With belatedness (as usual), a few notes on the enterprise and the economy

I still do not understand economist Bob Goudzwaard's reading of Herman Dooyeweerd regarding the enterprise. Usually, there's a problem of scale in reformational theory when its articulators talk about "the enterprise." One is often not sure with a phrase or two in the reformational economics discussion, whether the phrase's referent is a "mom&pop" (corner store, urban or rural), a 1stgen selfmade entrepreneurial enterprise (stereotype model distorted behind sloganeering versions of "free enterprise" and "freedom of enterprise" -- both phrases often further degraded by being equated -- an enterprise for which the son typically is not, from the management standpoint, competent to inherit the entrepreneurial role). By inheritance, the son should have the equity that, liquified, would have been his father's until the latter's death. Or, if not liquified, a non-managerial party in the firm's ownership that, at the very least, closely monitors the company's Chief Executive Officer and other officers, as well as rank and file of the workforce (those not included in the category of management workers), a presence in the corporation's life that, were the entity to "go public" with stocks sold on the regulated stock market, that kind of development virtually calls forth a caucus of stockholders that identify with the inheriting sons' leadership.

A third kind of enterprise might be a small group of partners, perhaps over time with junior associates, as in a law firm. Decades ago now, I remember being stunned upon being informed that a law firm located in the American north central states, this partner-owned firm had 3,000 lawyers in its employ. All along perhaps, totally digitalized, technics-ly uptodate (technology is the science of one or more techniques, capable of reflexive thawt on its own history/ies, presuppositions, and presumptions...but technics is a modal science with its foundation concerns in regard to all effective perceptions of techniques, usually inclusive of "hands-on" training in the skills necessary to the transmission of the skill-set which the technique itself requires for its own continuation from the present to the oncoming generation (many techniques are learned and maintained by lore, rather than science ... see Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge). A new generation of certified Apprentices, Apprentice Electricians become Master Electricians, having become trained linking a new skyscraper's myriad cords and plugs to the cement floors and ceilings, up and down cement columns and pylons, each with its own core of steel girders. I stray....

Another type of enterprise may be a corporation with a government-recognized board of directors (either self-continuing or elected by investors who have bawt shares and have a claim that the enterprise make a dollar profit.) In this usage, "enterprise" covers even the huge technocratic-bureaucratic internal-political organizations otherwise known as "mega-corporations"; often these enterprises are transnational to one degree or another.

Too often we are unspecified, ignorant of a knowlegeable Vollenhovian problem-historical grid for mapping the techniques of humans over time, a charting competent to illuminate a Dooyeweerdian typology of kinds of enterprises. By the way, an enterprise is not an economy. Yet both can be measured by common indeces based on the quantifications and ennumerations that, for instance, accompany a monetary system. Such as: Dollars. Pounds. Euros. Yens. Yuans. International currency matters and currency exchange are a vital economic function in the sense of "the economy," the juridics of the economy by which the government presents and maintains the integrity of the currency.

There is no reason to consider any kind of enterprise as untypable, either as to its technical aspect, its economic aspect (for instance, in its dollarability, profitabilbity, and productivity, among several other key features) as well as its sociality as a place where people work together [samenwerking], with intergroup health or without it).

By the way, you can now download a digitally-scanned set of Dooyeweerd's epochal work, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought in two PDFs, as offered by Steve Bishop's blog entry "At last...." (All of life redeemed blog, Dec25, 2008).

Yes, at long last, thru Kerry Hollingsworth at The Reformational Publishing Project, Steve has been given permission to republish digitally a scanned edition of D's NCTT. A hearty thanks to both Kerry and Steve, and to coworkers and especially the donors who made this long-sawt digital version possible. Potentially, the PDFs will open to many new readers the massive, pensive work (3 volumes in print plus a fourth volume, that being a volume of Index). And, of course, full-throated thanks to Dooyeweerd himself for this wonderful gift, he being dead now these several years.

Of course, a classic example of Dooyeweerd's thawt on the enterprise occurs when he cites the hybrid type of business/family blended structure known as "the family farm," a form of farming[business] that is losing ground in Europe and North America, in favour of engrossment of corporate and mega-corporate farming and dairying. It's this model that prevails among the membership of the very astute discipleship within farming constituted by Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario.