[kstenerud]

"For example, if we envision a form of market socialism where firms compete in a market but are entirely controlled by workers through some democratic means, would we still adhere so strongly to fixed schedules?"

One of two things would happen: Those wishing to maximize profits would push the less dedicated out of the company, or there would be a gradual trend towards putting in minimal effort because everyone else is outputting less than you for the same pay (or you're making those with more seniority than you look bad).

In fact, we've already witnessed the second phenomena in socialist countries and in many unionized jobs.

[nhaehnle]

Genuine question: Have there been examples of socialist countries or unionized jobs where profit was made and shared among employees rather than taken either by private capital ownership or by the government?

At least as far as I know, there hasn't been a country-wide experiment with a setup like that, where employees actually have a self-motivated incentive to work harder. (Now that I think about it, that's really quite a terrible indictment of both socialism and capitalism as it's been tried so far!)

In a sense, early-phase startups are like that, and those seem to work quite well ;-)

The law-firm model is a bit like this as well, I suppose, and small boutique shops in creative fields.

Another example may be existing coops like Mondragon and many other smaller ones. Those are not in the headlines much, but they also seem to be doing well despite competition from firms that are run along more capitalist lines.

[kstenerud]

Co-ops and communes are about as close as you'll get to that kind of experiment. From what I've seen, they start out great, but then as they grow either in size or in age, they begin to show stress fractures from the usual social problems that plague all human political endeavors. It almost seems as if we're doomed to mediocrity in the long run.