Can you provide a working example of it? Thanks.

Worker owned businesses seem to be less damaging than other forms of businesses.

We could replace the social construct of private property with the social construct of personal property.

Though really, the first question I think we should ask is "do we really need an economic system?" If we say "yes," then what should be the goals of that system? What do we want to achieve and what do we want to avoid? Should we serve the system, should the system serve us, or should we use another way of looking at the economic system?

economic system isn't going to work out too well, unless there's something all lined up to replace it. Lots of people want capitalism gone. I see few with a system in mind to replace it. Until then, I'm just all about the idea.

So, start thinking. If not, you'll keep getting capitalism.

That's why I asked, and you haven't really provided an answer that makes sense. When you do, we can discuss strategies.

It's OK. I've always made a living with it. I'm the worker, and I own it.

You can have one, too, if you can produce something that others value. You can start tomorrow. Start your own worker-owned business and abandon capitalism on a singular basis.

worker-owned businesses operate a lot differently than 1 per cent-owned businesses.


Cher

...but both are arguably socialist.

Earnings are plowed into the business to help sustain/expand the business to generate more earnings.

All were bootstrapped, and all involved only me and a very small group of clients or customers. I never borrowed a penny from anyone to start or operate any of them. None made me in any way wealthy, nor did I expect them to. I've not had a paycheck from any company since 1974. I have sold my output to corporate entities, though, but only on an individual project basis.

I'm still in business. My product now, as it has been many times, is words. I write, and people pay me for that ability by the project, after it is completed to their satisfaction. I turn down projects regularly from clients who are engaged in activities of which I do not approve.

Is that capitalism? I make money by contracting with others for my skills.

...unless you're doing it for free or cost. You are requesting a price for your service balance between what you want to earn and what you think your client will pay.

Let me know when you're available to be measured for your top hat and cape...

. . . in a cooperative format. There's no outside investor. Most contemporary capitalists aren't talking about that when they talk about capitalism.

My wife is currently in RN school, and I have tons of experience with dying people. I am usually the person who does post mortem care at my current place of work.

Not far from where I live. It's called the Little Hospice, not for its size by for the family that operates it, named Little. I don't know the story of its founding, though.

It's possible, but difficult, to start such a thing. But it can be done. I encourage you to investigate the possibility.

It's unrealistic in this time and place although there are a few hippie communes out there that now call themselves "cooperative living" that are still managing to cling to those ideals within the commune.

What works better is heavily regulated capitalism with socialist control over things like education, fire protection, police, health care, old age pensions, and the military. This list is not complete but it's a start.

I would prefer to see capitalism heavily regulated into economic justice for labor while people who invested all their lives would have that money work for them in retirement, earning dividends and interest. That's the good that comes out of the system, that and both innovation and quick response to customer demands. It has no place in running the commons, from the electrical grid to the water supply to what I listed above.

Capitalism is a great servant but the world's worst master.

This will not satisfy purists or idealists. I suggest the purists content themselves with speculative fiction and the idealists find a cooperative living situation that suits them.

Slow down capitalist takeover of humanity, push for more socialism, and dream big.

Definitely!

"We could replace the social construct of private property with the social construct of personal property."

Personal property is the property you personal use. Generally speaking, in a personal property system, you can't own more than one home because you can't live in two homes at once. If no one is using a home, then anyone can move in and make it their home.

Do they still pay for it?

So it's a needs based system?

Do you have to prove (for lack of a better word) how many cars you need?

Are we writing off hundreds of industries most notably the entire property invest income umbrella?

there are different ways to do personal property.

Their are hundreds of ways of "doing it"

We could give away all existing houses by alphabetical last name starting in Maine and heading west if it was a the prevailing method.

What of the existing is question one and b, what of the concept: proof of necessity.

You know that, right?

If I told you the hammer that's continually hitting my thumb was HURTING me, would you say 'well what do you suggest hitting your thumb with instead?'

of an alternative. Just shutting the economy off isn't going to have good results.

You can do whatever you want. I doubt, though, that you can destroy capitalism without a viable alternative to offer. I mean if the destruction of capitalism is actually your goal, rather than just complaining about it, of course.

More here.

One can still have capitalism with a very high taxation rate. Eliminate profits and you're out of business, pretty much. Now, that would destroy capitalism, for sure. I hope you're self-sufficient, in that case.

You've still provided no workable idea for replacing capitalism. The world's complex, so the idea will have to be complex, as well.

As I said above, start thinking. When you come up with something, we can discuss strategy. Until then, it's all the way down.

It folds democracy into the workplace as well as entails built in profit sharing to eliminate hugely disproportionate amounts of profit being hoovered up by upper management, although it would probably have to coincide with a broad based reform of finance as that has its own problems.

Start one and make it succeed. Make it a visible example of your system at work. Start with nothing, get a bunch of people together, and get started on your enterprise. You can structure it however you wish.

You've described a model for a single business, however, not an economic system. If you're going to replace capitalism, you're going to have to think in much broader terms.

Also all capitalism means is the industries are privately owned and seek to generate profit, if you have essentially collectivized it it really is no longer capitalism in the traditional sense and this would have an overall restructuring effect on the economy.

the concept produced the kind of success that could replace an entire economic system. I'm aware of some of those enterprises. It still does not answer the question of what replaces the system. There's room in our current system for many business models, as you point out. But the system still exists. We still live in a capitalistic society, and I'm not seeing your business model in use except in very limited ways in very limited enterprises.

What is it that you do to earn money? Are you part of one of these enterprises? If not, why not?

The finance system is hostile to these enterprises so it is very difficult to get starting capital for the business, which is going to limit growth in many respects. The economy is also largely dominated by very large entities with lots of capital to spare that tends to take up room in the ecosystem and limit viability. They are also relatively new compared to traditional capitalism, so even if it was a perfect replacement it takes a long time for these things to stick. The capitalist republic had several centuries of false starts and dwelling in niche environments in europe for a long time before they finally supplanted the feudal-monarchist system.

Or it isn't a viable replacement? That is also a possibility.

I'm currently unemployed at the moment, and I'm not part of one because I honestly don't have the skills to make them want to hire me in the niche environments they currently reside in.

How do you explain successful national programs like healthcare, police, fire, etc?

Capitalism needs to eliminate its prophets first

Every time it has been tried the capital class gets pissed and wages an extensive campaign to destroy the regulations and profit restriction.

Far too simplistic, to start. You're not giving me anything at all to work with here. You want to end capitalism, you're going to have to move along to some more complex ideas.

But, for your immediate dilemma, I'd suggest using the hammer to hit a nail on the house you're building for yourself. Still, where did you get the nail and the lumber you're using for that house? So many questions, huh?

and thee nails


Americans are trained to see Capitalism as a religion, so your statements don't surprise me

I'm sure you mean well. It's just that when people believe deeply in something they don't really understand...well, there's gonna be problems

Mineral Man's challenge isn't an easy one, but I like the exercise.

I think the Mondragon Corporation is the prototype that can be used as a model. Capitalism worldwide doesn't have to be "destroyed" first before this can be tried elsewhere.

I think we need to "think" in terms of a sort of parallel universe in the sense of creating a system to benefit people/communities locally and globally. We need not take on the impossible task of "taking down" the capitalist system first or even ever. It will continue to be the 1%'s playground in whatever condition they make it for themselves.

We do something else something much more viable, sustainable, and worthy of passing on/modeling.

40's - 80's)

In stating that this compromise systems are highly desirable in many respects, but they still have the following problems:

1. Regulatory capture and clawback from the capital class which started in the 50's and was accelerated in the 80's destroying the compromise and putting capitalism back on a more 19th century footing.

2. It is a point of contention how much the great compromise of capitalism was viable only by the shifting of the worst excesses of capitalism off of the developed world and onto the first. It is possible that capitalism demands a large class of people in extremely poor living conditions whether in a national or global sense.

is a critical service (water, post, internet), or gets too big to fail (banks).

Yep.

no annoying campaign commercials on TV, and no need to stand in line for hours to vote.

(uh oh, done stepped in it now.)

I just don't like unregulated or loosely regulated capitalism.

Always becomes unregulated.

But hey, that's just me.

Even the most vehement anti-capitalists are capitalists.

I don't recall Michael Moore giving away his movie 'Capitalism: A Love Story.' I had to buy my copy and I'm pretty sure Mike got some money.

Then why does it always go that route?

Capitalism is regulated now.

We can't sell things the government has banned. For example, If the FDA says a new drug is too dangerous, it doesn't get sold.
Anti-trust laws prevent monopolies.

I mean, seriously, anyone who says with a straight face capitalism isn't regulated has a different definition of the terms than most. It may not be regulated enough for you, but if you're advocating a socialist economic system the argument is moot anyway.

Things are getting less regulated over time and the inertia is towards as little regulation as possible. My argument is that things are not unregulated but that powerful and moneyed forces desire less regulation and are getting it.

But that statement is an admission that things are still regulated to a degree. My answer would be to re-regulate capitalism, not end it.

I like shopping at the mall for items with money I've worked for at a job who's owner developed a marketable technology. I enjoy earning extra cash designing websites for people and reselling items I buy at yard-sales.

And the assumption that you always can re-regulate is unfounded. Very particular events coincided to reel capitalism in during and after the world wars, and expecting another round of regulation without pointing out how it would happen again is engaging in magical thinking.

The efforts to regulate it have and are being thwarted and the capital class is decisively winning. A new effort at regulation would likely take the same events coinciding as it did the last time, and nothing is matching up. Thinking that a new effort at regulation would come from nothing is, essentially, magical. Would you care to explain why you think re-regulation will occur?

In fact, it's more regulated now in some sectors than it was in the 1920s.



Here are just a few off the top of my head that the Obama administration has passed:

EPA climate change regulations, EPA’s new restrictions on ozone pollution, Implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill (including rules governing credit and debit card charges) and the Wall Street Reform bill.

All REAL regulations that do, indeed, regulate capitalism.

It is largely toothless.

On the other hand I can point to things like austerity programs, the scaling back of the welfare state, the privatization of schools and in particular the heavy hand finance now has in higher education, growing subversion of institutions via individuals like the Koch brothers...

Union membership, a unifying ideology that presents an alternative, that sort of thing. What can you point to that offers a strong counter-balance to the power of capital?

Lol

During the 30's and into the 40's. So what do we have this time to rein it in?

it is toothless. And if you haven't noticed there have been substantial cuts to welfare over the last couple of decades, to say nothing of the outright austerity programs in the EU as well as Canada and Australia's rightwing trajectory.

The entirety of that wiki link on the eight hour workday is basically unionists and socialists fighting for it, btw.

As re-regulation! Good grief, man.

is unionist and socialist struggles with some industries following suit. The new deal is more complex to explain...

"You need certain conditions for re-regulation to be a thing. Union membership, a unifying ideology that presents an alternative, that sort of thing. What can you point to that offers a strong counter-balance to the power of capital?"

Quote the links.

Here is the quoted text for the eight hour day movement:

"In the United States, Philadelphia carpenters went on strike in 1791 for the ten-hour day. By the 1830s, this had become a general demand. In 1835, workers in Philadelphia organized the first general strike in North America, led by Irish coal heavers. Their banners read, From 6 to 6, ten hours work and two hours for meals.[7] Labor movement publications called for an eight-hour day as early as 1836. Boston ship carpenters, although not unionized, achieved an eight-hour day in 1842.

In 1864, the eight-hour day quickly became a central demand of the Chicago labor movement. The Illinois legislature passed a law in early 1867 granting an eight-hour day but had so many loopholes that it was largely ineffective. A city-wide strike that began on May 1, 1867 shut down the city's economy for a week before collapsing. On June 25, 1868, Congress passed an eight-hour law for federal employees[8][9] which was also of limited effectiveness. (On May 19, 1869, Grant signed a National Eight Hour Law Proclamation).[10]

In August 1866, the National Labor Union at Baltimore passed a resolution that said, "The first and great necessity of the present to free labour of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is achieved."

During the 1870s, eight hours became a central demand, especially among labor organizers, with a network of Eight-Hour Leagues which held rallies and parades. A hundred thousand workers in New York City struck and won the eight-hour day in 1872, mostly for building trades workers. In Chicago, Albert Parsons became recording secretary of the Chicago Eight-Hour League in 1878, and was appointed a member of a national eight-hour committee in 1880.

At its convention in Chicago in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions resolved that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labour from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labour organizations throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named."

The leadership of the Knights of Labor, under Terence V. Powderly, rejected appeals to join the movement as a whole, but many local Knights assemblies joined the strike call including Chicago, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. On May 1, 1886, Albert Parsons, head of the Chicago Knights of Labor, with his wife Lucy Parsons and two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in what is regarded as the first modern May Day Parade, in support of the eight-hour day. In the next few days they were joined nationwide by 350,000 workers who went on strike at 1,200 factories, including 70,000 in Chicago, 45,000 in New York, 32,000 in Cincinnati, and additional thousands in other cities. Some workers gained shorter hours (eight or nine) with no reduction in pay; others accepted pay cuts with the reduction in hours.
Artist impression of the bomb explosion in Haymarket Square

On May 3, 1886, August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers Newspaper), spoke at a meeting of 6,000 workers, and afterwards many of them moved down the street to harass strikebreakers at the McCormick plant in Chicago. The police arrived, opened fire, and killed four people, wounding many more. At a subsequent rally on May 4 to protest this violence, a bomb exploded at the Haymarket Square. Hundreds of labour activists were rounded up and the prominent labour leaders arrested, tried, convicted, and executed giving the movement its first martyrs. On June 26, 1893 Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld set the remaining leader free, and granted full pardons to all those tried claiming they were innocent of the crime for which they had been tried and the hanged men had been the victims of "hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge".

The American Federation of Labor, meeting in St Louis in December 1888, set May 1, 1890 as the day that American workers should work no more than eight hours. The International Workingmen's Association (Second International), meeting in Paris in 1889, endorsed the date for international demonstrations, thus starting the international tradition of May Day.

The United Mine Workers won an eight-hour day in 1898.

The Building Trades Council (BTC) of San Francisco, under the leadership of P.H. McCarthy, won the eight-hour day in 1900 when the BTC unilaterally declared that its members would work only eight hours a day for $3 a day. When the mill resisted, the BTC began organizing mill workers; the employers responded by locking out 8,000 employees throughout the Bay Area. The BTC, in return, established a union planing mill from which construction employers could obtain supplies — or face boycotts and sympathy strikes if they did not. The mill owners went to arbitration, where the union won the eight-hour day, a closed shop for all skilled workers, and an arbitration panel to resolve future disputes. In return, the union agreed to refuse to work with material produced by non-union planing mills or those that paid less than the Bay Area employers.

By 1905, the eight-hour day was widely installed in the printing trades – see International Typographical Union (section) – but the vast majority of Americans worked 12-14 hour days.

On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.[11][12][13][14]

In the summer of 1915, amid increased labor demand for World War I, a series of strikes demanding the eight-hour day began in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They were so successful that they spread throughout the Northeast.[15]

The United States Adamson Act in 1916 established an eight-hour day, with additional pay for overtime, for railroad workers. This was the first federal law that regulated the hours of workers in private companies. The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act in Wilson v. New, 243 U.S. 332 (1917).

The eight-hour day might have been realized for many working people in the U.S. in 1937, when what became the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S. Code Chapter 8) was first proposed under the New Deal. As enacted, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented about twenty percent of the U.S. labor force. In those industries, it set the maximum workweek at 40 hours,[16] but provided that employees working beyond 40 hours a week would receive additional overtime bonus salaries.[17]"


This overwhelmingly shows organized labor as a prerequisite to influence state action and policy. If you want a summary of labor organization, ideology, and the new deal that is a much larger writeup and I'd probably just rather find a video that explains it.

It is a chronology of unionists and socialists fighting for a goal with the state eventually enacting legal changes to reflect the popular pressure. Would you care for articles that more explicitly argue the connection?

"You need certain conditions for re-regulation to be a thing. Union membership, a unifying ideology that presents an alternative, that sort of thing."

So far, they've not even approached proving these are needed for re-regulation.

This is what led to the New Deal. I am open to arguments that large regulatory measures need not be predicated upon what happened historically but it'd need to be cite some kind of evidence. My argument is essentially that those things are what led to previous regulatory measures, so it is likely that future regulatory measures will require similar antecedents. Is this clear to you, now?

You keep trying to change the focus of the conversation when you hit a dead end with your reasoning. You must be a joy to have thanksgiving dinner with.

My point is you need those elements in order to bring back regulatory reform. These are the historic elements. I am open to the argument that you do not need these historic elements but you need to actually make that case.

Richard Wolff on the labor-radical coalition in the New Deal and Present: http://www.rdwolff.com/content/obamas-economic-significance

Your point is that "You need certain conditions for re-regulation to be a thing. Union membership, a unifying ideology that presents an alternative, that sort of thing."

Richard Wolff said no such thing at your link.

What do you think a labor-radical alliance is but unions and a unifying ideology (radicalism) coming together to a political end?

"You need certain conditions for re-regulation to be a thing. Union membership, a unifying ideology that presents an alternative, that sort of thing. "



Still waiting to see how this proves re-regulation isn't happening.

Re-regulation is NOT occurring because the trajectory is going further right and against regulation. Let us take the example you used earlier for re-regulation occurring: dodd-frank

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_04/your_handy_guide_to_gutting_do036779.php

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-wall-street-killed-financial-reform-20120510

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/dodd-frank-fsoc_b_2434849.html

The effects it had were mild, hardly a signal towards the kind movement towards regulation I am referring to which was embodied in the progressive New Deal.

I can point to the social democrats losing ground in the EU (even Sweden) as well, and the recent right wing resurgence in Canada and Australia.


My point is historical, those elements were present in previous regulatory pushes and are largely absent now. So I as you, what elements do you think are necessary for a regulatory pushback?

I was showing arguments that re-regulation is not currently occurring, but the points on the EU are fairly important to show that even in strongholds of regulated capitalism the capital class are still reversing the previous gains.

I previously showed re-regulation IS occurring.

I showed why that likely isn't the case. The EPA measures are a different matter and I need to investigate that a bit more before I respond to that particular point.

Your post: "EPA climate change regulations, EPA’s new restrictions on ozone pollution, Implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill (including rules governing credit and debit card charges) and the Wall Street Reform bill.

All REAL regulations that do, indeed, regulate capitalism."

Because many say it is, including people like Heather Slavkin Corzo is the Senior Legal and Policy Advisor for the AFL-CIO Office of Investment:

"It has been a pleasant surprise to see how efficiently the CFTC, a tiny agency, has moved to implement derivatives regulatory reform. While there are certainly areas where I wish the rules were stronger, I think Chairman Gensler deserves a lot of credit for putting a regulatory framework in place that will make our financial system more safe and sound."

Of course the left is going to think anything not inline with Karl Marx is a failure but for the rest of us, reality.

Isn't raising the mimimum wage a regulation of capital?

Isn't mandating that the insurers cover pre-existing conditions a regulation?

Isn't requiring that capital follow labor standards, stop discrimination (used to enforce different wage levels on the workers) a regulation of capital?

All of these things change the balance of wealth through the unifying theme of equality before the law?

These are all regulations.

As far as Dodd Frank goes, despite the pundits dissing it, Liz Warren says it was strong enough, and if she had had the chance to vote on it, she would have done it twice.

Creation of the agency she was supposed to head was fought desperately by capital, with the GOP filibustering her as well as the alternative, Corduray, and then denied funding, it showed there was a regulatory body coming into play they had to fight for their sponsors.

They also fought the nominations to the Labor Department, even wanted to change its name to remove the hated word Labor, and on and on.

And there has to be a public climate that wants regulation of the powerful more as a matter of social justice than they want to make some money off the status quo. People seem to be pretty brainwashed at this time, they don't want anything regulated, even if it saves their life or the livelihood.

The union movement came out of many years of various associations of labor that were always attacked by capital. It had a religious, non-religious and socialist theory to organize upon.

I think that's what's being argued here. I also think the ideas of Korten on building a competing system that bypasses capital for those who are less invested in the current one, to bring more people out from under the yoke of capitalist profit over people.

Gotta get some rest. Later.

BlindTiresias is arguing that regulation an re-regulation ARE NOT occurring and that Dodd-Frank is powerless.

Capitalism has been trending towards de-regulation since the 1980's would be a subset of my position that capitalism trends towards de-regulation. Get a grip.