Capitalism isn't even synonymous with free markets. Capitalism just speaks to who gets to own the businesses (those with the capital). There are alternatives other than "the state". Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful. Which means one economic system that isn't often spoken about might be described as "Free Market Socialism", in which businesses are governed democratically by their workers in a free market. That system doesn't really fit on the above referenced spectrum.
But it's not like Free Market Socialism sits in the middle of the spectrum from Capitalist Free Market to State Socialism. If anything it exists on a separate spectrum entirely where you're taken the variable "ownership of business" and flipped it to "workers". And then there's a different variable that forms the axis "how much of the economy is state managed".
But even the question of "how much" is the wrong one here. A much more valuable question is "which sectors" are state managed and why. And, as referenced above, at what level of the state.
And then there's the question of what kind of state we're dealing with (democratic or authoritarian) and how it's organized.
I think these sorts of things are why I don't generally find spectrums helpful when it comes to economics, politics, and policy. Then tend to boil down complex systems to single features of those systems. But the impact of those features depends heavily on the other pieces in the system. It's a feature of complex systems that tweaking a single variable can have unexpected consequences because it's heavily impacted by the state of the other variables in the system.
I think, in general, it's more useful to describe the systems as coherent objects with certain sets of features. Even trying a multi-dimensional map gets tricky fast.
Ha sure. Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why? Socialism is a sad joke, socialists group under a banner that does not even exist in reality.
Socialism: social control of the means of production
What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other.
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edit: because I'm getting rate limited because socialists like to flag posts they disagree with, my response to the post below:
> Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known
Small private corporations that are worker run under capitalism is a very unique definition of socialism. Socialism under the silly wikipedia definition you provided mandates social ownership of the means of production. For something to be considered socialist, property rights need to be abolished and "control" needs to be redistributed in some manner. Of course "control" is in quotes because under socialism nobody owns anything, "society" owns it. Workers don't really have control either because they can't choose to sell their control, that would obviously just be capitalism with extra steps.
Nobody ever actually explains the details of any of this. The communist manifesto gets close because Marx clearly understood that to steal from people you need to kill them but he never actually prescribes the details of running the damn thing after killing all the property owners.
> In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others
In other words you did not contradict anything I said.
> Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe.
Perfectly successful under what definition? Neither the US or Europe have complete social control of the means of production and the little control they do exert is widely known to be extremely wasteful and inefficient.
> Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure
The roads are terrible and filled with pot holes in San Francisco. The sidewalks are covered in shit. The storm drains did not function when a small storm passed the city. Please don't tell me they need more money to fix those problems.
> Ha sure.
Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably the biggest and most well known. It's effectively the GE of worker cooperatives. It's based in Spain, functions across numerous verticals and has 80,000 worker owners and total annual revenue around 12 billion euros.
One you might be more familiar with is Equal Exchange[2] - yes, the tea, coffee, and chocolate company. They have 126 employees, annual revenue of around $70 million, and national distribution.
Those are just two examples, there are hundreds more. You can scoff all you want, but these companies exist and are successful. They show that companies owned and governed by their employees can operate perfectly efficiently and compete in the marketplace.
> Ok, which brand of socialism do you support and why?
It's interesting to note that nowhere in my comment did I imply support for socialism. I merely mentioned its existence as a system, in the context of a conversation about boiling down the world of economic systems to a spectrum. Interesting that the parent commenter found mere mention of its existence triggering.
> Socialism: social control of the means of production > What does that even mean in practice? Nobody knows. This is why socialists and communists always end up killing each other.
From wikipedia[3]:
> Socialism is a left-wing[1] economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership[2] of the means of production[3][4] as opposed to private ownership.[5][6][4] As a term, it describes the economic, political and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.[7] Social ownership can be state/public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.[8][9] While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[10] social ownership is the one common element.
In other words, there are any number of ways social control can be constructed, and has been constructed. Some more successful than others.
And no, socialists don't always end up killing each other. Social control through the state of large segments of the economy has been perfectly successful both in the US and in Europe.
Driven on a road? Congrats, you've benefited from social control of infrastructure. Drunk water from your tap? If you're in the US, the water you drink from your tap and the sewer that carries away your waste is almost certainly owned by a municipal utility - again social control. In most of Europe, entire health care systems are run by the state through social control.
In other words, state socialism - both municipal and national - has been shown to be perfectly successful when used in the sectors of the economy it's best fit for and on the scale most fitting.
As I pointed out above, social control of individual enterprises (worker cooperatives) has also been shown to be perfectly effective.
By all means, engage in the debate about what economic systems are the most effective and the least harmful. But if you're going to do it, do your homework first and leave the self satisfaction behind.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Exchange [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
> Worker cooperatives exist and are perfectly functional and successful. Which means one economic system that isn't often spoken about might be described as "Free Market Socialism", in which businesses are governed democratically by their workers in a free market.
On top of that, work is where most people spend most of their lives. Right now, most people work at businesses that are governed in an autocratic way. Which means, on a very practical level, we're asking most people to spend most of their lives operating in an autocratic context.
With respect to Sole Proprietorships and Partnerships. There are some pretty big sole proprietorships and partnerships out there - with lots of employees. The bigger they get, the smaller the contribution of the sole owner or partners to the business vs the rest of the employees and the more the current system gives an unjust distribution of rewards.
Sole proprietorships and partnerships wouldn't vanish entirely. They'd just be limited to businesses where the sole owner or partner really could do all the work (or most of it with some of it maybe contracted out to other cooperatives).
It's true that the Free Market Socialist system described above probably would undervalue the contributions of founders. But the current system massively undervalues the contribution of the average worker. So it's a net gain in terms of justly and accurately valuing contributions. And Free Market Socialism would result in a much more even distribution of wealth, and therefor power.
It wouldn't be perfect, but - personally - I think it would be an improvement.
I have so many questions, but this should get us started.
> when say you envision the workers as the owners, how exactly does one change jobs then? Would I be forced to sell my ownership any/every time I wanted to leave a job?
Open question. I think there are a couple of ways you could explore implementing this.
One would be through ownership similar to what you describe. Workers would earn ownership over the course of their employment, when they want to move jobs the cooperative has to buy out their share (which would also enable retirement) at some agreed upon value. The cooperative would have to maintain capital reserves to cover this case. It doesn't really make sense for workers to take their share with them with out equity markets. They'd just be selling their equity back to the cooperative at a later date.
Another approach would be to consider businesses as institutions to be governed, rather than property to be owned. In this case, no one owns the business. The workers govern it. There's no equity earned. It would be one worker one vote. In this case retirement would need to be handled either through pensions set aside, or more likely through national social security (which we already have). It's also possible that retirement could be handled through normal savings accounts. With out a stock market, financing would happen through traditional banks (as worker cooperatives), credit unions, or municipal banks and there would be much more incentive to pay real interest on savings accounts.
In the former case, the earned equity overtime probably more accurately values workers contributions, and therefor also founder contributions.
In the later case, the system is simpler, more egalitarian, and less prone to manipulation by founders looking to retain authoritarian power as long as possible.
Important to note, I think there are existing worker cooperatives experimenting with both implementations (and probably additional ones as well), so if we're interested in seeing the effects of each approach (and possible unintended consequences) it would be worth studying what they're doing.
If I ever manage to save up enough to take a multi-year sabbatical I want to write a book on the topic and do that research.
> Another approach would be to consider businesses as institutions to be governed, rather than property to be owned. In this case, no one owns the business.
> The cooperative would have to maintain capital reserves to cover this case.
> I think there are existing worker cooperatives experimenting with both implementations
This is just factually incorrect. Mondragon has 80k employees and 12 billion euros in revenue. Equal Exchange has 120 employees, $70 million in revenue and national scale distribution. There are absolutely worker cooperates successfully competing at scale.
They do have trouble getting financing in a Capitalist economy, but they would not be an issue in an economy based on them.
Personally, I think I think one worker one vote and strong social security is the resolution to the question posed above.
This of course means the only solution to the talent disparity is an ultra-authoritarian crackdown on any type of private enterprise at all, a truly dystopian outcome that we've seen only under the likes of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot etc.
I think the part you're overlooking (or consciously not wanting to think about) is enforcement. How do you expect to prevent someone from starting a private business and structuring it in a non co-op manner? Ultimately, this can only be enforced with violence or the threat of violence, right? So now how do you convince people used to freedom to accept widescale authoritarian violence as being "worth it"?
That egalitarianism already exists in every democracy in the world, and everyone just accepts it. The guy working the McDonald's counter gets the same vote as the PhD in Public Policy. It's a feature of democracy and people, historically, will sometimes complain about it but generally accept it as a necessary feature of democracy. I see no reason that, after a transition period, people wouldn't accept it as a necessary feature of democracy in the economic realm as well. Indeed, people working at existing worker cooperatives or employee owned businesses tend to laud and speak very highly of this feature of them.
> How do you expect to prevent someone from starting a private business and structuring it in a non co-op manner? Ultimately, this can only be enforced with violence or the threat of violence, right? So now how do you convince people used to freedom to accept widescale authoritarian violence as being "worth it"?
You are already limited in how you structure businesses and what sort of employment relationships you are legally allowed to enter in to. These are already enforced by law, which is - as you point out - already enforced by violence.
Your choices for business structure (in the US) are sole prioritorship, partnership, LLC, S-corp, or C-corp. You may not hire an employee to work more than 40 hours with out paying them overtime. You may not ask your employees to put themselves in danger in violation of OSHA. You may not enter into an indentured servitude arrangement with someone. The types of employment contracts you are allowed to enter into, and the ways you are allowed to structure your holdings, are limited and structured by law.
People already accept this arrangement as normal and acceptable. And they've already accepted changes in that arrangement as normal and acceptable. I see no reason that they could - again with a transition period - come to accept a new arrangement as normal and acceptable. Especially if it's one that's viewed as more fair, egalitarian, and beneficial to society as a whole.
Most employees are already working in authoritarian contexts with a threat of violence hanging over them For many, many working people - losing their job comes with the threat of serious economic instability - including possible homelessness, hunger, or death. This system has the potential to drastically reduce that. It would limit the freedom of business owners and founders to drastically increase the freedom of the average worker. Seems like a net gain in freedom to me!
> The guy working the McDonald's counter gets the same vote as the PhD in Public Policy.
> Your choices for business structure (in the US) are sole prioritorship, partnership, LLC, S-corp, or C-corp.
> You may not hire an employee to work more than 40 hours with out paying them overtime.
> Seems like a net gain in freedom to me!
Pardon me, but I'm going to make a mild appeal to authority for a moment. I have run for office, served on a mayoral transition committee, worked closely with elected officials on a range of policy issues (many of which got implemented), and my family are professors in public administration at the top public affairs school in the US (specializing in mediation, dispute resolution, and collaborative democracy). So... uh... I feel pretty confident I know what I'm talking about when I say, that's not naive... that's exactly how elections work.
> You missed some.
Fair enough, B-corp, and Co-op are formal structures in other states. The ones I listed are the ones available in my state, but the point stands. I wasn't counting non-profit, since it's somewhat of a different thing.
> And really you can structure a business however you want as long as taxes get paid.
The LLC is an enormously flexible structure, but there are still limits. Either way, the point stands. There's no reason we couldn't change those limits.
> Salary workers everywhere are laughing.
Agreed, and that's a failure of our labor laws. But again, the point stands. There are structures, laws, and limits. The fact that capitalist businesses are constantly trying to find ways around them isn't an argue in favor of capitalism.
> Forcing everyone at the point of a gun to give up any interests in starting a private enterprise putting their own talents to work - sounds like freedom to you? That explains a lot.
It's not forcing them to give up any interest in starting a private enterprise. They're still perfectly free to start a private enterprise. The difference is that once they hire someone, they have to give that person an equal voice in the enterprise. And yes, that increases freedom.
If you don't want to live in an authoritarian society, you have to give up the freedom to become a dictator. The dictator loses a freedom, but everyone else gains a lot more.
> So... uh... I feel pretty confident I know what I'm talking about when I say, that's not naive... that's exactly how elections work.
> The difference is that once they hire someone, they have to give that person an equal voice in the enterprise. And yes, that increases freedom.
Oh wait, are you one of those people who pretends everybody is equally capable?
I don't want to ban you but we need people to follow the rules here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to them, we'd appreciate it.
More to the original topic, republics per Boix must prevent looting from the producers; this includes both external agents--"special military operations", barbarians on the frontier, foreign commercial agents who banana your republic, etc--and internal agents, who could be those welfare queens, men out of a job and certainly not looking (I mean why would you??), or plutocrats making out like bandits.