The “make every company a cooperative” concept has been proposed before. For certain companies it could make sense, but it gets a little tricky when it’s anything that needs significant funds to get off the ground.

Corporations were invented for a reason: it creates a mechanism whereby investors can put money in up front in exchange for a share of possible profits once the venture gets going. For example, that makes it possible to build a billion dollar nuclear reactor with 100 staff people who couldn’t each pay 10 million dollars.

The mechanism that creates billionaires is only sort of related. Elon Musk, for example, built up his wealth through tangential involvement with a series of really successful companies.

I still think capitalism is a useful tool. But by are we letting it use us rather than the other way around?

Government was arguably created to establish a market, needed for any economic system to work. You need consistent legal structure, money, a way to do business.

But our failure is government getting owned by the market rather than shaping it for the good of their constituents. Let capitalism be our tool in a market that factors in externalities, fairness and that rewards work.combine that with a progressive tax system like what we claim, and things are looking up, with what seems like minor changes.

• why does the market fail to account for environmental destruction in the cost of doing business?
• why is the market based on a legal structure that exploit individuals?
• why do the richest people have the lowest effective tax rate?

Why don’t you think taxing the super rich is great?

Maybe just give rid of the 2ndary market. You can only buy stock directly from the company, and you’re entitled to a % of profit share as a result of that. When you’re done, you can sell the stock back to the company

You just reinvented a Co-Op.

However, at what level does this get enacted?

Does little Tommy’s summer lawn cutting “business” with his 3 neighbors as customers need an elected board in order to operate?

If I run a business and need a secretary to take care of some mundane things while I do the actual money making part of the business, doors that secretary suddenly get 50% vote over all decisions?

I read through almost the whole thing wondering how it would connect to “socks”. Is he a shill for “big footwear”?

You need a way to invest in companies, especially for any to grow, and you need to motivate people. A central economy might budget tax revenue, typically on a multi-year plan, but it tends not to be responsive to real world messiness nor motivating. Capitalism means anyone can invest in a company, getting partial ownership and partial benefit from gains and responding quickly to the whims of the market. People are motivated by profit. Are you proposing a third way?

Our beef supply would vanish overnight

It becomes very hard to form a company of any reasonable size without government intervention. At that point, corporations that form need tight relations with the government.

Why do all solutions need to be destructive? The stocks and companies exist to make one thing - maximize the stakeholder value. So, to get rich, one just needs to - hold stocks, and the company works to make you money. Nothing more, nothing less. But why are so little people actually owning stocks? Because you don’t get tought in school about financial literacy.

Money is actually on the table for everyone to grab, just that majority of the people lack basic knowledge - where is the table and how to get to it.

Just teach people in school how to manage stocks, and everyone can be rich have a lot of money.

Just go back to needing futures to actually be fulfilled in kind.

And maybe limit/outlaw complex financial products.

These would be a solid start to fixing the issue of the unsustainable, and irrational, not to mention unconstructive economic growth of the last 60 years.

Why not instead have public and/or worker ownership of stocks, as the Meidner plan proposed, or in the form of a Social Wealth Fund as Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project has suggested? This give people both democratic control and socializes the profits. As long as we have corporations, having them owned either by the public or by their workers (in the form of cooperatives) seems like the way to go.

The solution proposed in “After Capitalism” is (with democratically worker managed companies):

A flat-rate tax on the capital assets of all productive enterprises is collected by the central government, all of which is plowed back into the economy, assisting those firms needing funds for purposes of productive investment. These funds are dispersed throughout society, first to regions and communities on a per capita basis, then to public banks in accordance with past performance, then to those firms with profitable project proposals. Profitable projects that promise increased employment and/or further other democratically decided goals are favored over those that do not. At each level—national, regional, and local—legislatures decide what portion of the investment fund coming to them is to be set aside for public capital expenditures, then send down the remainder, no strings attached, to the next lower level. Associated with most banks are entrepreneurial divisions, which promote firm expansion and new firm creation. Large enterprises that operate regionally or nationally might need access to additional capital, in which case it would be appropriate for the network of local investment banks to be supplemented by regional and national investment banks.

That’s for taking care of the investment part that stocks/shares fulfill for a large part right now.

And for getting there:

Legislation giving workers the right to buy their company if they so choose. If workers so desire, a referendum is held to determine if the majority of workers want to democratize the company. If the referendum succeeds, a labor trust is formed, its directors selected democratically by the work-force, which, using funds derived from payroll deductions, purchase shares of the company on the stock market. In due time, the labor trust will come to own the majority of shares, at which time it takes full control via a leveraged buyout, that is, by borrowing the money to buy up the remaining shares.

Along with legislation that if a company is bailed out by the government, it gets nationalized and turned into a worker self managed company. If companies get sold, they can only be sold to the state (according to the value of current assets, not stock market cap or similar). And if a firm is not sold, it’s turned over to the workers if the founders death. If there’s multiple founders, each can sell their share to the state or workers separately.

For stocks specifically, there’s the Meidner plan, where every company with more than 50 employees is required to issue new shares each year equivalent to 20% of its profits, these shares will be held in a trust owned by the government, and in an estimated 35 years, most firms would become nationalized (of course along side all newly founded firms having to be worker owned).

Not saying I fully agree with all of Schweickharts proposals, but at least the book is a relatively concrete proposal for an alternative that can be discussed, and how to possibly get there, so I thought it merits sharing.

Well that would eliminate the whole point of corporations, which is to make it easy to raise money.

Let’s start with an understanding of why corporations suck in the first place. The root of all good and evil in a corporation is limited lability. This allows investors to not have to worry that they’re going to lose more than their investment, so they don’t need to think too hard before putting their money in some company they just heard of. This is great for investors and for the corporation.

But this comes with a cost to everyone else. There’s the direct cost that if the corporation ends up owing people money through excessive debt, negligence, or illegal activities, they can declare bankruptcy and the investors don’t have to worry any paying for those (other than their losses on the stock). But I suspect the more pernicious effect is that the investors’ lack of concern over their investment as anything but a vehicle of profit basically leads them to pick sociopathic CEOs and demand profit maximizing behavior at the cost of social good and even long term stability. And since all this sociopathic activity is really great at amassing money, it’s kind of a big power boost for sociopathy overall.

However, the ease of investing can be a good thing for society too - basically it allows a lot of people to retire at some point, and allows for rapid funding of new ideas. So is there a way to get corporations back under control without throwing out the baby? I tend to think we should tax corporations higher if nothing else, as it is we do the opposite thanks to Trump’s last tax cut plan.

i think an easier way would be to limit stock trading to once per fiscal quarter.

stocks were invented as a way for people to invest in things they believe in, and get some money back as thanks. with the advent of rapid trading, the economy has become hopelessly slaved to the ticker; the business is no longer what makes value, value is what makes value.

it’s all turned into speculation. eliminating that part would go a long way.