Re: Ownership and Growth (Economics of Ownership 3)

["Keith Wilde" <kwilde@magi.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>
To: ownership@cog.kent.edu <ownership@cog.kent.edu>
Cc: john.mathews@mq.edu.au <john.mathews@mq.edu.au>;
jeffgates@mindspring.com <jeffgates@mindspring.com>
Date: Monday, November 01, 1999 8:02 PM
Subject: Ownership and Growth (Economics of Ownership 3)


Shann has gone to considerable pains here to rescue me from conviction as a
liar!  After pointing out that I was probably unjustified in believing that
he claims his techniques to be an improvement in promoting general growth
over the Kelso approach alone, SHANN observes  that

....I have always considered leveraged ESOP's (ie the Kelso technique)
complementary to my Ownership Transfer Corporations (OTC's) and Community
Land Banks (CLBs).  However, I have said that I consider leveraged ESOPs
more important in making economic development self-financing by providing
an institutional mechanism for converting debt to equity to finance growth.

However, I  could be proved wrong!  And on reflection I may be.  It may be
useful to share my speculations in the matter and my concern that it would
be difficult to prove from current economic statistics. ....


Thence follows another of Shann's lessons in accounting which are so
refreshing  to one confined by a stale and tenuous grasp on conventional
concepts.

By way of explanation for my gaffe, I have to confess that it was a
superficial inference from my impressions of his emphasis on and
illustrations of ways to be more effective and efficient in capturing the
benefits of successful capital investments, combined with my failure to be
thoroughly convinced by Kelsonian explanations for the power of "binary
growth".  Alan Zundel seems to share some of my unease in this corner of the
Kelso explanation, and I hope we will soon have a more complete exposition
of his thinking on the subject.

Since we are on the topic of growth, this may be an appropriate place to
express my hope that some participants or onlookers will soon be picking up
the subject of growth itself as a controversial issue.  When I first got my
hands on a draft of Ashford's and Shakespeare's book, the part that most
fired my enthusiasm was their observations on the different quality of
growth that is conceivable if people have some security of income in
addition to wages.  Economists are continually forced into defensive
postures on the topic of growth in recent decades, and it looks a bit
archaic to be promoting a solution to the poverty problem that appears to
offer essentially the same cure as Lyndon Johnson's "guns and butter"
promise of the 1960s.  Does ownership make green growth possible?  If so
what are the secrets?


>Keith Wilde
>Canada Pension Plan
>Ottawa
>kwilde@magi.com
>613 990-8125 (office)
>613 747-6847 (res)