@jlou
There is one economic model that might fit your thinking, I remember seeing someone tooting about it a while back, darned if I can remember whom though or what it was called. The word ‘commons’ keeps coming to mind and I recall thinking at the time that this was a #Zombie economic model, an old system dressed up as new.

Of note though is that common ownership is already there in the public sphere. All public assets and services are commonly owned and failry democratic in operations (Unions rep are present in most Department management levels — I certainly participated and was very active in Defence). I would not expect any common ownership in private assets though the shareholder model does and that represents a restricted type of common ownership. I’d also contend that there is a level of democracy in annual general shareholders meetings as well.

Workers’ Coops work where the workers (including management) are the only shareholders of the means of production in a capitalist system. This is not new. There are working enterprises structured this way in the UK I believe. That these are not widely implemented speaks to issues and problems (though I’m ignorant of the specific cases or causes). A Communist system does no implement this in any way since everything belongs to the State as it does in a truly fascist system. Socialism is a many faceted beast and might have pockets of workers’ Coops but it would not exclude private enterprises either. All of these have been tried in part or in full and economic history is riddled with their remains. Unlike other economic models, Capitalist systems have been structured and shown to work using the whole gammut of possible structures, from #Slavery to privately owned empires. The same could not be said of other historical economic systems. In my view, the greater the diversity of structures the more likely it is to be a successful economic model as a whole and the greater the benefit to society in the aggregate.

If you can point me to economists proposing new models I’d really appreciate it (ommiting MMT ‘cause I know about that one already). Thank you for the conversation.

#Capitalism #Communism #Socialism #WorkersCoOp #MMT #Fascism #DemocracyInTheWorkplace #Unionism #Commons