[nradov]

Which other systems are you referring to? Feudalism, fascism, and communism all produced more inequality than free-market capitalism. Note that equality or inequality involves more than just income and assets.

Environmental degradation is more a function of overpopulation and technology than the economic system. With free-market capitalism we at least have the potential to price in the environmental degredation externality in a fair and consistent way through taxes. That approach has been underutilized so far, but with most other economic systems it's not even an option.

[dbingham]

There are many more options than feudalism, fascism, or communism. And my point is that the lack of awareness of them is part of the problem.

For example, there's the form of Democratic Socialism I propose above: where we replace the current business structure with worker cooperatives funded by regulated loans or crowd sourcing that compete with each other in a free market. We know worker cooperatives work, because there are many successful worker cooperatives operating well in the current capitalist economy. There's no reason to believe they would stop functioning well in a free market economy where all businesses are worker run.

That's just one example. The next system project has collected a number of additional ones: https://thenextsystem.org/systems

And like I said, I have a whole bookshelf full of alternative proposals. Some of which don't make a whole lot of sense. Some of which are very plausible. And some of which are already working in micro, just waiting to be tried in macro.

[nradov]

There's nothing stopping workers from creating worker cooperatives today and getting business loans today. We don't need a new economic system for that. But lenders won't lend without a high expected ROI.

[dbingham]

Yes, worker cooperatives have formed and functioned in the existing economy. Which is part of how we know using them as the foundation of our economy, rather than a niche aspect of it, could work.

> But lenders won't lend without a high expected ROI.

Exactly, that's what's stopping them. Worker cooperatives don't provide the return on investment that investor ownership grants. They don't allow those with capital (wealth) to demand a large portion of the returns from the business. That's what requires the new economy - removing the option for capital to demand ownership and control so that it has to make do with a reasonable, regulated return on its loans.

[nradov]

This is an unrealistic fantasy. Capital owners don't lend money to businesses just for fun. You haven't proposed a viable way to encourage lending. If they can't achieve a high expected ROI on business lending then they'll use their capital for other purposes.

[iammisc]

> Which is part of how we know using them as the foundation of our economy, rather than a niche aspect of it, could work.

We don't use worker cooperatives in the same way we don't use corporations. There is no overarching entity that uses any of these things.

If worker cooperatives are so great, they should be outpacing corporations. Some do. For example, companies like Winco and Mondragon exceed productivity of their corporate counterparts. That's fine. More power to them. Their story should encourage others to start worker cooperatives.