[lbo-talk] socially irresponsible investment

Michael Dawson mdawson at pdx.edu
Sat Apr 16 10:57:13 PDT 2005


The problem is price competition, not single-firm failures, right? The idealized world of Adam Smith is only half the story of small capitalism, which could probably never exist, due to the other, bad half of the story -- shitty wages and extreme instability.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of snitsnat
> Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 10:31 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] socially irresponsible investment
>
> At 10:53 AM 4/16/2005, Michael Perelman wrote:
> >Tell us more. I have never heard of a recession beginning with the
> >failure of a mom
> >& pop store? Can you imagine what would happen if a CitiCorp would go
> >belly up?
>
>
> When a small factory in a small town goes belly up, though, it does cause
> a
> local recession, yes? Because, isn't that what we are talking about? The
> same system, only writ small? By definition a small business is limited,
> but it's only a small business _relative_ to what is considered a norm,
> the
> big business.
>
> Tully's talking about creating a world in which there are no big
> businesses. In which case, what is small would actually be quite
> influential within the lifestyle enclave itself. I'm curious, not being an
> economist, how you'd examine the economic impact of a small 100 employee
> factory in a small town of, say, 1000. What was the typical size of the
> Greek polis? Or, rather, what do people think a small enclave might look
> like in this utopia? Is the economy extremely local, with everything being
> produced and distributed within a geographic region with as little
> dependency on the rest of the world as possible?
>
> Would crop failure be a problem under those conditions? What if a few
> individuals mismanaged things so badly that the whole community was sent
> into a spiral of recession? What if they were actually cooking the books,
> robbing the utopian polis?
>
> Why would another utopian polis rush to the aid of another utopian polis?
> If they're merely eking out a living themselves, would they have surplus
> to
> give to the freeloaders? Would they want to establish rules as to whether
> or not the other failing community was truly worthy of their aid? what
> about natural disasters? What costs go up in the absence of the economies
> of scale? Wouldn't the tax burden increase?
>
> Rambling q's.
>
> k
>
>
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