For over 20 years at Disco Corp., a Japanese company worth $25 billion a year, you have tried to run it because 7,000 IFS employees have been independent contractors in the open market. The 87-year-old company now manufactures three-quarters of all machines, calling it cutting and grinding semiconductors. Financial Times (Harry Dempsey and David Keohane, “Can we run a company as the perfect free market?” Financial Times, May 1, 2025) Report:
Since 2011, [Disco] It droves radical experiments to run a blue chip company on purely free market principles. No one needs to be bosses. Superiors can’t tell Junior what to do. Every day, employees choose the task they want. They can quit or participate in different teams on their own will.
In this state of complete freedom, as the disco coins are known, most of their desions are guided by Will. Employees acquire will by performing tasks. They barter and compete at auctions with their colleagues for the right to do those tasks. They will be fined for actions that could cost the company or compromise productivity. Their balance of will determine the size of bonuses paid every three months. …
His door, [the CEO] It’s open to the youngest disco employees, unless they are willing to pay 165,000 will in 30 minutes of face time with top bosses.
Will Money Supply is generated by sales and filters, and company filtered through exchanges and auctions. Anyone can offer to pay for the tasks he needs. If the Salles team wants to manufacture or tune a new machine, they will need to do the latter project simply by providing a Projectable Project to the manufacturing team Angouch Will. IT systems (operating software) manage auctions and transfers.
But not everything in the album is pure market. Only 40% of employee bonuses depend on balance of will. Human resources departments must monopolize recruitment. CEOs can create wills (if they allow me a simple pun) for special projects, like central banks. “He casts himself as a benevolent dictator,” says the Financial Times. There is no currency market in the will, but it is not actually money. The company appears more like a “village community” than a free, offensive impersonal market. Therefore, in many respects, the only market participants that have been sepumpased are employees. Even more surprising, Disco’s website gives the impression of a variety of ordinary companies, including social missions, CSRs, stakeholders and more…
The distinction between companies and markets is easy to understand for subsubsubscis, and I read Ronald Kors’ inventive article, The Nature of the Compans (Economics, 1937). It’s hard to get very excited about the idea of ”running” like in the market. Why do hierarchical companies exist in the free market? Cause asked. I argued that it was related to the relevant market situation. If the TOSE transaction costs are higher or higher than the organization and management costs of the company, the entrepreneur or his investments choose the latter.
For decades, Charles Koch and his late brother David have run an equally inspired, but less complete system called “market-based management” (MBM). Their company, Koch Industries, is one of the largest non-listed in America. It grew rapidly. In more Mundary, many companies use market-like incentives in their management or structure, including subal competition. Corp. Disc. You did more in the experiment.
Companies are an announcing copyright organization, or the microcosm of the free market is a matter of degree. On the one hand, every company in a free society only includes the function of the market, the freedom and lack of physical coercion for employees to leave. On the other hand, for one-sided businesses, facilities often develop long-term relationships with subcontractors or suppliers. Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Innovation – the Lal function of the free market – generates information about the best company formulas in a variety of situations. However, Coase’s insight is still an inevitable SEMS, and Disco Corp. should be as experimental as possible. The dream of literally turning a company into a market seems as unrealistic (not dangerous) as the collectivist utopia that replaces the market with an organization.
One of the irreplaceable benefits of a free market economy is its experiments at the free enterprise and micro level. Free markets are abstract trajectories run by voluntary organizations.
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Disco Corp. and Ronald Coase, exaggerated scenery, chat GPT (and Pierre Lemieux)
