Dan Little: Capitalism's bad incentives

Chris Dillow writes about Capitalism's bad incentives.

Now, I’m not saying that these bad incentives will bring down capitalism or that they are all eliminable: there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. They do, however, raise an important possibility — that there is abundant room for a leftist government to consider alternative governance structures that reduce agency problems and produce better incentives. As John McDonnell notes, such structures might (pdf) well include more cooperatives, as these give control to workers who have both skin in the game and local knowledge of particular working practices.

Unfortunately, the Capitalists will see the development of worker cooperatives as a threat to their power as these cooperatives are a contending centre of power in the political and economic system. And their existence undermines the Capitalists' contention that there is no alternative.

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Noam Chomsky: A World in Peril

Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian discuss A World in Peril.

Functioning democracy erodes as a natural effect of the concentration of economic power, which translates at once to political power by familiar means, but also for deeper and more principled reasons. The doctrinal pretense is that the transfer of decision-making from the public sector to the “market” contributes to individual freedom, but the reality is different. The transfer is from public institutions, in which voters have some say, insofar as democracy is functioning, to private tyrannies — the corporations that dominate the economy — in which voters have no say at all. In Europe, there is an even more direct method of undermining the threat of democracy: placing crucial decisions in the hands of the unelected troika — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission — which heeds the northern banks and the creditor community, not the voting population.

Emphasis Mine

Capitalism destroys Democracy.

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Dan Little: Community resilience

Dan Little writes about Community resilience.

So the question here is this: what features of community life can be developed and cultivated that can serve as "shock absorbers" working to damp down the slide towards antagonism? What social features can make a multi-group community more resilient in face of provocations towards separation and mistrust?

Without pretending to offer a full theory of inter-group community stability, there are a few measures that seem to be conducive to stability.

First, the existence of cross-group organizations and partnerships among organizations originating in the separate groups, seems to be a strongly stabilizing feature of a multi-group society. The presence of a group of leaders who are committed to enhancing trust and cooperation across group lines provides an important "fire break" when conflicts arise, because these leaders and organizations already have a basis of trust with each other, and a willingness to work together to reduce tensions and suspicions across groups.

Second, person-to-person relationships across groups (through neighborhoods, places of work, or family relations) provide a basis for resisting the slide towards suspicion and fear across groups. If Chandar and Ismael are friends at work, they are perhaps less likely to be swayed by Hindu nationalist rhetoric or Islamic separatist rhetoric, and less likely to join in a violent mob attacking the other's home and community. Neighborhood and workplace integration ought to be retardants to the spread of inter-group hostility.

Third, policing and law enforcement can be an important buffer against the escalation of ethnic or religious tensions. If a Muslim shop is burned and the police act swiftly to find and arrest the arsonist, there will be a greater level of trust in the Muslim community that their security interests are being protected by the system of law.

Intergroup violence is the extreme case. But the separation of communities into mutually fearful and mistrustful groups defined by religion, race, or ethnicity is inherently bad, and it has the prospect of facilitating intergroup violence in the future. So discovering practical mechanisms of resilience is an enormously important task in these times of division and antagonism presented by our national political leaders.

Emphasis Mine

Shouldn't we consider class solidarity instead? Little's analysis seems to be blind to class. He alludes to the ruling class formenting community antagonism, but is unable to elucidate a theory for such a policy.

The explicit generation of community unrest by the political class means that law enforcement is unlikely to intervene. In fact, the police are more likely to protect the agitators (such as Fascists) than their victims.

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