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Dahl's Argument Essay

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The idea of self-governing enterprises is based on the principle of democracy. His belief in the democratic process is contingent on a number of assumptions that he lays out, and I believe it is these assumptions that distort Dahl’s argument. There are 3 main assumptions that Dahl holds that I believe to be flawed: a strong principle of equality, an elementary principle of fairness, and property rights. Dahl is operating on assumptions that are flawed, thus his resulting ideas are flawed in similar ways. The first flawed assumption that Dahl holds is the strong principle of equality. This theory states that members of an enterprise are qualified enough to decide which matter require binding collective decisions, and to delegate the authority …show more content…
I believe his take on property rights is fundamentally different than how property rights are viewed in today’s society. Dahl expresses his view on property rights in their fundamental moral sense on page 112 by saying, “[the] right to acquire the personal resources necessary to political liberty and a decent existence.” This is a take on property rights that I had never heard of before. The right to property in today’s society is instead that you have the right to keep the things you posses. By fundamentally changing what constitutes property rights, Dahl has changed them to fit his narrative. He goes on to say that this take on property rights allows corporations to turn into SGEs without violating anyone’s property rights. However, I believe this is staunchly wrong. Turning a self-owned corporation into a self-governing enterprise takes away the ability for the owner to control his property. This doesn’t apply to Dahl’s take on property rights, because he is able to claim the owner doesn’t need a massive corporation to have a decent existence. While that may be true, I do not believe that taking the property away from one person because they have enough is a just or effective way to run an economic institution. Dahl distorts property rights to fit his idea of a SGE. Without this distortion, it seems much more likely that SGE would violate the rights of some people by removing enterprises from their

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