Gryzemuis on 20/9/2013 at 15:50

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That is a subject that deserves its own thread. (Heck, discussing different political systems deserves its own thread outside the thread about Syria).

I got a few ideas what could change. Large changes. My ideas might be completely dumb. Or undoable. Or whatever. What surprises me is that I don't see thinkers coming up with radical new ideas. In the 19th century (and before) we had people trying to come with radical ways to improve the world. It seems that after WWII, we have nobody like that anymore. I was surprised when I heard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek) Zizek a few times. He might be wrong in everything he says (he's too preoccupied with communism, I think). But at least he is willing to rethink anything that is taken as a given by anyone.

I'll give you one example of one of my ideas.
I am against large-scale. Large-scale in anything. I think the larger something becomes, the harder it will be to manage. Especially if you want to manage it in a fair way, and an open way. Sheer size will attract the worst people. And they'll have the biggest budgets to set up their crimes.

I am against the EU. Economic co-operation is fine. Having one remote government/parliament in Brussel decide over my life is not fine. The size of the EU, the distance between Brussels and their citizens is too big. Nothing good can come from this in the long run.

I think globalization has a much worse effect than we could envision. Basically all decisions in the world will be decided by: who can do something for the least amount of money. Or: what is profitable most. All other factors will be eliminated. There is no room for social justice. There is no room to improve society and the world. The only question asked in a global society is: "how expensive is it". Bad.

Multinationals are huge powerhouses in today's world. In the US they decide who become president. (Presidency costed $1B last time). They fuck over whole countries (Greece thanks Goldman Sachs). There is no true competition. (Only a few companies in a market will form (unspoken) kartels). When a newcomer enters the market, the old forces just buy it. Huge marketcap will cause no big shareholders. And thus the executives can basically do with a company what they want, without having to show true responsability. Result: only short-term thinking, and taking huge risks at the cost of customers, employees, shareholders, taxpayers, environment, etc.

Now my proposal.
It think the size of companies is a big factor in why things go wrong. My suggestion is to break up large companies. Let's take a (semi-arbitrary) limit of a 1000 people. A company can have only a 1000 employees. If it grows too large, they have to split again. It means a big production company will have to split off their sales team. It means a company with many products will have to split off a separate company per (type of) product. It means large companies can not buy startups, and have to do their own research. It means less stockholders per company, and thus executives can not use the divide-and-conquer strategy to ignore stockholders.

Of course you can not allow one company to own all stocks in another company. Because that would mean nothing has changed. And of course companies (and especially the executives at those companies) will fight such a change with every drop of sweat they got.

We could start with banks. Separate "utility-banks" and "investment-banks". That has been discussed for 5 years now. Nothing has been done. (http://news.yahoo.com/swiss-lawmakers-renew-efforts-split-ubs-credit-suisse-212911967--sector.html) Except maybe an effort by the Swiss law-makers.