All this talk about a cooperative socioeconomic framework, and yet I get no reaction when I suggest universal cooperatives as a solution. If we were to embrace the cooperative business model, but take it to it's logical conclusion (where everyone owns a share), the profits would be split equally among us all, giving each and every person an equal base income, and therefore an equal share in the excess production of the economy, without significantly modifying the core economic concepts we are already all familiar with (money, corporations, jobs, etc.). Employees would get an income on top of this base amount, in order to motivate them to do the additional work that others aren't doing, but each time a job is eliminated due to automation or other efficiency gains, the wages that are eliminated go into everyone's pockets instead of the select few. This also has the side benefit of creating a miniature democracy out of the shared company, which operates parallel to and largely independently of the government.
Matt, you like to play with big dollar amounts. If we somehow took all the profits made last year in the US and split it equally among all its citizens, how much would those citizens have received per month? Now factor in all the wages paid to jobs you are predicting will be automated away. What's the monthly amount then? A universal cooperative system would graduate smoothly from the first amount to the second as a larger percentage of jobs are automated, or back again should it turn out we create new jobs to replace the original ones. The only difficult step here is in the masses acquiring profitable corporations and converting them to universal cooperatives. Governments could begin the process now, by allocating a certain amount of the budget towards purchasing profitable corporations via imminent domain -- on behalf of the people, not the government, so the citizens maintain direct control. This too would be a fairly smoothly varying process, and no current shareholders or owners need be forcibly disenfranchised of their wealth (aside from taxation, which is already happening). On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 4:08 AM, just camel <[email protected]> wrote: > I collected some not-so-academic video links on what some groups and > movements are working on ... in case you get bored in between running ultra > marathons and compression algorithms ... http://rbe.info/ > > > On 01/08/2013 07:28 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: > >> So does that mean you are for wealth redistribution or against it? >> > > > > ------------------------------**------------- > AGI > Archives: > https://www.listbox.com/**member/archive/303/=now<https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/**member/archive/rss/303/** > 23050605-2da819ff<https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/23050605-2da819ff> > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/** > member/?&id_**secret=23050605-53e85d0d<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
