Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 7:31 am
OK, this whole current discussion started when someone - although, as it happens, that someone is
not a socialist - complained about how there are supposedly too many descriptions of problems, and not enough proposals for solutions.
So perhaps I might post a rough first draft of a proposed solution to the problem of how to run an economy.
For now, I'll only talk about basic economic structures, and not about things like environmental protection or basic income or anti-discrimination measures or health and safety measures. That's
not because I think those latter things are not important, but simply because I'm not trying to solve all the world's problems in this one post.
First, all economic entities - what a capitalist economy would call "businesses" - are
legally owned by the public. The public retains all ultimate rights to exercise control over them, and to reap the benefits, if any, of their activities.
However, that is not interpreted as meaning that the people in charge of economic entities - which I'll call "EEs" for the rest of this post - are selected or appointed by "the state", or "the government", or something or someone like that. Instead, they can be chosen in many different ways. Perhaps elected by employees, or by customers, or by suppliers, or by the local public where their EE is active, or perhaps, if the EE is seen as especially important, by the legislature of a larger area. Or by any kind of combination of those groups. There might be enough variation in the details of this process that no two EEs get their managers picked in the exact same way, or grant their managers, internally, the exact same amount of authority over internal decisions.
At the same time, there is still a certain amount of space for what capitalists would call "entrepreneurship". This happens in the way
new EEs are initially set up.
There are a number of public organisations, institutions, agencies, and so on, that have the authority to authorize new EEs. Individuals, or small groups of individuals, can bring proposals for new EEs to any such institution. If one of those institutions rejects their proposal, they can try another one. If an institution
approves a proposal for a new EE, it also provides what, in a capitalist economy, would be called the "seed capital" for the EE.
Now, if you, or you and a small group of people, get approval for a new EE, then you, or you and your small group, get to be in charge of that EE for five (5) years. During that time, you can only be removed from that position in really exceptional circumstances.
If it should turn out that you really
are the kind of brilliant, dedicated, driven, visionary entrepreneur-hero type that capitalist propagandists love to go on and on about, then you can work your magic during those five years, and hopefully create, or inspire others to create, a lot of great new things for the world. There might even be an unwritten, informal
custom that if your first five years are seen as a success, you get re-appointed for as long as you want, or until people get sick of you, afterwards.
In such a system, it would probably be unavoidable that there would also be an unofficial, or perhaps downright illegal, part of the economy which would be a lot more decidedly capitalist. This factor, together with possible high salaries for managers, or for skilled professionals, would still lead to certain inequalities in wealth. To keep that kind of thing from getting out of hands, there would be a hard, non-negotiable upper cap on how much wealth each individual would be allowed to own - perhaps 10 million 2023 Euros or US dollars, adjusted for inflation and converted into applicable currencies. Own more stuff than that, and it gets confiscated, no ifs and no buts.
Finally, to initially
popularize the ideas that I just talked about, and perhaps help them gain political traction, someone might produce a science-fiction sitcom set in a society and economy that is run along those lines, centered on a few friends and acquaintances who keep trying to start new EEs, with varying degrees of success.