Mutualist journal club

Two views on health insurance co-ops | Freedom Democrats

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I don't have any opinion about the health insurance co-op legislation that some people are talking about, but given the role of co-ops in left-libertarian economic models, it's probably worth looking into. Here are two views:

• A DKos, slinkerwink seems offended that Blue Cross Blue Shield Wants To Become A "Co-Op!". His main objection seems to be that non-profits still give their top execs immense salaries (same is true for hospitals and universities).
• At the Daily Dish (and Reason), Peter Sunderman ponders Those Mysterious Co-ops, and gives some history of health co-ops in the USA.

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The scope -- and dangers -- of GE's control of NBC and MSNBC - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

The Economist has an article about how the Lloyd's of London insurance market compares against the integrated insurance companies. The article even discusses how state intervention supports the megaliths at the expense of smaller rivals. Perhaps the the main downside of distributed systems is that their inherent flexibility means that they will never be "too big to fail" and will never attract bailouts from the state.

Kevin recently wrote about the problems with the Green Revolution.

Here's some new reports from NPR (audio, transcripts, and pictures):

India’s Farming ‘Revolution’ Heading For Collapse

‘Green Revolution’ Trapping India’s Farmers In Debt

WorldBlu | Designing Democratic Organizations

A list of "most democratic businesses". Could be a useful resource.

tip to the DreamHost blog, where they discuss what it is about their organization that may have gotten them on the list.

PsyBlog: 7 Reasons Leaders Fail: This list sounds like it was drawn straight from the Mutualist blog, but it comes from a modern psychology book. One interesting point is that the psychology of "followship" (the vast majority of our society) has hardly been studied, while "leadership" has gotten tons of attention.


Also of interest from the same blog: Malcolm Gladwell: Success Comes from Social Advantages

I've written a review of The Black Swan, published at Swords Crossed (and elsewhere). This book is a narrative, rather than a rigorous argument, so I don't think there is anything particularly useful for advancing mutualist theory. However, I was impressed by the extent that the author inserted libertarian/anarchist sentiments into a best-seller.

This could end up getting a lot of people interested in libertarianism (in particular Hayek gets a lot of credit).