Bhaskar Sunkara

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1,609 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2022 last heard Dec 2022

Bhaskar Sunkara’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Lex Fridman Podcast · #349 – Bhaskar Sunkara: The Case for Socialism · 22 Dec 2022 podcast

Now, I don't think that's not true at every level, but I think there's no doubt that in workplaces, workers know how to...

productively do their task in ways that their manager might not know.

I think we've all been in workplaces where we've had managers who kind of don't know what you do or whatever else.

And I think that collectively, if incentivized, we could have them, one, instead of hoarding that information, since they're getting a stake in production and so on, they'd be able to more freely share it and be able to reshape how their day-to-day work

happens.

And also with, with elected managers, you kind of take that up the chain.

I think you would have perfectly efficient market-based firms that, that could exist without capitalists.

So I think that any successful model of socialism that involves the market, you need two things.

One is at the micro level, you need the ability to fire people and for them to exit firms, which might be a slower process in cooperative-based firms than it is in a capitalist firm without a union.

But it would be probably akin to the process that would happen in a capitalist firm, of which there are many, with unions.

Yeah.

So you need that.

And then at the macro level, you need firm failure.

You need to avoid a dilemma that happened in Soviet-style economies, which was soft budget constraints and firms basically not being allowed to fail because the government was committed to full employment.

The firms employed people.

So even inefficient firms were at the end of the day, they knew they were going to be propped up.

by the government and they would be given all the resources they would need no matter how inefficiently they were using those resources to maintain employment.

So I think you need both.

Well, I think there would be certain, so maybe another way to put it is, think about like if you're a partner in a law firm, right?

I don't really know how law firms work, so I probably shouldn't use this analogy, but correct me if I'm wrong.

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