I'm not sure (yet)! One thing O'Neill and Williamson are trying to do is delay out what Rawls might have meant by property-owning democracy, because he didn't give a lot of detail; and the ownership economy is still to be defined (your book will help!).
One difference might be that Rawls' conception is explicitly both economic and political, whereas I can imagine an argument (one I would disagree with) that you could have some kind of non-democratic ownership economy.
Like you, I wonder if it’s even possible to have non-democratic ownership. Ownership of something IS power over it. And the more of something you own, the more power you have over it. It would be rare indeed to have one without the other!
Some of the EO scholars talk about this as return rights v control rights, and (counterintuitively) there are a lot of ways to split those two up! Steward ownership and public equities both do that in different ways.
Chris Mackin has an interesting paper on different forms of ownership:
And Graeber and Wengrow go through the (ugly) history of the idea of ownership in Ch. 4 of The Dawn of Everything, "4 Free People, the Origin of Cultures, and the Advent of Private Property."
I've been grappling with the myriad answers to the "why" from past and current employee-owners who have generously participated in the filming of "Own It!" Each is convinced of his/her own reasons but often adds "we do things a little differently." I was wondering if the flexibility of the Kelsonian structure, which attracted me to it in the first place, had resonated with anyone else. So, it was gratifying to hear Chris Mackin tell of Senator Long's response when as a grad student Mackin asked him what could be done to make the ESOP more democratic. The Senator's answer was, "Don't tell them what they should do. Give them the foundation and let them make it as democratic as they want to." That, to me, is what democracy is all about.
Totally valid--part of why ESOPs took off, I suspect, is that flexibility. I also wonder, though: flexibility for whom? In the absence of some sharing of decision-making power, it seems like the (default) answer is "selling owners."
I agree with you that the ESOP process is initiated and controlled by selling owners/stockholding executives/equity investors and anyone else who has the decision-making power (as you point out) of property ownership. But my take on this is skewed toward the shop floor and I include a story of employee-owners voting the CEO off the Board. At the other end of the spectrum, the story of Weirton Steel shows that the fear of losing control of the ESOP is very real among new employee owners.
Wouldn’t a property-owning democracy be the same thing as an ownership economy? Is there any difference in your mind?
I'm not sure (yet)! One thing O'Neill and Williamson are trying to do is delay out what Rawls might have meant by property-owning democracy, because he didn't give a lot of detail; and the ownership economy is still to be defined (your book will help!).
One difference might be that Rawls' conception is explicitly both economic and political, whereas I can imagine an argument (one I would disagree with) that you could have some kind of non-democratic ownership economy.
Like you, I wonder if it’s even possible to have non-democratic ownership. Ownership of something IS power over it. And the more of something you own, the more power you have over it. It would be rare indeed to have one without the other!
Some of the EO scholars talk about this as return rights v control rights, and (counterintuitively) there are a lot of ways to split those two up! Steward ownership and public equities both do that in different ways.
Chris Mackin has an interesting paper on different forms of ownership:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/jpeo-10-2022-0019/full/pdf?title=defining-employee-ownership-four-meanings-and-two-models
And Graeber and Wengrow go through the (ugly) history of the idea of ownership in Ch. 4 of The Dawn of Everything, "4 Free People, the Origin of Cultures, and the Advent of Private Property."
Adding both to my reading list and will come back to you 😊 Thank you!
I've been grappling with the myriad answers to the "why" from past and current employee-owners who have generously participated in the filming of "Own It!" Each is convinced of his/her own reasons but often adds "we do things a little differently." I was wondering if the flexibility of the Kelsonian structure, which attracted me to it in the first place, had resonated with anyone else. So, it was gratifying to hear Chris Mackin tell of Senator Long's response when as a grad student Mackin asked him what could be done to make the ESOP more democratic. The Senator's answer was, "Don't tell them what they should do. Give them the foundation and let them make it as democratic as they want to." That, to me, is what democracy is all about.
Totally valid--part of why ESOPs took off, I suspect, is that flexibility. I also wonder, though: flexibility for whom? In the absence of some sharing of decision-making power, it seems like the (default) answer is "selling owners."
I agree with you that the ESOP process is initiated and controlled by selling owners/stockholding executives/equity investors and anyone else who has the decision-making power (as you point out) of property ownership. But my take on this is skewed toward the shop floor and I include a story of employee-owners voting the CEO off the Board. At the other end of the spectrum, the story of Weirton Steel shows that the fear of losing control of the ESOP is very real among new employee owners.