Commentary Archives - Page 2 of 3

Commentary

The Going Wage Is Not Necessarily a Fair Wage

Capitalism,Commentary,Enterprise Theory,Labor and Workplace 167

Reference code: C26-08 Why an employer and worker can agree on a wage that has already been shaped by employer labor-market power An employer offers a wage. A worker accepts it. Most people naturally assume that the agreement establishes a fair wage for the work. Modern research on labor monopsony...

Commons Capitalism and Ixtlán as “Market Enterprise Without Private Residual Claimants”

Commentary,Economics and Surplus Allocation,Enterprise Theory,Governance and Structure 1350

Reference code: C25-19 Ixtlán de Juárez is an Indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico, frequently discussed as an example of a high-functioning communal commons that operates sophisticated market-facing enterprises. The community is widely associated with community forestry and with operating...

Polycentric Governance Augmented by Worker Input

Commentary,Enterprise Theory,Governance and Structure,Labor and Workplace 1305

Reference code: C25-18 Polycentric Governance and Worker Input as Downturn Resilience A CCE is structurally positioned to weather economic stress better than a conventional firm, not because it is insulated from markets, but because its governance is designed to gather better information, make...

Paying Down the First Deal: The First CCE Uses Old-Fashioned Seller Financing

Commentary,Finance 1348

Reference code: C25-17 Only the first CCE typically faces the financing problem in its hardest form, because it starts with no money and no collateral. In practice, there are three commercially realistic ways to finance that first acquisition, listed here in descending order of practical viability...

Polycentric Governance Tends to Outperform Traditional Capitalist Governance

Capitalism,Commentary,Enterprise Theory,Governance and Structure 1301

Reference code: C25-16 The Concentrated-Power Problem in Traditional Capitalism In a conventional capitalist firm, economic authority tends to collapse into a single dominant center even when the org chart looks more complex. Shareholders (or the capital markets that discipline them) set the value...

How Reserves and Funds Protect Workers in a Downturn

Capitalism,Commentary,Economics and Surplus Allocation,Labor and Workplace 1176

Reference code: C25-15 This commentary is one of a two-part set of commentaries that examines worker precarity in down economies. What “Reserves and Funds” Mean in Practice Reserves and internal funds reduce precarity only when they operate as pre-positioned commitments rather than...

Durable Worker Security in Economic Downturns

Capitalism,Commentary,Economics and Surplus Allocation,Labor and Workplace 1372

Reference code: C25-14 This commentary is one of a two-part set of commentaries that examines worker precarity in down economies. Why Downturns Turn Jobs into Precarity Economic downturns translate quickly into worker precarity because the employment relationship in the United States is often the...

The Problem of Captured Surplus

Capitalism,Commentary,Economics and Surplus Allocation,Foundations and Philosophy 2006

Why A Commons-Based Enterprise Model Is Needed Now Reference code: C25-13 Historical Drift of the Postwar Social Contract In the decades after the Second World War, households in the United States could reasonably expect that diligent work would translate into stability, modest upward mobility and...

Projected Reach of Commons Enterprises in the United States

Capitalism,Commentary,Economics and Surplus Allocation,Enterprise Theory,Foundations and Philosophy 1805

Reference code: C25-12 Recent data from the Federal Reserve and related analyses show just how concentrated wealth has become in the United States. The Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts, summarized in a June 2025 article from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, report that the...

Executive Role and Board Stewardship

Commentary,Governance and Structure 1220

Reference code: C25-11 This commentary is one of a two-part set of commentaries that examines the principles and practical design choices involved in Small Scale Commons Governance. Part Two─Executive Role and Board Stewardship Within this compact design, the role of an executive director or...