Communism in the Workplace

When considering my place of work, it ocurred to me than many politico-economic systems are simultaneously in play and that each of the systems has its own set of merits:

libertarianism (trading/selling): Being a private sector company, the company is almost entirely at the fate of consumers. This requires marketing, pricing, and competitive analysis. This is perhaps the most obvious system in a private company; however, this is not how a company operates internally for most resources. Except in the initial hiring, even salary negotiation is quite limited.

negotiated-resource managerialism: Many items are available by a process that will be familiar to any government beaucrat: budget negotiations. This applies to resources that are owned communally, but subject to restrictions as to its use. It usually applies to company profits. The process by which this resource is allocated is a game called budget negotiation in which every manager compiles requests from his employees and argues for the need for these items in front of competing managers and and overseeing manager, who is usually the CEO. The allocation decision process is a complex one involving the evaluation of the appropriateness, best use, and impact on profitability, of the various requests. Managerialism may be anathema to libertarians, but, ultimately, decisions must be made and goods must be managed at some level. That goods are frequently poorly managed does not, as a libertarian would have it, mean that one can dispense with management all together. In fact, it points to the necessity of good management.

accounted-resource managerialism: Each department owns many items; however, rather than exchanging for those items someone may obtain them by simply giving an account number. The department from which the item is taken receives nothing of value in return. Many items are purchased and transferred from one department to another by a process of requests using account numbers. One would expect that one would get a chat from one's manager should one request an excessive or inappropriate amount of goods from another department. The accounting department simply keeps a record of all of these expenses, so that blame can be allocated to the appropriate department for not meeting the budget.

unaccounted resources (communism): Every large company has certain freely-available and unaccounted resources, such as drinking water, coffee service, paper towels, pens, pencils, paper, servers, hooks, glues, tapes,network cables, etc. One may think of these items as being owned communally. Perhaps this is not pure communism because the ownership only extends to employees of the company. Obviously, this policy leads to greater than normal consumption of these items; however, since these items are low-cost, accounting for these items, which would be required in libertarianism would add additional cost. In this sense, communism is probably the most efficient system for these items.

Former Libertarian

My flirtation with libertarianism is officially over for the following reasons:

1. No matter how well-meaning libertarianism is not stable. The reason for this is that people who contract with security agencies will eventually be controlled by the agencies that they seek to protect them. What is needed is a different type of relationship from one of a service contractor, what is needed is a share in voting institution, but this is democracy. The examples of libertarianism persisiting for long periods of time are few and far between.
2. Libertarianism is one valid system, but as I will show in a later post other institutions are not only valid (more efficient), but omnipresent: direct democracy, representative democracy, service contracting, communism, regulated comunitarianism, etc.
3. Libertarianism goes against most human's inate social tendencies. Many people are naturally subservient, others are natural leaders, others are team-players, others are socializers, others are liars, and a few are libertarian-loners (frequently programmers, and contractors).
4. While the selfishness and competiveness that are characteristic of libertarianism have proven to lead to efficient markets, these characteristics also may lead to alienation of many from society and various forms of sociopathic behavior. Indeed, why should one expect that others will have any consideration for our well-being when the best that can be said for our existence is that we do not interfere in their lives.