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Let's try that again, shall we...

[and again, Previous video was edited because of potential offense, thanks everyone]

Hope you all enjoy it. This is an early release for Patrons - keen to know what you think.

Proper subtitles and references to come.

If you spot any glaring errors, let me know!

Files

Worker Democracy

An overview of the evidence surrounding worker democracy. In summary: it's good, but far from perfect. Hope you enjoy the video and the new animations. Those beautiful voices you are hearing are @Saint Andrewism , @Zoe Bee , and @JohntheDuncan My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/unlearneconomics My Twitter: http://twitter.com/UnlearnEcon The Discord: https://discord.com/invite/jy8CNzDsgf Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnlearningEconomics/ Produced by Hobbie Stuart Animations by Grim Friberg Artwork by Jacob Cob © 2021 Unlearning Economics I am an academic economist from the UK who has long been critical of the economics profession and how economics is used in public policy. Mostly the channel will cover economics with a critical perspective but I aim to educate people about economics in the process, so I'll try to explain key concepts and ideas along the way. That way, even if you disagree with aspects of the videos you will hopefully learn something from them. Subscribe for more! References (in rough order of appearance): Productivity in cooperatives and worker-owned enterprises, Logue and Yates Equality Under Threat by The Talented: Evidence From Worker-Managed Firms, Burdín Do Broad-based Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing and Stock Options Help the Best Firms Do Even Better?, Blasi et al The empirical performance of orthodox models of the firm: Conventional firms and worker cooperatives, Pencavel and Craig Wages, Employment, And Capital in Capitalist and Worker-Owned Firms, Pencavel et al New evidence on wages and employment in worker cooperatives compared with capitalist firms, Burdín and Dean Employee Vs. Conventionally Owned and Controlled Firms: An Experimental Analysis, Frohlich et al Workplace Democracy in the Lab, Mellizo et al Do cooperative enterprises create social trust?, Sabatini et al Survival Rate of Co-operatives in Québec, OCA Co-op Survival Rates in Alberta, Stringham and Lee Co-op Survival Rates in British Columbia, Murray The Relative Survival of Worker Cooperatives and Barriers to Their Creation, Olsen Scale, Scope and Survival: A Comparison of Cooperative and Capitalist Modes of Production, Monteiro and Stewart Productivity, Capital and Labor in Labor-Managed and Conventional Firms, FakhFakh et al Are Cooperatives More Productive Than Investor-Owned Firms? Cross-Industry Evidence From Portugal, Monteiro and Straume Shadow price of capital and the Furubotn–Pejovich effect: Some empirical evidence for Italian wine cooperatives, Maietta and Sena Trust, Inequality and The Size of The Co-Operative Sector: Cross-Country Evidence, Jones and Kalmi Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options, Kruse et al Full Undercover Boss episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXK3czablWY but note it includes adverts, specific timestamps to follow. You’ll probably want to download the whole video as it will appear loads of times The Use of Knowledge in Society, Fredrich Hayek Seeing Like a State, James Scott Worker Cooperatives: Good, Sustainable Jobs in the Community, Pérotin The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP, Duda https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members The Marcora Law Supporting Worker Buyouts for Thirty Years, International Cooperative Alliance https://www.ica.coop/en/media/news/marcora-law-supporting-worker-buyouts-thirty-years Second Thought’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG0FhpGdFwc&list=WL&index=3&t=489s&ab_channel=SecondThought Lonerbox’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7n52oyRUVI Worker Cooperatives: Pathways to Scale, Abell Employee ownership and firm performance: a meta-analysis, Boyle et al Employee Stock Ownership, Involvement, And Productivity: An Interaction-Based Approach, Pendleton and Robinson Employees to be handed stake in firms under Labour plan, Syal https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/23/labour-private-sector-employee-ownership-plan-john-mcdonnell?utm_source=pocket_mylist What do we really know about worker co-operatives?, Pérotin Evaluating Workplace Democracy in Mondragon, Christiansen Spanish ratio of CEO to worker pay: https://www.statista.com/statistics/424159/pay-gap-between-ceos-and-average-workers-in-world-by-country/ Board-level employee representation rights in Europe: Facts and trends, Conchon Labor in the Boardroom, Jäger et al Voice at Work, Harju et al The Marx Ratio and the Trouble with Coops, Bruenig https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/05/22/the-marx-ratio-and-the-trouble-with-coops/ From Illyria towards Capitalism: Did Labour-Management Theory Teach Us Anything about Yugoslavia and Transition in Its Successor States?, Estrin and Uvalic Market Entry of Firms with Different Legal Forms, Arando et al

Comments

James Kavanagh

Wake up babe, new unlearning economics video just dropped

Mondian

Finally!

Mondian

One thing I was wondering beforehand was whether or not you're going to mention the different types of cooperatives especially since them always just being referred to as "coops" confused me a lot when researching in the past so I was really happy that you addressed this right at the beginning.

Yakov Mikhailovich

I really enjoyed this. Worker democracy is something I find interesting and that seems promising, but it's hard to find assessments that don't treat it as a panacea. I also really liked the "bag of policies" structure of the video! A couple of notes I made while watching: (1) slide @ 8:20, it might make sense to replace/supplement "capitalist principles" with something like "ownership by shareholders and effective control by management", just because many viewers may not immediately see why "capitalist principles" are framed as opposed to "some degree of worker control" (since the word "capitalism" itself is used in a bunch of distinct and sometimes conflicting ways) (2) @ 14:17, I'm not sure that James Scott would characterize himself as an anarchist per se (based on my reading of his book "Two Cheers For Anarchism") - not really relevant to the content of the video, but I thought it worth mentioning As an aside, I'd love a video sometime about your agreements and disagreements with Hayek and with free-market oriented economists generally - in particular, what are the most important things that free-marketers get right, which (leftists/progressives/whatever people are typically "opposed" to free-marketers) would benefit from understanding? And conversely, what are the things you think free-marketers are most wrong about, or most importantly wrong about? Thanks for the great video!

Deuterostomia

Amazing video as usual (I love your guests too). Will you at any point make a video commenting on the economic system in "Another Now" by Yanis Varoufakis?

Mondian

Econoboi mentioned in his video that worker coops may be more hesitant to hire workers. I know that you disagree with his reasoning on this but I still think it might be a worry worth mentioning. Any particular reason why you didn't?

Jacob M Keegan

-Putting up the pic of the 18th century guy ~3:20 without saying his name is a little weird, even I don't quite remember his name. -Putting up those pictures when you said "degenerate" was funny to me, but probably wouldn't come off well to a lot of folks tbh. -The animations are a great touch, not so flashy as to be distracting, but more interesting then just staring at your logo. I also really like the whole "bag of policies" thing, I often lose track of what we're talking about in long videos like these. -I'm surprised you didn't talk about Cooperation Jackson at all, seems very relevant, especially to policy number 2! -It seems like you accidently faded the logo out too early around 39:00. In conclusion, unsubscribing until you put coops into a stock-flow consistent model to determine their macro effect But seriously, I think it's worthwhile to note that making distribution of profits more equal is itself good, and may have positive macro effects too.

Unlearning Economics

His video was released after I'd finished my script! I do think his reasoning is okay but somewhat speculative, and there's a fallacy of composition in saying that because individual worker democratic firms are reluctant to hire that it will have macroeconomic effects. For example, people could make new firms, or the more reliable demand due to not firing could bolster the economy. It's really difficult to reason from the part to the whole.

Unlearning Economics

All of these points are well taken but I am a little concerned about the degenerate point. I wonder if I should take that out before making it public.

Unlearning Economics

Thanks very much, you are of course right that Scott isn't a strict anarchist and there are surely areas of the video where terminology could have been improved. Probably not worth re-editing for (my producer and I may break down if we are forced to go back to it) but thank you.

James King

Really enjoyed this. I’ll have to watch again to take the detail in, but the summary from the ‘policy bag’ at the end was a great idea. I like that you don’t shy away from suggesting actual policy changes. A lot of Lefty content has a strong message but nothing concrete to organise around. The animations were spot on. I second the suggestion to remove the “degenerate” photo joke. Not every viewer will get that you’re using it ironically.

Green Cerenkov

Will this be public at some point? Excited to share it

Tracking the core of stuff and more Lol

dont forget that the populist movement in the U.S.A tried to create coops on a mass scale to control prices and deal with deflation but it failed because of the lac of capital