Overcoming Bias: ‘The Profit’ Socialism Challenge

The first step is to get all workers together to explain their co-ownership status. They need to figure out a new set of governance rules. Working at the firm is ownership of a share of the firm; the share is a vote and an equal claim to profit.

The second step is to ask which goods they are making that benefit the community, and in what ways? If they are making nothing useful, it's time to figure out what can be made with minimal changes to the equipment and materials available.

Now that they know what they are making and how they are governing themselves, they need to have new operating rules. How do they assess the need for new co-workers? How do they assess current productivity? What non-production jobs are necessary, and which ones are largely about enforcing rules that no longer apply?

Then comes the long haul of self-assessment and discussion with the community: are these the right goods? Are they being produced both efficiently and humanely? What changes need to be made? Capitalist firms usually rely on a triplet of marketing, sales-people and consulting. Marketing is a mix of research and pushing opinions; sales tends to be overly-optimistic; many companies don't value feedback from their consultants.

It should come as no surprise that cooperative ventures have more degrees of freedom than capitalism's traditional central-control and fiefdoms; more decision have to be made, and this can be slower.

wikiepdia is a non-capitalistic entity that seems to work pretty well.

a lot of insurance companies are organized under mutual companies which are "owned" by the members.

I'm curious to see if any crypto utility tokens work out on any kind of scale.

I recommend Sydney Homer's A History of Interest Rates in which he traces interest rates from neolithic period up to the 20th Century. If you want to know what interest rates were charged in the time of ancient Egypt, or early African societies, or Native American tribes, or whatever happened to those French rentes, then this is the book for you.

Here are some excerpts:

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Paleolithic man went out to find his food. Neolithic man produced his own food through agriculture and animal culture. His capital took the form of seeds, improved tools, and especially herds of animals. Capital accumulation led to a great increase in population and the opening up of vast new areas in Asia and Europe. Such capital permitted the further accumulation of possessions, the support of chieftains, and the building of cities.

Cattle breeding has supplied us with many financial terms used in later money economies. For example, there is our own word capital and our term pecuniary, from pecus, meaning a “flock” in Latin. Sumerians used the word mas for calves and for interest. The Egyptian term ms, meaning interest, is derived from the verb msj, which means “to give birth.” Early Greeks, in fact, valued their precious metals in terms of cattle.

[...]

In Namaland, in Southwest Africa, cattle and beads were the original currencies. Debts were incurred in cattle (no rates quoted), and the difficulty of repayment often led to cattle raids into neighboring states.

[...]

In the French Sudan cattle were used until recently as currency for large transactions. Cattle loans were granted free of interest, but if a cow which was lent had a calf, the calf and the cow was claimed by the creditor.

Similarly, in Uganda and French Equatorial Africa cattle and sheep were the bases of credit. In the former the creditor expected every third new birth as interest.

In Northern Siberia, at least until recently, domesticated reindeer served as money. Loans were granted in reindeer. Among the Kirghiz of Siberia, horses and sheep served as money and were loaned out. The usual interest for such loans was 100%.

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Homer, Sidney; Sylla, Richard. A History of Interest Rates (Wiley Finance) (p. 53-58). Wiley. Kindle Edition.