Series
The Voluntary Settlement
A series on how owners and workers can work together peacefully, neither in the cold war of pure extraction nor under the coerced truce of the state. It builds the case for a voluntary standard a free owner binds himself to, a floor of dignity and a real share of the gains, and defends it philosophically, objection by objection. Best read in order.
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Part 1
The Third Answer
Most of adult life is spent at work, which makes the firm one of the main places human beings actually live together. The two answers our age offers for how owners and workers should relate are both forms of war. There is a third, and it …
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Part 2
What We Refuse to Count
Almost everyone, left and right, agrees that pay should track value and that some people are worth many times what others are. They argue about the multiple. The premise underneath is the thing worth examining, because the multiple is …
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Part 3
The Floor and the Share
Strip the settlement down to the two commitments that do the real work, a published floor of dignity and a real share of the surplus, and you have the part that needs no apology. They are not generosity. They are what you owe once you see …
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Part 4
The Cap
The hardest piece of the settlement, and the most attacked. A ceiling on what the people at the top can take, set as a multiple of the floor. It does almost nothing as redistribution, which is why it has to be defended on other ground.