How to Make a Difference
The greatest challenges of our time threaten our species and our planet. What remedy? We do what our species has always done to survive, we cooperate (Harari, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2022). Imagine if the best of human ingenuity was focused on solving problems, rather than walking by, or worse, being manipulated into exploiting them, or being stifled by the effects. There are better ways of solving our problems, that arrive when we all help one another.
In supporting DGTB you would be involved in a concrete plan to:
- Meet the challenges that threaten our species and our planet.
- Intervene strategically in polycrises and contribute to positive social change from a position of maximum leverage.
- Change the lives of the project’s immediate participants in ways that give sovereignty to their needs as creators, consumers and service users.
- Design the decision-making processes about the products and services that are produced, the ways in which they are produced and how they are distributed.
- Develop the social relationships and organisational forms which release people's potential, maximise their productivity, are more able to produce positive social impacts, reduce moral hazard and combat negative externalities.
- Lower all vectors of socio-economic inequality, which in turn, will have positive consequences for sustainability and well-being.
- Construct the social architecture which extensive research has shown provides the basis of human happiness and fulfilment.
- Intervene at the larger scale of developing organisations which can buttress the social organisation of democracy itself.
- In other words, the scope of this ambitious project is nothing less than to change the course of history.
Economic Democracy provides the means to structure cooperation into decision-making about what we produce, how we produce it, and how the produce is distributed. It provides the means to marshall the best of our abilities, from the greatest number of people. The greatest opportunities to contribute to problem solving are provided, they are built into the structure, rather than arriving or not, on an ad hoc basis.
We can, and must, develop democratic economic and social relationships that further our collective and individual interests. The current development of Artificial Intelligence makes economic democratisation both urgent and imperative (Kasy, 2023; Acemoglu & Johnson, 2023). Cooperation is the reason that our species dominates the planet and is not yet extinct (Harari, 2015; Bowles & Gintis, 2011) and it is the best prospect for our continued survival (Harari, 2016, 2018, 2022).
Rather than addressing problems one by one, ignoring the interconnections between them, Economic Democracy serves as the pivotal point, a point of maximum leverage, offering the greatest potential to solve the multitude of problems plaguing our lives, from the catastrophic, to the merely annoying. It clears from the field, the biases of vested interests. It summons the best within us, and calls upon us to serve our own best interests, as judged by our own assessments. But what does Economic Democracy entail? How can it be translated into practical structures?
Historically, the bases of political power, have shifted from physical or military strength, to accident of birth, to possession of scarce skills, to geographical location, to gameship, to gerrymandered position, and finally, to the more rational struggling towards democracy. Where should power properly lie? Resource development involves two aspects: production and consumption. It is only fitting that these fundamental, irreducible interests of human beings become the fundamental organizing principles of society. This is where true sovereignty lies and forms the bedrock of a genuinely democratic society. Political democracy is not merely a travesty, although it has regrettably devolved into one, it acts as a precursor to a future society built on genuine democratic principles.
Economic Democracy and economic justice lean together in the same direction towards human fulfilment. Cooperatives are the institutional form of Economic Democracy. Ultimately what they produce, are lives worth living.
Why We Need Democracy
Democracy is essential for quality assurance within a society. It serves as the feedback loop through which a society learns about itself. A society that fails to learn about its own shortcomings cannot effectively help itself. Without a clear understanding of the problems, they cannot be adequately addressed. This is why oligarchy is not sustainable. A society without democracy is akin to an individual without a conscience—it becomes psychopathic. Why do such societies fail? Because, like psychopaths, they lack the ability to feel or sense. They cannot accurately diagnose their ailments and therefore cannot heal themselves. They struggle to relate to individuals because they lack knowledge and understanding of them. They lack judgment, due to a lack of empathy. Such societies cannot truly elevate humanity, only manipulate it as an exploitable tool fashioning the invisible suit for the Emperor's vanity.
Production decisions are adrift from human needs, and no fictioning about the hidden hand of the market can connect them. The hidden hand is the power of what money can bribe and buy, while the hands of the poor are underutilised, unfulfilled and empty. We produce infinite supplies of cruel unneeded means of destruction, while immense needs for sustenance, health and shelter, remain unmet. Voracious non-productive financialisation colonises vast economic resources that could be deployed to improve mortality and quality of life. Economic Democracy is the only mechanism that we have to connect production decisions with people's needs, in a manner that cannot be distorted, corrupted or subverted. It provides the setting where everyone gets to benefit from the best that each of us can produce. Insofar as we have democracy, we meet our needs. Where there is a lack of democracy, our diverse needs remain unmet.
Why Workplaces must be Democratic
To create is to be human. Our capacity for productivity and creativity is the fundamental essence of our being. Being alive means interacting with our environment and effecting change. Work not only yields tangible products but also shapes the individuals carrying out the work (Graeber, 2006). Through work we change the world and the world changes us. This process begins from the moment of our conception and continues to infinity. We are born to become.
Creativity inherently involves problem-solving, yet the confines of traditional employment stifle the world's creative potential. It is no wonder that we find ourselves in the current state of affairs. Einstein working as a Patent Clerk, is the metaphor, for partially wasted talent, but it was not entirely a waste of time, work exposed him to patents that would have stimulated his creativity and problem- solving skills. Work provides education and development throughout life, but if it is at a mediocre level, our capacity to develop as humans is stunted. One who is employed to produce widgets, becomes defined as a widget producer, limiting their access to their boundless creative capacity.
Reducing us to mere employees is to suppress our humanity. The more specialized the division of labour becomes, the more our creativity and fulfilment as human beings are stifled. Individuals find themselves unable to express their true selves as they are compelled to conform to limited roles, leading them to gradually lose, or never really develop, their sense of identity. The question of "Who am I?" is met with infinite potential until one steps through the doors of the workplace, at which point people are categorised within the narrow limits of the specified role within the division of labour. One becomes categorised, a tinker, tailor, soldier or spy.
While it is commonly advocated to "follow your dreams," the reality for many employees is that they exist within a system where they are expected to pursue someone else's aspirations, serve another's purpose, and contribute to someone else's benefit, to serve interests not of their choosing.
Too often, employees are made to labour under psychopathic bosses (Klaas, 2021; Babiak & Hare, 2006). The career most likely to be occupied by a psychopath is CEO (Dutton, 2012). We are suffering an epidemic of corporate destruction wreaked by psychopathic senior management (Boddy, 2011). Meta analysis of the Dark Triad (DT) personality traits- Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy- demonstrates that they are linked to counterproductivity and reductions in the quality of job performance, unless counteracted by contextual factors such as authority and culture (O'Boyle, et al, 2011). Psychopathy adversely impacts individuals, the organisation itself and externalises adverse impacts as social costs in the form of environmental damage, consumer harms, unnecessary layoffs and increased taxation burdens (Boddy, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2010, 2011; Sutton, 2007).
People’s emotional repertoires become warped and underdeveloped. Lives are often tainted with unacknowledged envy, leading to unhealthy competition that fractures our sense of community and intimacy. Though it is often thought that competition drives the best outcomes, there is contrary evidence that intrinsic motivations will stimulate the highest levels of genuine commitment to work of quality (Hennessey & Amabile, 1998; Pink, 2010; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Deci, Connell & Ryan, 1989; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Deci, et al 2008).
The World Economic Forum (2021) reports that record numbers of people are leaving their jobs. The World Health Organization (2019) found that “Time pressure, lack of control over work tasks, long working hours, shift work, lack of support and moral injury are important risk factors for occupational stress, burnout and fatigue among health workers.” Pew Research (2023) reports that only 67% of Americans are well satisfied with their relationship with their co-workers and 62% with their relationship with their managers, 51% are well satisfied with the day-to-day tasks at work, 49% with the benefits their employer provides, 44% with the opportunities for training/ developing new skills, 34% with how much they are paid and 33% with their opportunities for promotion at work. Gallup, reports that worldwide, only 13% of employees are ‘engaged’ at work (Crabtree, 2013).
In theory, economic organisations can be run by anyone who supplies one or more, of the factors of production, those who supply the land/ capital, labour, raw materials or enterprise (Dow, 2018). They can theoretically, also be run by the consumers, by anyone who is impacted by the production process, or by anyone with power to seize or requisition. The decisions can be made in a way that is democratic or autocratic. Power can be distributed hierarchically or heterarchically. The division of labour can be specialised or provide for complex distributions of tasks. Production can serve or diminish the producers and consumers. Products can enrich our quality of life or destroy us. The distribution of the produce can be concentrated among the few or shared by the many. Continuum stretch between each of these binary poles. For the last century or so, the dominant organisations have been run by the owners of capital as autarchies, but more and more our eyes are spanning broader horizons. Organisations can nurture our abilities, or extinguish our humanity. This plan contributes to the process whereby we build organisations with more thought and deeper agency so that they might better serve our needs.
Political Democracy Cannot Survive Without Economic Democracy
The need for Economic Democracy is crucial. Indeed it needs to be the fundamental organising principle of economic activity at all levels. The American Founding Fathers were undoubtedly committed to combating and preventing tyranny, authoritarianism, despotism, and similar oppressions. They rightly believed that dividing and balancing power was the way to achieve this. However, their efforts fell short. Democracy is undermined by economic inequality (Gilens, 2012; Gilens & Page, 2014, 2017; Page, Bartels & Seawright, 2013; Hacker & Pierson, 2011). Moreover, economic inequality is increasing at an exponential rate and along with it, it brings political inequality that increasingly replaces democracy with oligarchy (Piketty, 2017; Reich, 2020b). Political democracy has been increasingly undermined by oligarchy to the point where it has become little more than a thin veil of theatre, with puppeteers pulling the strings of real power.
The Founding Fathers endowed a democracy that was limited to the political sphere, where it cannot sustain itself. It is a castle in the air without foundations in the real. The numerous legislative actions in the US aimed at restricting voter rights are evidence of this. American academics have sent five letters to Congress, expressing concern about the state of American democracy (One Hundred Scholars of Democracy, 2021). Democracy is in grave danger (Runciman, 2018; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Parker, 2018; Klaas, 2016; Munshi, 2017; Homer-Dixon, 2021). Rigging of elections is becoming increasingly commonplace (Cheeseman & Klaas, 2018). It is widely accepted that at least since the Citizens United and Speechnow.org precedents, which sanctioned unequal financialisaton of politics, political democracy is a threadbare shield for Oligarchy (Kuhner, 2014; Formisano, 2017; Whitehouse, 2017; Gerdes, 2014; Street, 2011; Lessig, 2011; Palast, 2012). Unless the underlying economic structures of society are democratic, political democracy will not survive.
Economic Democracy provides both the cultural and structural elements that can work against these adverse influences. Furthermore, economic organisations exert the greatest influence over governments. They do not vote, though through lobbying, they exert far more influence than voters. Currently they are displacing democracy with Oligarchy. The way to return governments to democracy, is to establish democracy within the organisations that influence and control governments.
The Plan: What is to be Done?
The plan benefits from critiques of the current charity model (Brecher, 2017; Editors, 2019; Gridharadas, 2019; Reich, 2020a). Most notably, Anand Giridharadas in Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, argues that philanthropy tends to serve the interests of the donors rather than the recipients. It is often used by the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and to maintain their power and privilege. It is used to co-opt and silence dissent, and to promote a false narrative of progress. He cites the accurate Bahá’í perception that “social change is not a project that one group carries out for the benefit of another.”
Citing research by Isham et al (1995), Hjerppe (1997) reports that “An increasing number of development practitioners agree that the participation of the intended beneficiaries improves project performance” (Isham, Narayan and Pritchett, 1995). Participatory governance improves service provision, enhances decision-making, and assists organisations to achieve their objectives (Wellens & Jegers, 2011). The effects of participatory democracy on productivity, commitment and wellbeing are now well documented (Bartling, Fehr & Herz, 2014; Bó, Foster & Putterman, 2010).
Therefore the plan is to establish a strategic organisation that will transfer organisations from private or public ownership into cooperatives which would be democratically run by workers and/or consumers, or through universal membership. The beneficiaries rather than the doners will decide for themselves how their needs will best be met. What makes this proposal unique, is that the donations to it would be in the form of organisations, either entire organisations, or branches split off, to be transferred into cooperatives in their own right. Hence the strategic organisation will be termed Don't Give Them Bread, because doners will be giving away the entire bakery.
Who will benefit?
The workers, consumers and universal members who will become the owners of the organisations formed by DGTB will benefit from the project, economically and socially. They will participate in an exciting ground-breaking social experiment that fundamentally changes the way we organise our economic activity, involving decisions about how we determine what products we produce, how we produce them and how the products are distributed.
The project is committed to so much more than the reduction of economic deprivation and inequality. In connecting production decisions with human needs, consumers, producers and others, benefit from the democratic input. Consumer participants gain input that can steer production decisions into the types and qualities of products or services, more in the direction of their requirements. Worker participants gain meaningful rewarding work, that is subject to their own democratic control. Universal members are able to influence decisions in ways that ensure more socially useful goods and services are provided, and negative externalities minimised.
Overall, because people are more able to meet their own needs, their dependence on state services is reduced and their potential to contribute socially is increased. The fiscal benefits therefore extend beyond the range of the immediate participants and accrue to all taxpayers.
As covered in our full report, Cooperatives have an excellent record in reducing the negative, and increasing the positive, externalities that follow from business decisions. When compared with Capital Owned firms, they are less likely to be limited to the singular objective of profit maximisation and are more likely to achieve positive social outcomes such as reduced unemployment, better material reward for workers, subsidisation of pro social production and less harmful environmental impacts (United Nations, 2014; Novković, Prokopowicz & Stocki, 2012). Research for the OECD found that “the social economy plays a growing role in OECD countries in tackling the problems of socio-economic exclusion and poverty and in fostering active citizenship and solidarity together with democratic participation”; that it has the potential to contribute to sustainable development and more resilient and better performing economies; and that “social entrepreneurship is a key component of any strategy aimed at making our societies more entrepreneurial, innovative and competitive.” (Arzeni, 2007:4).
Donors benefit by finding a fitting legacy for the organisations that they have developed. Doners’ succession planning achieves the highest level of meaningfulness, because entrepreneurs have the satisfaction of knowing that their life’s work is being given to the best hands which can possibly receive the gift. The gift will be cared for by the best knowledge that consensual action is capable of producing and therefore the gift will benefit humanity to the greatest possible extent.
Most importantly, this project is situated not only in changing the lives of its immediate participants but within the larger scale of developing organisations which can buttress the social organisation of democracy itself. The project focuses on developing the social architecture which extensive research has shown provides the basis of human happiness and fulfilment (Pink, 2010; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Deci, Connell & Ryan, 1989; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Deci, et al 2008) and indeed, provides the basis for human survival (Harari, 2016, 2018, 2022).
How can this project be assisted?
Don't Give Them Bread will work with donations of organisations which will become economically democratic. However, it will require seed funding and support in its early stages. All forms of assistance will be gratefully received. These could consist of:
- Cash donations or a fund raising activity.
- Sending an email mailout informing people about the project and explaining how they may support the project. The text above can be used for the mailout, linking to this crowdfunded or our website.
- Along similar lines to the mailout, articles on the project can be distributed in newsletters or other formats.
- Provision of expertise in Commercial and Charity Law, Political and governmental liaison, support for Startups/ Entrepreneurship, Business as philanthropy, Building Cooperatives and Grant Writing.
- Visiting or Honorary academic attachments for the organisers of DGTB which would provide access to databases and other knowledge resources.
- Video equipment and associated production and editing software to produce videos for use in fundraising, marketing and publicity.
- Propose organisations to be transformed into Cooperatives.
- Undertake a fundraising activity or challenge.
- Any other forms of assistance to progress the project.
More Information
You can find out much more, including downloading a full report on the project, on the DGTB website on https://www.dontgivethembread.net/