Public corporations DO represent their shareholders. And the management is supposed to be accountable to said shareholders. But because of the dictatorial-autocratic model of overpaid corporate management structures, unaccountable even to their boards of directors, anti-democratic practices are deeply entrenched.

But, when you think about it, who died and made the current structures god? The presumption is that such organizations function best with an autocrat-dictator. But what about co-ops? Worker-owned and run organizations? Corporations run inherently as democracies?

If "democracy" is such a great concept (and I believe it is), why is it allowed to be banned at the corporate gate? What are corporations anyway? Mini-nation-states?

Chris: Keep sharing the concept of alternative models. Teachers can form private or cooperative non-profit government voucher schools in competition with for-profit and religious government voucher schools, only without profit be more affordable to those who can't afford private school but whose taxes pay for the vouchers anyway.

Thanks, bluesmokeandmirrors, but why would teachers abandon the far more egalitarian (and what, would you call that "universal sufferage"?) public school system?

The voucher system is at its core the anti-thesis of open access and egalitarian structures. It is a deeply imperfect and easily corrupted (by classism, by racism, by many other kinds of warped biases) kind of system, like its hybrid cousin, the charter school, displacing public schools from buildings built with historical public bond issues (this is esp. going on in NYC), downsizing to exclude nearby students, leaving huge numbers adrift and scrambling to find someplace to gain entrance.

It gives me nightmares. And I say that as someone with teacher-friends who have taught within these systems, and other than counting the minutes until they can retire with their pensions, they hate the systems that have completely alienated them from a profession they entered out of love for teaching.

Chris: I don't like the voucher system either, but I'd rather see those voucher dollars run through alternative models that would be competition against profiteers and competed for by those models as described. After all, private for-profits only have to compete against themselves and are getting the entire benefit of what otherwise would be more broad distribution.

Public corporations DO represent their shareholders.

No they do not. Corporations in my 401k do not speak for me or on my behalf. If anything, investors place their money in organizations THEY support, not the other way around.

If "democracy" is such a great concept (and I believe it is), why is it allowed to be banned at the corporate gate?

Democracy is a great form of government, a representative democracy in our respect, BUT it does not make for a good company or organization. Can you imagine a football team taking a vote on what play to run? Ridiculous.

This does not mean that organizations should be run at the expense of stakeholders or without regards to their input, but not as a democracy.

RobDon, if they aren't speaking for you, then perhaps you are not harnessing your shareholder voting rights to their fullest. Because that is precisely the intended purpose of giving shareholders such a vote.

And I believe it is an unquestioned assumption that has not been adequately validated that democracy does not make for a good company or organization. It begs the question. There are a number of scholars of democracy, radical democracy, and forms of governance for worker-owned and -run organizations. Many European-based scholars. Let's see if I can pull a few out of my hat:

http://eid.sagepub.com/content/27/4/686.abstract

Cooperatives, Worker-Owned Enterprises, Productivity and the International Labor Organization. I believe this is one that had a big influence on me in the early (pre-web) days of my graduate study, particularly the work of Pelle Ehn:

http://books.google.com/books?id=nj2Y50nWjyAC&printsec=frontcover&vq=%22Work-oriented+design+of+computer+artifacts%22&source=gbs_citations_module_r&cad=6#v=onepage&q=%22Work-oriented%20design%20of%20computer%20artifacts%22&f=false

Work-oriented design of computer artifacts
Computers and democracy: a Scandinavian challenge

http://books.google.com/books/about/Work_oriented_design_of_computer_artifac.html?id=7dJQAAAAMAAJ

http://books.google.com/books?id=sjntAAAAMAAJ&q=Pelle+Ehn&dq=Pelle+Ehn&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hOj4T6PEBdLU6QHj4vHrBg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAg

But my ABSOLUTE favorite on this subject (without going off into the PoMo radical democracy folks like Chantal and Mouffe) is C. Douglas Lummis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lummis

and this book: Radical Democracy. http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Democracy-C-Douglas-Lummis/dp/0801484510

It explores small-d democracy as a principle, like justice, that can be examined anywhere (civil society, technology structures, economic structures, and yes, workplace structures) rather than absolutely linking it ONLY to governmental structures (a conceit that perhaps is unique to our age).

The book blew my mind, and took my thinking far beyond any specific citations in any specific proof ever could. I still love it to this day. ESPECIALLY the chapter on workplace democracy.

In looking for it just now, I just discovered he's on Facebook! Oooh, fangrrrl alert. Wonder if he'll consider a friend invitation?

WHoops, my own correction is needed above. Laclau and Mouffe. Chantal is Mouffe's first name.

When you work with a lot of bibliographies, you start just calling people by their last names. And sometimes you get sloppy.

In what universe is that in the realm of political possibility? Realism says we have a dashboard with lots of switches that are no longer hooked up to anything. The practical thing is to look around for any handles on power whose wires haven't been clipped yet.

Oddly, there is an entity with massive power and an explicit mandate to protect workers. TRMS viewers are well aware of this- it's the Federal Reserve. Why do I think they might act? It has to do with how supremely pissed off Bernanke's normally supremely reserved counterpart in London is. Mervyn King had this to say about the profound threat posed by the violation of trust:

"Many people in the banking industry are hardworking and feel badly let down by some of their colleagues and leaders. It goes to the culture and the structure of banks: the excessive compensation, the shoddy treatment of customers, the deceitful manipulation of a key interest rate, and today, news of yet another mis-selling scandal." (source)

King calls for structural changes, and the Vickers report he endorsed, while modest does include proposals to address the compensation problem.

Maybe on this side of the Atlantic, Bernanke and the Fed's Governors will similarly come to grips with the reality they have been played for fools. They are at their 2 percent inflation target and it is not motivating firms to do anything with the 2 trillion in cash that businesses are sitting on.

Fine.

They announce over the next quarter that the lending rates will be phased in to become a quarter point higher for institutions with executive compensation above 300K per year. The rationale is that the Fed is interested in lending to responsible financial institutions and that given the fixing of the Libor rate, there is little evidence that current executive pay packages are motivating responsible behaviors. Is this fantasyland? Maybe. But look at what Bernanke had to say in 2009 on the subject:

"poorly designed compensation policies can create perverse incentives that can ultimately jeopardize the health of the banking organization" (source)

Let the banksters retire- let them head for the doors and let real bankers who have motivations other than personal enrichment take their place. This addresses the question how to make banks safer.

Next, the Fed takes the further step that there will be a further interest rate penalty for financial institutions who lend to companies whose executive compensation packages exceed $500K per year. The rationale is the same but answers the question how to make banks useful.

The question is whether the Governors are through having their pants legs peed on by Wall Street.

RobDon, if they aren't speaking for you, then perhaps you are not harnessing your shareholder voting rights to their fullest.

Chris, your voting rights as a shareholder are so that you have a voice in the decisions of the company, not so the company can speak on your behalf. As a member of a union, the union actually speaks for you.

RobDon, what part of "having a voice in the decisions of the company" makes "speaking on my behalf" NOT part of the decisions of the company?!

There are a bunch of grassroots shareholder communities RIGHT NOW working precisely to exercise this right, at places like Target and Wal-Mart, etc.

Methinks the Maddow Show could come up with a swell Venn Diagram for you, to demonstrate this.

It would be two concentric circles. I rest my case.

John, don't know if you were referring to me or the other posters above, with your question:

In what universe is that in the realm of political possibility?

My answer is (if it was intended for me): Scandinavian countries.

That's where the scholars have been running their studies on real world examples of worker-run and worker-owned corporations (and, to my own fascination, worker-designed industrial interfaces and machinery, the technology used on the shop floor! That's the bit that I specifically studied as part of my orals, the idea of collaborative software design, or user- and worker-designed software. Because my degree is a combination of technology and social/political theory. Think of it as a cross between UCD and Agile development techniques for industrial uses-- I know you are a wonk so I am using shorthand here).

The links above detail their studies.

RobDon, what part of "having a voice in the decisions of the company" makes "speaking on my behalf" NOT part of the decisions of the company?!

Chris, the distinction to me is that "having a voice in the decisions of the company" means I get to try and steer to company in some respect, while "speaking on my behalf" means that it has the ability to steer me.

If I own Company A stock that doesn't mean that Company A speaks for me, does it?

If I am a member of Union A that means their voice is my voice.

There may be a tinge of overlap but very little.

How so? Appears to be a distinction without a difference, if you ask me. An organization is an organization is an organization (to bastardize Gertrude Stein).

The degree of any person's "identity" with any given "organization" depends on how publicly the person "wears" such an association (school letter jacket, military unit insignia patch, Masonic ring, hardhat or lunchbox with IBEW sticker, JB Hunt truckers' cap, Tyson Foods polo shirt, Razorfish-branded laptop bag (5-year employee gift), publicly "liking" it on Facebook, OR sporting shareholder swag given out at the annual meeting! (I used to crash those famous WalMart annual meetings back when Sam was alive. Everybody wanted to wear WalMart swag back then, Sam's style WalMart ball caps, "associate's vests," etc.).

Or think about people who use Apple products and own Apple stock. A bit religiously fanatical about the association, eh? Bumper stickers, Apple insignia stickers everywhere.

When was the last time you saw someone sporting a union sticker, vs. proudly showing a bit of corporate branding? Who is identifying with whom?

The "idea" of a "union" claims that "we" are unified. So unity is a theme, and a damn good one, since so many forces try overtly to undermine that unity, in order to skim more profit from the wage and benefits pool for shareholders.

It is well-known that shareholders often see ANY employees as a "drag" on their profits. Just watch when any company announces layoffs. Share price soars. The ideal company, from a shareholder standpoint, would have ZERO employees.

Shareholders do seem pretty unified about this. OTOH, Target shareholders were also quite unified in demanding that a company which touts its fair workplace for LGBT workers STOP contributing to conservative political campaigns for Minnesota candidates who want to eliminate LGBT rights altogether.

They spoke with their votes and changed that policy. Scared the @!$%# out of Target mgmt too, I'd say. Lit a fire that is spreading among organizing groups of shareholders all over.

Chris, I didn't communicate my sentiments very well.

I agree on the desirability of this so much... Actually I wrote some of my college entrance essays on this sort of proposal comparing our current system to feudalism. There was a high correlation with the universities who received that essay and declined to invite me versus the ones that accepted and received a different essay. I would love for us to go to stakeholders based representation, and I do agree there are real world examples showing it does in fact work.

What I meant was the task of building the political environment necessary to drive such an economic transition is so formidable that there is an extremely high probability of failure. Maybe I am just a fuddy duddy cautious type, but if you go for the whole transition at once, that it would be a slaughter.

It seems to me we would transition towards it using as aggressive a set of steps as the practical political environment allows at the time.

Oh John, I miss you! Someday we really gotta do a vulcan mind meld, and I would totally dig reading that essay that went to the universities that declined to invite you.

The universities that declined to invite me didn't like my ideas about Emily Dickinson. But other ones loved what I had to say about technology (neither knew that I'd been slowly transcribing Dickinson's poems into the early classic Macs for about 3 years in order to do word counts and track imagery patterns).

But, to quote Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, "Politics is the art of the possible."

Speaking of mind melds, maybe Rachel and Bill Moyers had some thought transfers because about 30 seconds into his show today he was talking about Knox vs. SEIU. (link) Maybe she sends thoughts to him via hammering her head on the wall. Hope it doesn't involve morse code.

I think humans naturally prefer the individualist mode of relating to the group, but we naturally slip into sociocentric mode when there is a group threat- eg unity after 9-11, or Pearl Harbor or the Great Depression. It's the- there's no democrats or republicans in the foxhole. These are your brothers/sisters- you fight or die as a unit. You don't even think about self sacrificial actions- they are just acts of service- doing whatever needs to be done. Total group orientation.

In most normal times when there is no percieved group threats, such group behaviors generally give us the creeps- maybe we will self consciously and half heartedly throw a fist in the air and chant in unison in the march, but if there are a lot of them I just think- this Hive thing is creepy- we are all like robots and who is it that is controlling this show? I don't want to be a cog in someone else's hidden scheme etc etc. That is the natural revulsion of sociocentric modes of being. As soon as WWII was over, we were back to the old divisions.

That I think is at the heart of why unions are declining. There was no more perceived collective threat posed by a malevolent enemy.

It turns out that this is not true across social classes or cultures. For example sociologists studying the Heat Wave of Chicago 1995 found that of the deaths, most were low income, but that as a proportion, latinos were far less likely to die than poor blacks or whites. (article) Part of this may be the collective peril of possible deportation, part the common language and binding cultural norms within a dominant and often hostile culture, and part of it the kind of family orientation of traditional latino culture. Whatever the basis, the sociocentric mode snapped on and people rallied to look in on old folks in the building who were not even related. This sort of hivish behavior violate norms of privacy in black and white culture, and it cost them their lives.

The conditions are ripe for this sociocentric mode snapping on against the 1%. We saw it flicker on momentarily at OWS. When you have the unemployment rate among teen and early 20s workers at 24%, and the U6 unemployement of minorities in a similar range, you have a situation ripe for mass movement.

Marshaling these forces would be high risk for any sitting politician but I could see a charismatic latino female leader able to galvanize a massive resurgence of a broad based labor-progressive issues movement. For practicality I don't see how it could be leaderless- the strongest org would have strong principles of matriarchy, and the service orientation of latino culture to catalyze healthy hivish behaviors amongst those less familiar with this mode of being.

Anyway, Jonathon Haidt drew my attention to this sociocentric versus individualist mode of being in his analysis of right wing versus left wing attitudes towards norms. Joan Walsh may be getting into the ethnic dimension in her upcoming book, but who knows- both she and Klinenberg were on Hayes' show but there wasn't a peep out of them on anything anywhere near this. Too bad, because this I think is at the core of something whose eruption is probably inevitable. Even if economics don't drive people to act, the physics of CO2 build up will ultimately generate the collective threat. The sociocentric reaction will flip on regardless how strong the propaganda and money machines are at that time, even if the 1% triumph in domination of the US, with clear majority in SCOTUS, elimination of FDR and social programs- and Paul Ryan is considered a liberal republican. None of this will matter because the hive reaction will turn on the establishment who denied/ ignored the threat.

Ironically, we would have the 1% to thank for a populist political movement that swept the oil and banking plutocracy from power, and established a new society of collectivist value institutions.

It is not a hopeful scenario, but grim. This inevitability would involve a 4 to 6 degree change in global temperatures, meaning tens of millions of deaths due to starvation, migration and wars caused by displacement of people from lands no longer inhabitable.

About the universities- I visited them and didn't care for the preppie entitled elite vibe at any of them.

It wasn't really fair, as I found out later but it was probably had a lot more to do with how they and I reacted to my insecurities and assessment of who was to blame for the world's ills. I finally settled on a hippie school that was a cocktail of radical feminists, marxists, militant vegamatics, proto punks, loner artists and scholars. Folks that really dug mind altering conversations.

My take is that it would include anyone who is "represented" by the union, paying member or not. So yes, it would include right-to-work states.

Right terriels, but in right-to-work states, there are no closed shops. From my understanding, then, even if there were a majority vote to adopt the union as primary negotiator, those choosing not to join in that majority vote as members or non-members are not compelled to participate through dues, even tho they stand to benefit from said negotiations.

That's the way I understand it, at least. From having lived in the South, I realize the point is actually moot. I cannot think of a single union shop in the South (that I have encountered).

Right-to-work laws essentially bust unions, wiping out a century of labor movement gains in a fell swoop, without a single strike, no bare knuckles, no union thugs, no company goons. Unions just rolled over and died there. End of story.

Chris is correct. "Right-to-work" states are in entirety "opt-in" by all practical terms. Non-union employees are most often still part of the bargaining unit, and therefore inherently still reap the benefits of union representation without any skin in the labor.

It is the union members who increasingly shoulder the burden of protecting their fellow coworkers, and employee interests in safe working conditions, positive work environments, fair conditions of employment, benefits, etc.

In more efficient companies and agencies, management and union partnerships are valued by both, for unions can be instrumental in determining the best practices to encourage productivity, efficiency, workplace safety, increasing overall health of the workforce, and reducing employee turnover rates.

Congress is sitting on DeMint's 2011 national right-to-work bill. It has yet to go to committee. With RTW Legal Defense Foundation's direct admission of having political motivations behind crippling unions' ability to ensure US labor has any voice of significance, they're going to have to approach their national attack on labor rights a little more tactfully, or their national objective will be too obvious for even the staunchest conservative to ignore.

It is about more than just eliminating political competition, or pushing anti-labor policies, it is about who controls and redefines the terms of American labor. Jobs... it's just another market to "them", which makes it all about supply and demand, baby.

Consider this hyperbole, but I would venture a bet on an increase in google hits on the word "serfdom" in one possible future.

I don't think it is hyperbole, but then I google "serfdom" all the time. I think JohnMesserly has since before there was a Google.

You know the part I just can't feature? Chamber of Commerce. They've been completely corrupted by the offshore bug. But, like, isn't the Chamber of Commerce sort of THE town Main Street booster organization? Like, right up there with the Kiwanis and JayCees?

What did it take for them to get in bed with Asian interests and totally sell-out local businesses, their ostensible constituencies? That's a level of corruption that is never talked about.

It isn't just unions that are getting screwed over by this current Scorched Earth Changling in charge of the GOP. US small business and local communities are getting the shaft as well. And the idea of non-urban communities that can prosper and thrive as well. These have all been sacrificed on the cross to monopoly schmoozing to the super-mega-rich.

Basically, it's the Courtiers to the new Aristocracy, and everyone else. Welcome to Pluto in Capricorn.

Study the reduced influence Quintilian had over the Roman Emperors vs. how influential Cicero was in the time of the Roman Republic.

We will now all be playing the role of Quintilian. Or maybe the original Franciscans in medieval times.

That would also bring worker productivity and wages more in line with each other without raising wages to make up that difference. Since about 1973 to now, worker productivity has doubled while wages, previously moving up with productivity, have been flat. The harder we work the less we make. In any case, workers have not fared well under the governance we have had for many years.

Snarky, angeleno, snarky. Why should she be ashamed that YOU can't open it with your 'many viewer programs'...I just used Windows viewer...or you can go to explorer and use that...there are FREE viewers out there. Quit assuming garbage.

angeleno: I imagine that Rachel is using plain old Flash, just like YouTube. You should be able to open the video right through your browser. I tried it on my aging laptop, using both Chrome and Internet Explorer, and the video played perfectly. If you can play the other Maddow videos and other MSNBC videos, then this one should work just fine.

This is weird--Firefox will not allow playing, but Explorer will.

Guess I know which browser to use on MSNBC sites.

Thanks for the hint!

Why should we contaminate the universe with our idiocy?

I believe your "Nietzschean Gestalt" is aka Neo-evolutionist of the Nazis that survival of the fittest was the greatest determinate in evolution and could be exclusive, a theory which Darwin did not see even the need to investigate as a hypothesis. Many today espouse this in another form we know as individual responsibility, where if you want something you get it yourself, work harder, while worker productivity has doubled and wages flattened over the last 40 years.

I have to agree harder work means more success, but sadly that is not the case in today's USA. Today people make 100,000 times what a worker does by simply trading paper. I agree again that the productivity of the average worker has doubled, while those same workers wages have flattened. Going by what $1 could buy in 1972 and what $1 buys today, it is clear to see how badly the average worker has lost the game of life.

pendulum. I saw a horror movie once where the pendulum was central to the plot.

It's not football season.

Are you drunk? What the Hell are you talking about? Seriously, if you want your message to be understood, maybe you should sober up before typing.