Talks at Google
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2017–2026
1:25:34 · 3.3M views · Jun 28, 2017
Economist Richard Wolff's Talks at Google lecture on his book Democracy at Work. He critiques capitalism and argues for worker-run cooperatives as a path to a more democratic economy.
HN commenters share it as an accessible case for worker cooperatives and workplace democracy as a model for a modern left.
8 comments from Hacker News
In this video[0], economist Richard Wolff talks about all the things he didn't learn studying economics at the US's most prestigious universities, because they were never mentioned. Fascinating talk. Towards the end he talks of a Spanish company run by its workers, which sounds like it has successfully transformed work for those people to something democratic, and, well, something free from what anarchists (and we all..uh 99% of us anyway) want to be free from. It sounds doable to extend that to other areas of life. Watch it! Highly enlightening ...and 'hope you can believe in' isn't that common nowadays. [0] this video
I used to be inspired by the Venus Project years ago. Unfortunately I realized it is extremely utopian and things needs to change in a more practical sense if we want a good chance of succeding. I'm currently very impressed by the work of Prof. Richard Wolff, an economist that heavily criticizes Capitalism and tries to make actual practical changes in the lives of people starting from their workplaces. Here is a talk he made in front of Google employees (the irony): this video
To make this discussion maybe a little bit more solution oriented, what would be your solution to problems of labor mistreatment? Or do you suggest that nothing like that exists? I recently came across an interesting talk by Richard Wolff at Google [1] which suggests that a great solution would be the democratization of the work place in the form of worker coops. It’s actually a tried and true model that works well in a variety of contexts. It would probably solve the problem you outline as well as make labor mistreatment a lot less common. 1: this video
Mr Graham writes "You would think, after having been on the side of labor in its fight with capital for almost two centuries, that the far left would be happy that labor has finally prevailed. " Unfortunately Mr. Graham has an outdated view about the "far left". I recommend anyone interested in what a modern "far left" looks like learn about Richard Wolff and the Democracy at Work movement. A startup in a garage where everyone is an owner building great stuff is pretty much it. He did a Google Talk here: this video
Suggested recently by Richard Wolff and many others before him: a possible solution out of this economy is worker coops aka democracy at work. this video