2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent ideas. People need to read this book., 16 May 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Stakeholder Society (Hardcover)
The concept of a stakeholder society is a very reasonable and very important idea. Alstott and Ackerman present a lucid, easy to read, argument for it. Their argument of the need for a citizen's pension in place of the present system of social security (which excludes people who have not 'worked', such as housewives), is also very convincing. I hope that their ideas don't get simply dismissed as "too radical" by the media. These ideas aren't radical at all. They're down to earth and sensible.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly novel idea, 24 Aug 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Stakeholder Society (Hardcover)
The idea at first sounds crazy, but trying to figure out why will force you to examine many of your own opinions--and perhaps ultimately to reach a different conclusion than your first.
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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting - and new - idea. But, oh, the side effects!, 16 May 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Stakeholder Society (Hardcover)
It was winter; the ants' store of grain had gotten wet and they were laying it out to dry. A hungry cicada asked them for something to eat. "Why didn't you gather food in the summer, like us?" one of the worker ants asked. "I didn't have time," it replied; "I was busy making sweet music." The worker laughed at it. "Very well," it said; "since you sang in the summer, you must dance in the winter."
A few ants of the drone caste heard what the worker said and were morally outraged. They convinced their brother drones to force the colony to share its grain with the cicada and all its relatives. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs," they said. For several years the drones ran the colony in the new, moral, way. The cicadas and the ants all nearly starved to death. Equally.
The drones of another colony, who agreed with the moral claim of the cicadas, pondered the sad fate of first colony. "The worker was right; the cicada made its own choices and had no moral claim on the ants' store of grain," they said. "But not everyone gets a fair start. To fix this, we will give everyone a share of the grain at the beginning of the summer, not at the end. Then at the end of the summer everyone will pay back the share he or she got at the beginning, plus interest. And those who do well and have extra grain will pay back extra to make up for those who don't have enough."
The cicadas thought this was a great idea. The workers weren't so sure. All that summer, the cicadas sang sweetly, the workers gathered grain (but not too much since they knew they'd have to give away any extra), and the drones watched. That winter they all nearly starved to death. Equally.
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