Reply #93: There are collective entities other than central governments.

[JackRiddler]

Long as you're asking, some combination of ownership among the following:

- workers (which already exists in coops)

- depositors (for banks, which already exists in credit unions)

- municipalities

- states

- separate voted or appointed bodies

- government.

All of these have been done and already exist in the US to some extent.

I would start with banking.

My model:

All states launch three banks (for consumers/state employees, small businesses and farmers, and corporations and development projects). Different bank board members are chosen by depositors, governor, legislature, bank workers and councils representing the market of eachof the three. Banks send representatives to a national coordinating congress (votes weighted by size of state) that sets capital allocation priorities according to a rational plan.

This is no longer centralized command economy, but flexible planning representing many different stakeholdres. It will be wearying and complicated - but not arbitrary, unstable, and constantly in crisis, like the present system.

You're always told that socialism never worked, but the fact is there has never been a capitalist country that at some point did not fail. US capitalism failed flat out in 1933 and again in 2008. It depends on massive subsidies and distortions and externalizations to survive. All of the capitalist countries have gone bankrupt at some point or other, or into hyperinflation, or into crisis so dire it caused civil war.

And when they fail, the way shown to get out of it is by socialist means. They put the people above the market. New Deal.

The development mission is no longer growth and profit. It must be transformation of the energy and transport economies toward sustainability. This is such an enormous undertaking that if pursued seriously, it will take more than full employment for decades.

There would be a national bank that replaces the federal reserve and works with the state banks.

State banks have simple packages. For example, you get a mortgage if you meet the criteria after the right check. All mortgages are at the same interest and terms. The goal is to keep interest low and credit adequate.

Meanwhile, all communities are supported in starting credit unions. These will operate much more in a free market, but on the smaller scale.

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By the way, surely the leading institution of American life is socialist. People are saluting it all day tomorrow. If we can find 700 billion to spend on that, we can shift a couple of hundred billion to the development of clean energy, and stop waiting for BP and the "free market" to wise up and build a few wind turbines before the planet is burned away.

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There's much more but you get the idea I hope. Economic control by users - for real, however, not as mere "consumers" who are given multiple choice tests - control by stakeholders and workers, control by municipalities and states.

Finally, you have to figure out some way to create incentives NOT to grow, not to produce junk. I'm thinking about how Cargill is running an ad campaign to make people use MORE salt. That's just nuts. That's what the perverse incentive system of private enterprise capitalism in which each sector is out for itself without the possibility of creating a rational big picture is leading us.

But how could we convince a salt producer to want to encourage people to eat LESS salt, because it's good for them. Or think of the example of the tobacco companies, who because of perverse incentives want to hook children if they can (still today). A great many things shouldn't be made. This problem can't be solved by pure capitalism.