Brad Voracek — Reimagining “right-to-work”

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” This is Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared by the UN in 1948. It sounds like a pretty good right to me. That’s why when I learned about “right-to-work” states in America I was dumbfounded. I thought we were fulfilling this right in my own country and I hadn’t even heard about it! Why were people still unemployed if we had a right to work?

It only took a few minutes of research to find out that the “right-to-work” laws some states have are nothing like the fundamental human right. What these laws actually do is defend a worker’s right not to be required to join a labor union to work at a company....

Hey, the essence of capitalism is free-riding, also known as rentierism.

The Minskys
Reimagining “right-to-work”
Brad Voracek

Kevin Cashman — Think Uber’s Problems Stop at Its Management and Culture? Think Again.

So, while some have suggested that the solution is simply to stop using Uber (and, ostensibly, to use competitors like Lyft or Gett), this is no solution at all. The solution is making sure that these companies are subject to the same regulations as traditional taxis, as well as that they comply with labor and other laws, which was unsurprisingly absent from the Holder report. This is the innovative idea that is also a solution to many of Silicon Valley’s problems, regardless of the industry.

Uber might not be able to survive if it started caring about the safety of its passengers, the exploitation of its drivers, or the social costs it shifts onto the rest of us, but maybe it shouldn’t. As politicians plot with Silicon Valley to take over public infrastructure and to revamp the fundamental nature of work, maybe Silicon Valley shouldn’t either.

Free rider problem (pun intended).

The Minskys
Think Uber’s Problems Stop at Its Management and Culture? Think Again.
Kevin Cashman, researcher, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC

Rutger Bregman — No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there

Must read article on work versus rent and free-riding. 

Attacking false consciousness by consciousness-raising.

The Guardian
No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there
Rutger Bregman

Crossposted at Evonomics

New Deal Democrat — How "the Ultimatum Game" explains the Populist backlash to Globalism

In the Ultimatum Game, one player is given $100 with complete discretion as to how much to share with a second player, whose only power is to accept or reject the division. While a strictly rational economic player would accept even a $1 share, in real life most people reject any share under $30. In so doing they harm themselves, but inflict even more harm on the greedy player, enforcing altrusim over the longer term.

Rationality is not a simple as economists make it out to be because interests not merely economic. Moreover, interest involves not only reason but morals, involving sentiment. As contemporary cognitive-affective research shows, cognition is joined at the neurological level with affect, that is, reason with feeling.

"In so doing they harm themselves, but inflict even more harm on the greedy player, enforcing altrusim over the longer term."

This behavior is observed in primates, for example, suggesting that it is an evolutionary trait. Social animals depend on "morals" to function together as units, beginning with the family, since this requires in-group coordination as well as competition. Free riding is discouraged (punished) at much lower levels. The issue is not so much altruism as a choice as much as reciprocity as a requirement.

I do think Brexit and, to a lesser extent, the nomination of Donald Trump by the GOP are watershed moments, where the elites in powerful Western nations have been suddenly and utterly swept aside. I expect this to be a dominant theme in politics over the next 10 years or more, as the neoliberal centrist consensus is destroyed and the left and right offer competing visions of a New Deal 2.0 vs. neofascism to replace it.

Angry Bear
How "the Ultimatum Game" explains the Populist backlash to Globalism

New Deal Democrat

Nicholas Gruen — Success Means Competing and Cooperating. Adam Smith as You’ve Never Seen Him Before

Free rider problems and twenty-first century public goods

Evonomics
Success Means Competing and Cooperating. Adam Smith as You’ve Never Seen Him Before

Nicholas Gruen | CEO of Lateral Economics

Edward Fulbrook — The 1% Curse: What can be done about it? – Oxfam graphics

Graphics from the Oxfam report tell the story of growing wealth concentration due to social, political and economic power rather than fair competition on a level playing field.

What can be done about it. Lack of fairness involves free rider issues. End the free rides.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
The 1% Curse: What can be done about it? – Oxfam graphics

Edward Fulbrook

Bryan Caplan — The Evidence of Altruism

The logic of collective action versus the free rider problem. Take that, economic liberalism.

Each of these stories appeals to self-interest, but economists almost uniformly reject them as absurd. Why? Because they ignore another beloved economic insight: the logic of collective action. When actors have a small effect on big social outcomes, and their only incentive to act is the big outcome itself, selfishness urges them to stand down, twiddle their thumbs, free ride, and yawn "Let someone else do it."

Econolog
The Evidence of Altruism
Bryan Caplan | Professor of Economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Bryan Caplan is a Libertarian (anarcho-capitalist). But see his Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist.

Apparently, some Libertarians (right libertarians) get it about the logic of collective action and the free rider problem that arises from economic liberalism based on self-interest (rational pursuit of maximum utility).

On the other hand, all left libertarians get this, as well as social democrats and heterodox economics of the left — which is why they are on the left. Caplan links to the Wikipedia article on the logic of collective action, which is chiefly about the book of that title by Mancur Olson. What it fails to mention is Nobel laureate in economics Elinor Ostrom's collective action and social development. See her paper, Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms.

Oh, and contrary to Libertarian assumptions to the contrary, some people are actually motivated by altruism. Moreover, this is the normal path of human development toward self-actualization and unfolding human potential.

Altruism one manifestation of spiritual maturity. Caplan seems to think that his explanation is comprehensive, whereas it is only partial. Just as humans develop physically, emotionally and intellectually, they are also capable of developing spiritually, that is, the the direction of greater universality as the boundary of individuality recedes toward the horizon of wholeness.

Spiritually immature people imagine that altruism means giving up individual desire, choice and action, which kill one's individuality, one's sense of personal self, that to which one relates everything, which is what one is. However, the opposite is the case. As one grows spiritually through actualizing one's potential as a human being, one becomes more fulfilled, more complete, and happier. As Aristotle observed in Book One of Nichomachean Ethics, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the by-product of excellence (arete). This is consistent with the perennial teaching of those to whom humanity looks to as sages about the spiritual path and the progressive realization of inherent potential. To miss this is to miss what is truly important in life.

Chris Mooney — 6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil

Harvard's Joshua Greene on the evolution of morality—and why humanity may, objectively, be getting better in the long run.

AlterNet
6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil
Chris Mooney | Mother Jones

Lynn Stuart Parramore — Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters

American business has always had cheaters and crooks, but today they are escaping prosecution and are incentivized to cheat more.

AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore
Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters
Lynn Stuart Parramore

(h/t John Zelnicker via email)

The Free Rider Problem

While this is funny, it also demonstrates the sociological phenomenon of opposition to "free riders." It's a biological phenomenon that extends way down the range of evolutionary development, and, of course, it is typified by parasites. Taken to the extreme, it is comical.

The Raw Story
Georgia Republican Party chair: Straight people will enter gay marriages to get ‘a free ride’
Arturo Garcia

Fox News contributor: ‘It gets a little comfortable to be in poverty’
Stephen C. Webster

Appearing Saturday on Fox News’s “Cavuto on Business,” contributor Charles Payne insisted that he knows firsthand how “it gets to be a little comfortable to be in poverty” in the United States.

“There’s this idea that between the food stamps and the welfare and the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit and the local programs, you know, it gets a little comfortable to be in poverty,” he said. “Listen, I’ve lived it first hand. I’ve seen when people don’t go to work because they get everything paid for them. The incentive is not there.”

Payne, one of the network’s more vocal critics of assisting the poor and under employed, expanded on his theory about the laziness of poor people during a broadcast last Thursday, explaining that he’s disappointed so many Americans — over 47 million, according to the latest official numbers— are on food stamps. “What we actually have ended up doing is created a wall, a giant barrier, where people don’t move out of poverty into the middle class because in that initial transition they actually lose money and lose benefits,” he said. 

Payne is essentially repeating a common meme among many conservatives who believe that helping poor people keeps them poor and only fosters dependence and the growth of state benefit payments. What many Fox News reports on this subject fail to note is that 90 percent of all welfare benefits go to either members of working households, the elderly or the disabled,according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

Harry Bradford — Cheaters Get 'High' From Breaking The Rules: Study

Why law, regulation PLUS oversight and accountability are required to address the free rider problem.

The Huffington Post
Cheaters Get 'High' From Breaking The Rules: Study
Harry Bradford

Chris Dillow — Changing banking culture

In banking, however, the culture that helps solve agency problems is lacking.

So, how to create it, given the obstacles I've described?
We could learn from pre-modern states. They imposed brutal punishments upon wrong-doers, in part because they needed to terrorize their subjects into submission simply because they had no other means of controlling them. Similarly, if shareholders or regulators cannot control bankers - and it looks like they can't, draconian punishments for wrongdoing are needed to keep them in line. As Voltaire nearly said, "it is wise to kill a banker from time to time to encourage the others."

Read it at Stumbling and Mumbling

Changing banking culture
by Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Whatever it takes, I guess. We lock up people for a long time for a lot less.