Conversely, the idea of private land ownership and the ability to charge rent without services is horrendous, the ultimate expression and power of idle wealth, charging people simply for a place to exist.

“Land value taxes effectively constitute a massive disincentive to the most practical passive-income arrangement (the letting of commercial and agricultural property)”

You say that as if discouraging idle wealth is a bad thing. Also, you’re wrong. It’s a massive disincentive to land speculation, holding onto land and keeping it empty in hope of future sales. It’s a massive incentive to getting the most productive use out of a plot of land, so as to pay the ongoing taxes on it. And as it’s a tax on land, but not on buildings, it encourages a shift from idle rentier income to actual useful services, providing and maintaining buildings.

When I rent an apartment, I’m paying for two bundled but unrelated things: a sound and maintained building, which is a useful service from my landlord, and access to the land the building is on, which owes nothing to the landlord. Land tax takes the latter component away from the landlord and gives it back to the public who generally create high land values in the first place; far from being arbitrary or confiscatory it’s entirely moral and economically appropriate. If city police, water, and subways create high land values, it’s logical that the city should collect the higher rents those induce people to pay.

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It is possible to be accepting of, though not cheerful about, taxes in general because there are concrete benefits; a strong national defence force, protection against violent crime (private forces would be preferable, but local government-funded police forces are acceptable), sewage management, road systems and so on function much better when centralised. Benefit received, payment made in the form of taxes; as long as the government is represented as just another corporation providing a service it all makes sense.

Land value taxes effectively constitute a massive disincentive to the most practical passive-income arrangement (the letting of commercial and agricultural property), while providing no significant benefit to those affected by it. This is roughly equivalent to walking into McDonalds, handing them £100 and saying “the next thirty people’s burgers are on me”. Perhaps if you’re the sort of person who gets warm fuzzies from such an action you win, but it’s the kind of activity which should be optional, and neither stigmatised or encouraged.

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“A 12% annual growth advantage is huge. The example given in the article is Southwest, only 11% employee-owned. So the claim is that it pays for itself in a year. ”

No, no one said that giving out 11% ownership gets you a 12% growth advantage. From the article:

“A 1993 survey of 188 companies conducted by the Washington State Office of Trade and Economic Development found that employee-owned firms grew no faster than conventional companies unless they gave workers a voice in management. Likewise, broader sharing of information and authority with workers didn’t boost growth unless that was combined with ownership. But firms that put the three together grew about 12% faster than their competitors.

To see the difference between merely giving stock and letting workers shape their destiny, look at the airline industry. In return for lower wages in 1994, United Airlines pilots and mechanics got more than half the company’s stock. But life inside the cockpit and at loading ramps barely changed. By contrast, Southwest Airlines employees own only about 11% of the company’s stock, but the company works to encourage and implement workers’ suggestions, in part through town hall-style forums with top management. While there are other important differences between the carriers, workplace culture is a big reason United posted record losses last year while Southwest made a healthy profit–as it has for 29 years”

So even majority ownership doesn’t do much by itself. Going by the survey, just listening to your employees doesn’t reliably help either. It has for Southwest, but we lack the information to say that the 11% employee ownership was a big part of that.

I’d cynically say that implementing workplace democracy might be harder for the average manager than simply handing out shares…

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A 12% annual growth advantage is huge. The example given in the article is Southwest, only 11% employee-owned. So the claim is that it pays for itself in a year. That’s an easy decision for the owners of an individual firm. But, yes, that doesn’t mean it will take over the industry. That’s only a factor of 100 over the 40 years of Southwest’s existence, which sounds about right.

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Damien, getting an extra 12% growth if information, management, and ownership is shared with employees is pretty impressive.

I’ve wondered if part of the problem is that banks generally have a gut-level disbelief in businesses with significant employee participation, so it’s too hard for such businesses to get loans.

I’m watching crowd funding with considerable interest.

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I don’t think lack of innovation is a good general explanation for why there are so few worker-managed firms.

Risk, not innovation. Conservative business choices are just one way of avoiding risk; exchanging marginal claims for a paycheck is more common.

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3) I was also thinking that, leaving aside the evidence of superior performance, we’ve got different problems here. A business is “I want to reach this goal, will you help me, if not you can go leave.” Politics is “we have to live together, how do we do that, what are our goals?” So an anarchy of monarchies works well in competitive markets with full employment or other backstops, while democracy is the moral and superior solution to living in a society. Big business oligopolies are a gray area in between. (And some people want society to be like an anarchy of city states, but moving between cities is much more troublesome than changing jobs.)

3a) Plus complications about employee “citizenship”, how long do you have to work to get a voting share, will people vote in the business interest if they can bail out easily.

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