understand quantum mechanics
November 28, 2024 by
This paper tries to elucidate the paradoxical aspects of quantum mechanics (QM) by using a simplified pedagogical model of QM based on the support sets of the state vectors, by assuming an ontology of superposition-as-objective indefiniteness, and by not giving any ontological interpretation to the computational device of the wave function.
Historical and Modern Arguments about Contractual Slavery
November 28, 2024 by
The overall conclusion is that any institution or practice—human trafficking is a modern case in point—that, in effect, treats a person as a non-person, as only a means instead of as an end-in-themselves, violates their inalienable rights and is illegitimate, even with consent.
Democratic Ownership: Scale Through Leveraged Conversions
November 28, 2024 by
One of the problems that cooperatives face is that they do not have a standard gradual conversion mechanism but are generally established as new business startups or by an all-at-once conversion of a conventional company to a cooperative. This paper describes such a conversion mechanism.
Critical Analysis of Different Forms of Employee Ownership
November 28, 2024 by
From the 1970’s, there has been almost a half-century of development of employee-owned firms. There has been a wide variety of legal/capital structures that have been tried but too little analysis of which legal forms work or don’t work over the longer term, e.g., the transition from one generation to the next generation of employee-owners. This paper provides a critical analysis of the major forms. The emphasis is the lack of learning between the different forms. The same problems keep recurring even though solutions are known.
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation
October 6, 2024 by
This paper reviews some of the classic authors and literature on the subtleties of intrinsic motivation in the human activities where a presumed ‘helper’ (teacher, manager, social worker, etc.) are working with a certain class of ‘doers’ (students, workers, clients, etc.).
A Fundamental Duality in the Mathematical and Natural Sciences
September 8, 2024 by
This is an essay in what might be called “mathematical metaphysics.” There is a fundamental duality that runs through mathematics and the natural sciences, from logic to biology.
Is “Capitalism” a Misnomer? On Marx’s “capitalism” and Knight’s “civilization”
June 11, 2024 by
This is an open access article from the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.
The name “capitalism” derives from Marx’s false analogy between medieval land ownership and the “ownership of the means of production.” However, unlike medieval land, capital goods can be rented out, e.g., by Frank Knight’s entrepreneur, and then the capital owner does not hold those management or product rights. What then is the characteristic institution in our civilization? It is the voluntary renting of workers. What then is the relationship between Classical Liberalism, the dominant philosophy behind Economics, and a lifetime labor contract? Frank Knight had plenty to say against the doctrine of inalienable rights which disallows such contracts.
Keiretsu, Proportional Representation, and Input-Output Theory
June 1, 2024 by
This is Chapter 9 in my book: Ellerman, David. 1995. Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life: Essays in Philosophy, Economics, and Mathematics. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
This essay grew out of an attempt to model mathematically the possible cross-ownership arrangements that might arise between privatizing firms in the former Yugoslavia [see Ellerman 1991]. The cross-ownership arrangements resemble the groups of Japanese companies called keiretsu. There is cross ownership between the companies in the group as well as some ownership outside the group that is traded on the stock market. In spite of the partial outside ownership, the keiretsu often behave as “self-owning” groups. If firm A owns shares in B, then the management in A usually signs over its proxy on shares in B to the management in firm B. And the management in B does likewise with respect to the managers in A. Thus within certain constraints, each firm can act like a “self-owning” firm, not totally unlike the self-managing firms of the former Yugoslavia.