[js8]

What I am suggesting in practice would be similar to either consumer or worker cooperative. These are similar to publicly-traded companies, except the stakeholders are not some Wall Street randos, but people who actually use company products or employees of the company.

Of course, for this to be truly socialist, the system has to be democratic, i.e. each person involved has equal and non-transferrable vote.

What type a company should be is up to discussion. I believe infrastructure (natural monopolies) are better served by consumer (public) ownership, while companies that can compete on the free market are better served by worker ownership.

As I said elsewhere in the discussion, I think lot of Internet infrastructure should be publicly owned. (And on this infrastructure, businesses could be built.)

Personally, I would prefer an economic system where every company above certain size (say 20 employees) must be either publicly-owned or worker-owned, i.e. democratic in the above sense. Which makes me into a pretty traditional socialist. But that's tangential to the discussion about the Internet.

[ants_everywhere]

Got it, thanks that was very helpful