An Economy for the People…

After reaching a consensus, despite the great achievements of capitalism, our economy is based on the exploitation of the weak and poor so that the strong and rich may benefit. People with open minds and hearts can easily recognize these traits on Wall Street (it seems that that exploitation has come back to bite them where it hurts). Up until the reading of Schweikart, no one had really presented an alternative to capitalism. The proposal of economic democracy is an interesting take on how an economy should be structured. Economic democracy proposes that the business of a company is controlled by the workers, that it operate within a market, and that the capital is reinvested back into the society in which the company belongs to. Ideally, this seems almost perfect. No more would CEOs be paid $100 million contracts. No more would corporations neglect, exploit, and abuse their workers for the sake of the shareholders, because there would be no shareholders in this economy. No more would jobs be outsourced because all of the capital remains in the community and is reinvested there. In fact, this may put Lou Dobbs in a tough situation since it would eliminate one of the main topics of his show, job outsourcing. However, we do not live in an ideal world; therefore nothing that man creates can be 100% ideal, although we can still try. For instance, who is to say that the democratic system of the workplace doesn’t turn into a good ‘ole boys system where a select few are able to manipulate the other workers? Or who exactly will enforce that the capital is going to be reinvested in communities? Even more importantly, how does this affect international trade, especially amongst nations that don’t use economic democracy? Also, will the economic democracy lessen the desire of the company to advance in the economy in comparison to the same company under a capitalist system?