My Summary
The author of Redistributing Income Through Hierarchy, ∇ Blair Fix, comes to the conclusion that, Hierarchies are perhaps the dominant feature of our working lives. Yet paradoxically, they rarely enter into mainstream theories of income distribution. Unfortunately, … the study of income distribution became dominated by human capital theory , which focused on personal traits and neglected ‘structural’ explanations of income.
Hierarchical Power
A few facts,
- The United States has grown more unequal over the last 4 decades
- This growing inequality occurred via a ‘fattening’ of the income distribution tail
- Growing inequality is associated with a dramatic increase in US CEO pay
- … the pay increases of US CEOs has an underlying uniformity … [it] seems to have increased
- This increasing ‘hierarchical despotism’ among US CEOs correlates with rising US inequality … US hierarchies have become more despotic.
And the same is true throughout the world, not just in the US.
Despotism
Below, D represents hierarchical power or despotism. In other words, the greater the value of D, the more despotic the hierarchy.
The word despotism is used to indicates that,
- Hierarchies concentrate power at the top
- Rulers can use their power to benefit the group. But they can also use their power to enrich themselves
- The more [rulers enrich themselves], the more ‘despotic’ the hierarchy.
From our perspective,
- Despotism is common of all hierarchies
- Businesses hierarchies are hierarchies.
- Modern governments are hierarchies.
Hierarchy
Like Water to Fish
Hierarchy is not only a ubiquitous feature of human organization, it is the only system we can think of. All “revolutions” have been but variations of it. ∇
The Radical system is an alternative,
- Meaning and belonging (people) are at the root of it.
- All forms of organizations are decentralized and transparent. ∇
ENDNOTES
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Blair Fix. Redistributing Income Through Hierarchy, WORKING PAPERS ON CAPITAL AS POWER, No. 2021/04. 2021. <https://radicals.world/uUuBSg> (alt, <https://radicals.world/FlpevH>)
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Matt Perez, Jose Leal. The Radical Foundation House, 2023. <https://radicalcompanies.com/2023/03/11/the-radical-foundation-house>
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Including all that Karl Marx wrote.
