Socialism: spec the pilot in numbers, and guard it against gaming

Add "The Pilot, in Numbers": a one-time $350M, ~400-co-op pilot with a power-calculated sample size, loan limits, a checked definition of market rate, two pre-registered deciding measures (fair survival with a pay and membership guardrail, and a Treasury-rate hurdle for the loan book), a matched SBA comparison plus a lottery at the margin, a year-12 review, a fast-track vote on success and a self-executing wind-down on failure. Built around the FONDES and Venezuela failures. Add "Guarding the Pilot": rules against hidden-boss shells, capital claim drains, split borrowers, relabeled rescues, zombie survival, sabotage, a rigged review, and political favoritism. Link both from the index, bank, test, capital and lock pages, and add the pilot's weak points and the federal-vs-state question to Open Problems. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QWPs69B8nQZjtPEUXMKzZx
2026-09-23 10:00:03 -06:00
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@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ This model doesn't buy, seize or convert anyone's company. Instead it builds new
 - **Workers own their company.** Every member gets one vote. A share of the profits grows with tenure until long-time members split them equally. Salaries still exist, and hard jobs still pay more. [Worker Ownership](worker-ownership.md)
 - **A small public bank lends to worker co-ops.** It charges market rates, so it only succeeds if co-ops can really compete. Its whole job is to be willing to lend to a kind of company other banks won't. [The Bank](the-bank.md)
 - **Co-ops funded this way stay co-ops forever.** They can't be sold to conventional owners, and members can't vote to cash out what earlier members built. [The Lock](the-lock.md)
- **It runs as an honest experiment.** The success measures are published before the first loan. If co-ops match conventional firms after about ten years, the bank grows. If they don't, it's wound down. [The Test](the-test.md)
+- **It runs as an honest experiment.** A one-time $350 million pilot aims to fund about 400 new co-ops. The success measures are published before the first loan. If, after twelve years, co-ops stay open about as well as similar conventional firms while paying their members fairly, and the bank earned at least what Treasury bonds would have, Congress votes on growing it. If not, it shuts down automatically. [The Test](the-test.md) and [The Pilot, in Numbers](pilot-spec.md)
 - **Co-ops back each other up.** They pool part of their profits into a shared fund. If one fails, its workers are moved into others instead of being left with nothing. [The Federation](federation.md)
 - **Nobody is left behind by low-margin work.** Owning a company doesn't help much when there's barely any profit to own, so a strong floor covers the rest. [Ownership and the Floor](the-floor.md)