Common governance awards all members of a given community equal rights — power is equally distributed. There is no coercive body delegating policy. Common governance is rooted in liberty, not enclosed by a monopoly of force and violence.

For the libertarian this approach to governance is ideal. We do not view freedom in the abstract — we hold it is critical to unleash the creative, innovative potential of human society. Consistent libertarians seek a stateless society. Beltway political circles dismiss the proposal as utopian and incompatible with modern civilization. These objections are easily refuted, however. We are inclined to decentralize. The emergence of democracy, for example, exhibits this societal trait.

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

Bitcoin tips welcome:

• 1N1pF6fLKAGg4nH7XuqYQbKYXNxCnHBWLB

The research finds that people evaluate issues based on the desirability of policy implications. If said implications are undesirable people tend to deny a problem even exists. The study uses the subject of climate change as a specific example. Most discourse regarding climate simply asks after the role of the nation, or state, in addressing global change — to carbon tax, or not to carbon tax is the question. The Washington Post‘s Chris Mooney connects the dots and notes: “Conservatives don’t hate climate science. They hate the left’s climate solutions.”

This is interesting fodder for the libertarian. Beyond the subject of climate change, this study holds large implications for the entire state apparatus.

The scholarly definition of the state is: “A human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” State officials, ideology intact, make sweeping policy decisions for entire nations. After each election, parties gain or lose majority influence, but the problem of centralized governance always remains. It is impossible for a few elected officials to form desirable policy representing the whole public, even if they want to. Successful governance and state are ever at odds.

This cannot be more evident today. The United States Congress enjoys a miserable 14% approval rating and after recent mid-term elections the same miserable party affiliates are crafting policy to govern each and every one of us. It is time for polycentric, common governance.

Common governance awards all members of a given community equal rights — power is equally distributed. There is no coercive body delegating policy. Common governance is rooted in liberty, not enclosed by a monopoly of force and violence.

For the libertarian this approach to governance is ideal. We do not view freedom in the abstract — we hold it is critical to unleash the creative, innovative potential of human society. Consistent libertarians seek a stateless society. Beltway political circles dismiss the proposal as utopian and incompatible with modern civilization. These objections are easily refuted, however. We are inclined to decentralize. The emergence of democracy, for example, exhibits this societal trait.

Today it is of increasing importance to dismantle illegitimate forms of authority and spread power to as many individuals as possible. Systems of power and domination contribute to apathy and quiescence. This hinders the populace and denies us the ability to craft our own unique existence. We are too busy denying problems exist to fully engage and participate in democratic decision-making.

The beauty of common governance is its decentralized nature. The commons are built and sustained by individuals — empowering the commons, by default, empowers all individuals. A society operating under the principles of liberty necessarily rejects the concentration of authority and coercive claims to power. Such an order thus champions individual labor, place connections and civic participation in the political economy. Individual achievement exists not despite of, but due to liberty.

Decentralization is a requirement of successful governance. Concentrated power is unnatural. It holds a monopoly over decision-making. Concentrated power lacks competition, innovation and progress — it is static. Common governance, on the other hand, is dynamic. The commons allow all stakeholders to craft and emulate policy, creating desirable options for all participants. Thus, the commons can overcome barriers to meaningful social change as discussed in the Duke study.

Let us end the state monopoly on governance and reclaim the public.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.60 for every additional copy.

“From the individualist point of view, competition is synonymous with emulation, or stimulation. . . For individualists, then, the expression ‘freedom of competition’ means the complete possibility for individual affirmation in all fields. In other words, full opportunity for every individual, in association or alone, to present, diffuse, and put into practice all conceptions and methods with similar or differing aims, without any fear of restrictive interference by a State, governmental administration, or any human being whatsoever. In the field of economic action freedom of competition means full opportunity for the producer – in association or alone – to develop his individual effort according to his taste. That is to say, to put into action his ingenuity, to call on his creativity and personal initiative, without the fear of clashing with a regulation which limits the conditions of his production. . . .

“Any hindrance of this opportunity, or liberty, has as a result the increase of uniformity. Who says ‘uniformity’ says fossilization, regression, retrogression. In an environment in which there is no competition degradation results: the producer, instead of evolving towards the artist, devolves towards the labourer; the latter recedes into the automaton; and the consumer loses himself in fatuity and vulgarity. . . . The concentration of manufacture into the hands of a few, mass-production in immense industrial barracks, conscription and permanent armies – all these push the human personality towards the beast of the herd, making it into flesh for shepherds and dictators. . . .”

The best, surest way to prevent monopoly (the ostensible goal of antitrust law, also called “competition law”), isn’t instituting new arbitrary rules and regulations, but rather allowing anyone to engage in any peaceful, voluntary enterprise she wishes. The constant threat of new competitors is the single most effective check on the commercial power of incumbent corporate giants.

Since these incumbents are more entrenched and closer to lawmakers and regulators, relying on legal and regulatory instruments instead of open competition simply creates opportunities for the corruption and abuse that come with “regulatory capture.” Lobbying pressure groups have the access and the resources to tailor public policy to their private ends.

Antitrust law is just one instance of attempted economic planning, based on all of the same fallacies that underpin other centralized economic controls. Efforts to determine or predict which mergers and acquisitions will harm the competitive environment assume that we know far more about the overall economy than we ever could. They represent what Friedrich Hayek famously called The Fatal Conceit.

Hayek understood that markets made up of freely trading and interacting individuals are the only way to organize and coordinate the profusion of dispersed knowledge we call “the economy.” And just as we don’t and in fact couldn’t know all that is necessary to plan an economy, neither can we predict the consequences of, for instance, allowing some mergers but not others.

Still, market anarchists as critical of corporate power as anyone else on the political left. We too believe that something must be done to remedy the exploitative dominance of big business — but both theory and observation have taught us that the state is the disease, not the remedy. It is in fact state-granted privilege which gives today’s corporate powerhouses their chokehold on economic relations.

Once the state’s coercive, criminal privileges are removed from the economic system, there will be no need for “competition laws” designed to prevent any one market actor from growing too large and powerful. Such laws appear desirable only where special regulatory and licensure barriers have already made competition itself illegal, advantaging favored groups.

Rather than adding new layers of mindless and arbitrary rules — to be administered by lawyers and bureaucrats — market anarchists propose that we actually try the free competition we’ve heard so much about. Political and economic power need one another; in truth, it is probably a mistake even to consider them as separate and distinct phenomena, for historically they have always been thoroughly entwined.

Today’s massive multinational corporations are very much the products of state power, the successors of the “mercantile system” criticized by Adam Smith. To rein in their power, we need only allow full, genuine competition. The freest possible system would also be the fairest, obviating the need for antitrust law.

I happen to embrace the term, rather than run from it. If we’re being precise with our language and defining it properly, then isolationism ought to be the goal of any person who understands the routine and predictable fallibility of government. It is a philosophy grounded in historical fact, one based on a multitude of experiences which all point to the extremely limited ability of governments to accomplish their ends.

Real isolationism thus seeks not the walling off of America from the rest of the world and its problems, but instead, to isolate only the American government from inserting itself into those problems, thereby creating a bigger shitstorm than already exists. But those who create the political lexicon today have turned the term on its head in Orwellian fashion.

The folks who tar others with the isolationist label need to look inward, for it is they who seek to do the isolating. They wish to isolate you from just about everything you stand to come in contact with, both of the living and non-living variety. From the people you associate with, the places you go, what you eat, who you sleep with, where you go to school, and how you medicate yourself, to what you read, watch, hear, and think — the real isolationists seek to control virtually every conceivable human action and interaction. There is nothing the real isolationists don’t wish to restrict, license, tax, or require you to get their permission for. These isolationists, the true ones, are your Congressmen, their administrative minions, and all of their constituents who loudly support them and play their game. They’re here to define your entire life for you, starting on day one.

Nowhere is this paternalistic mindset more starkly exhibited than in today’s immigration debate. The Central American children crossing the border are presented by the isolationists as your enemy, when in fact, it is the American government that turns the children into something resembling a threat.

A recent parody song by Ray Stevens highlights the real American isolationist worldview plainly, and without any of the political-speak that you hear on the nightly news. If only the Fox News talking heads would be this straightforward about their position. Stevens mocks America as the country that hands out “goodies” to all who illegally cross its border. It is apparently lost on Stevens that the ones actually handing out the goodies are the politicians themselves, always with their hand in your wallet. No songs about them, however. As long as Stevens’ Medicare tab is being paid, he’s just fine with the political thievery.

If government handouts are the root problem, the solution is logical — eliminate government, the very source of the handouts. And as Murray Rothbard said, “[o]nly wholesale flailing away with a meat axe could possibly do justice to the task [of cutting government].” But again, that’s the solution only if the goodies are your real problem.

If brown-skinned children are your real problem, then by all means, demonizing them, building a wall, and militarizing the border all seem like appropriate responses. Why would Ray Stevens, or any who share his isolationist views, wish to attack the root (government welfarism) when their real issue is with the foreigners themselves?

Stevens’ song continues by giving examples of other countries that handle border issues by jailing, beating and killing illegal entrants. “Imagine that!” he says, as if these are things America should aspire to. That line of reasoning speaks for itself, and is unfortunately all too common in most Law and Order types.

And no isolationist’s ravings about immigration would be complete without the boneheaded economic argument. You know, the one that says immigrants will take your job if you don’t turn them away at the border, as if you have some kind of entitlement to lifetime employment. Is that attitude not welfare dependency in its purest form?

Professor Donald Boudreaux has destroyed the economic argument against immigration beautifully on his blog. Taken to its absurd but logical extreme, if walling off a territory to prevent competition from flowing in were an economic benefit, then why not apply it on a state level, or even the city, neighborhood or household level?  Wall yourself and your family off from the rest of the world and produce everything in-house. See what kind of prosperity results.

I’ll continue to embrace isolationism as long as the political class is defining the term, but I long for the day when we can call a spade a spade. Yes, it is the government that is the real isolator. Immigration is just one small facet of their isolationist attitude. There are countless other ways in which government seeks to cut you off from the entire world around you.

Building A Solidarity Economy

Under the cooperative model, workers own the business, reducing injustice because they have a stake in the community and because an individual will find it hard to exploit oneself. Workers often buy into their jobs (upfront or amortized), vote on major decisions in general assemblies or committees, and even voluntarily donate to the co-op for re-investment. Known as “workplace democracy,” this model of authentic self-determination renders state action superfluous.

The flagship Mondragon Corporation, the seventh largest company in Spain by asset turnover (and a federation of hundreds of cooperatives) is a controversial but impressive proof-of-concept that worker cooperatives can do everything the vampiric large-scale, capital intensive firms can, but better.

Today, worker co-ops have immense economic impact but unrecognized political clout. The cooperative is a sleeping giant: There are at least 30,000 U.S. cooperatives with at least $3T in assets, $654B in annual revenues, $75B in wages and benefits and 875,000 jobs directly created. [1] For comparison, Apple had $156.5B in revenues for the 2012 fiscal year. Rigorous studies on the viability of the cooperative model can be read on the website of the Quebec International Summit of Cooperatives here.

The above figures don’t account for cooperatives outside of the US, either. In Britain, Italy, Sweden and Germany, cooperatives are a sizable pillar of the economy and partially account for the high social development statistics in these nations. Reflecting these egalitarian values, a 2003 federation of worker cooperatives drafted the World Declaration on Cooperative Worker Ownership, a.k.a. the Oslo Declaration, a sentiment based on solidarity and inclusiveness rather than the psychopathic self-interest that characterizes the corporation-state.

The Evolutionary Cosmology of Economic Self-Interest

Cooperative behavior does not necessarily violate the idea of homo economicus, rational self-interest and utility maximization—people simply derive utility from helping others and seeing that justice is served. The idea of rational self-interest holds, but mainstream economists’ standard utility functions fail to account for the hard-to-quantify pleasure of mutual aid.

Taylorist “Scientific Management” and the competitive corporate model gained popularity in light of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, which described nature as competitive, cannibalistic and callous.

Darwin’s less-read but equally important treatise The Descent of Man (1871) describes pro-social, synergistic and cooperative behaviors within and between species. Scientist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, inspired, elaborated on this friendly dynamic in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.

Surprise, surprise — the most successful species are those that maximize cooperative behavior. Competition is costly — resources spent trying to thwart an opponent could be pooled and used to enlarge the pie rather than take an increasingly sharp knife to it.

The hegemonic ideology of selfishness, competitive ambition and that “greed is good” are inaccurate and destructive. Greed is taking more than you need at the expense of others – it is always immoral (and rightfully one of the seven deadly sins in most of the parable-anthologies of religion). Coincidentally, economics students behave more selfishly than other students in experiments. [2] And, to boot, they’re more selfish than other majors going in to college, meaning they self-select.

“Leafing through Forbes or Fortune [magazine] is like reading the operating manual of a strangely sanctimonious pirate ship.“

- Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Economics and business school programs inculcate vampiric values with hegemonic, corporation-statist curriculum. Economics today serves as a moral and empirical justification for capitalism as it currently exists (though not in all departments, only ones like Wharton and the Harvard Business School that tend to place their students in prestigious positions like at J.P. Morgan, Deloitte, Bank for International Settlements and the UN).

Hilariously, CEOs think they’re doing a service to society! In fact, some believe they’re “doing God’s work,” like Goldman Sachs’ humble friar Lloyd Blankfein, who pays himself $68M a year of stolen wealth.

Really, claiming that executives are necessary to create jobs implies that monopolized capital is the only way capital can be deployed. In reality, factories run quite well without bosses. Argentinian workers successfully occupied and began producing in their old factories after capitalists had shut them down, as detailed in the documentary The Take.

The beauty of the worker’s co-op is that it merges the union with the management; there is no energy or time wasted on antagonism, sabotage and bargaining. Workers vote on salaries, working hours, conditions — everything.

Co-ops are often more efficient because middle managers, foremen and taskmasters are unnecessary; nobody needs to crack the whip to coerce productivity because workers have a strong incentive to add value as they share directly in the profits (and losses, which are actively mitigated). There is a strong disincentive to destroy the natural resources workers rely upon because they are embedded in the community and cannot just move operations to East Asia or Latin America when the “job’s done.”

Mondragon

The Mondragon Corporation, the 7^th largest company in Spain, is currently the apex of capital-intensive, highly specialized worker’s co-operatives. In the year 2010, against the backdrop of the ongoing global financial crisis, the competitive advantage and efficiency gains were clearly evident in the firm’s strong financial figures: €33B in assets, €14B total income and €178M “profit” in 2010 (triple the “profit” of 2009). [3] Video Report.

The co-op does everything from manufacturing computer chips, auto parts, renewable energy machinery and kitchen appliances to acting as a bank, insurance, consulting, architecture and engineering firm. Mondragon runs petrol stations, retail outlets, supermarkets and even a university. Over half of the company’s products are for international export. Those that believe worker’s co-ops only work on a local, small-scale should study Mondragon.

The “corporation” is truly a federation of many worker-owned businesses, comprised of over 83,000 employee-owners with subsidiaries in places like Brazil and China. The company is based in the town of Mondragon in the Basque region (population 23,000) where there is reportedly neither poverty nor opulence. Almost everyone has healthy food, comfortable houses and modern conveniences. There are no mansions, Ferraris or Armani suits, though. There is, however, a convivial, joyful sense of community trust and solidarity because workers own the full product of their labor, nobody lives opulently while others are left in the cold – in other words, justice.

Mondragon’s early prototype was borne out of the Spanish Civil War period (1936-38), when socialists and anarchists warred with Franco’s fascists. The philosophy at work in Mondragon is compatible with libertarian socialism or market anarchism. Unlike state socialism, free association reigns and there is no place for government violence.

“Contrary to what some advocates of top-down management say, this worker-centered focus hasn’t been an obstacle to growth. Founded in 1956 by Father Don Jose Arizmendi, a Basque Catholic priest, the Mondragón cooperatives today […] employ more than 100,000 worker/owners and in 2007 generated revenues of more than $24 billion.

The central importance of workers permeates every aspect of the Mondragón Cooperatives. Even though the MCC businesses are affected by the global financial crisis, there is no unemployment within the MCC businesses. People are moved around to other jobs, or hours are cut without cutting pay. The wages for unworked hours are to be repaid through extra hours worked later in the year.” [4]

Mondragon has perfected E.F. Schumacher’s Principle of Subsidiarity, striking the appropriate balance between order and autonomy. In a large bureaucracy, efficiencies are shaded and dispersed – not under this model. Each of the over 285 subunits keep their own balance sheets. Mondragon offers budding entrepreneurs training and funding, helping hundreds of new companies form. [5]

Upper management makes 6 times the salary of workers at most. Compare this figure to the 300:1 average in the U.S. Finally, the mode of production is the highest manifestation of democracy: one worker, one vote. They meet annually in a general assembly and coordinate social services and business plans. Mondragon is doing a lot right.

The most important aspect of Mondragon’s model, though, is not how efficient or profitable the company is, but the quality of life for the worker-owners. The cooperative federation guarantees pensions, healthcare, and education—explaining the absence of poverty in the city of Mondragon itself.

This system is rooted in a basic idea: treating workers like dignified human beings leads to productivity gains. Giving labor direct incentives, profit sharing and periodic goals that boost solidarity result in profit. These methods are evidenced also by Jack Stack’s miraculous turnaround of the Harvester tractor company, resulting in 10 times productivity gains just by rallying feelings of solidarity in the workers. [6]

Emerging Cooperatives

For Yes! Magazine, Annie McShiras reported on the Brooklyn-based worker’s cooperative, Beyond Care, a childcare business and a part of the Solidarity Economy Network of collaborative enterprises in New York. Co-ops like Beyond Care bring together independent contractors to leverage clout, pool capital, exchange expertise and serve as social support systems for one another.

There are 68 other co-ops in the New York area listed in the NYC Solidarity Economy Mapping Project.  The international propagation of worker’s co-ops reflects changing views about the economy; one based on mutual aid, justice and human happiness instead of lifeless, arbitrary and abstract monetary value.

Yes! Magazine has described several other emerging co-ops. [7] Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperative Laundry is one of them, which built a LEED-certified $6M facility in a city with crumbling infrastructure and high unemployment. The laundry is owned by its 50 employees. They seek to serve “anchor institutions” like the Cleveland Clinic and various universities. The laundry even solicited startup capital from them, instead of relying on financing from an investment bank that would demand unfavorable working conditions and tax breaks (not that tax breaks are bad in isolation, but they’re bad when they’re preferentially given to large corporations and nobody else).

The most revolutionary thing one can do is grow their own food. Likewise, large-scale urban agriculture co-ops like Evergreen City Growers are the backbone of radical independence, sustainability, health and justice.

Evergreen is a year-round hydroponic operation capable of producing 3 million heads of lettuce and 1 million pounds of basil per year (on the labor of only 50 people). Ohio spends $7B shipping food from places like California and Hawai’i; the health and petroleum savings are considerable.

This project is similar to many others seeking to alleviate the “Food Island” crisis of the inner-city, similar to the Growing Power project based in Minneapolis and spreading throughout the country. Co-ops also tend to be Green-minded, like Ohio Cooperative Solar, which installs solar panels.

These co-ops needed startup capital and banks don’t like unconventional models. So they did it themselves. The Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund provided seed financing to worker’s co-ops in the Cleveland area and in turn each co-op dedicates 10% of profits to the fund to expand the co-operative network. It is very much like Mondragon’s Caja Laboral credit union. The key to any hub of cooperative activity is financing, which is why credit unions are so vital.

Worker’s co-ops also favor local currencies that retain and amplify wealth within the community. These currencies also defend against hyperinflation, deflation and the paradox of thrift whenever the cartelized Federal Reserve credit system decides to simultaneously rob the people and destroy their economy.

Toward A Just Mode of Production

The problem with Taylorist scientific management is that it fails to account for that which can’t be quantified: human dignity among them. Productivity can be boosted by treating people with respect, setting small goals and giving workers enough information to monitor the company’s finances. Management theory often fails to realize that worker happiness fuels the engine of production; even if the worker has the most advanced tools ever, it is all for naught if they recalcitrantly drag their feet because they feel oppressed, micro-managed and degraded.

There are no principal-agent dilemmas or tensions within the organizational structure of worker cooperatives. The worker-boss relationship is a vestige of feudalism, sharecropping and slavery because it rests upon coercion rooted in the desperation of the working class.

Labor has been expropriated and systematically emasculated by states to benefit the elite ownership class. Capitalists argue that labor has the freedom to turn down employment and go elsewhere, but this is not an option when one has been born into poverty. Employers offer the same deal and the only alternative is to starve.

The fact that there is such a thing as a permanently impoverished working class and a fixed wealthy ownership class (who need not work) betrays a seriously unnatural distribution of resources and responsibility.

Let’s break out the physics metaphors: Nature abhors a vacuum. Nature also equalizes temperature and balances particle concentration (which is why electronics work) — the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few conflicts with immutable natural law. The current power asymmetric is thermodynamically unsustainable. The stored potential energy will again become kinetic in the form of upheaval.

Worker cooperatives alleviate the pressure (increase conductance) by opening a gap in the membrane between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Violent revolution is not wise, because states get repressive when they feel threatened and time is on the side of the masses. For fear of sounding reformist, however, it is incumbent upon all of those with creative powers to tilt full-throttle into the task of disseminating revolutionary ideas, means of production/consumption and disruptive technologies to expedite the shift, because a lot of people are suffering.

The current global imbalance would not have emerged if not for the hegemony of corporate power rooted in state violence. In the case of worker cooperatives, efficiency, order and profitability need not be sacrificed for social justice. These ends are not merely compatible, they are synergistic. As Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote, “Liberty is not the daughter but the mother of order.”