jheapsandClaude Opus 5.5
8305c72843
Add before-launch.md: a founding lottery testing whether serious pre-launch help (a founder's stipend, a feasibility study, legal setup) creates more co-ops that last, measured independently of the bank, and a 5% founder stake payable in verified unpaid work. Fund it from the loan budget, and correct the pilot's growth arithmetic. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QWPs69B8nQZjtPEUXMKzZx
5.4 KiB
title, summary
| title | summary |
|---|---|
| Free-Market Democratic Socialism | A working model for building an economy where the people who do the work own and govern the companies they work for. Nobody's company gets taken, and markets, wages, investment and personal property all stay. |
Free-Market Democratic Socialism
The idea in one sentence
Your house, car, savings and tools are yours, and nobody touches them. But a permanent, tradeable claim on the work of thousands of strangers is a different kind of thing, so there should be companies where that claim never forms, and nothing in law or finance should stop people from building them. Read the thesis.
Nobody is forced
This model doesn't buy, seize or convert anyone's company. Instead it builds new worker-owned companies alongside existing ones, then lets customers and workers choose between them.
- 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. Part of each year's profit builds up in a personal account that's paid out when you leave, and part goes into a permanent reserve that keeps the business investing. An insurance pool the co-ops pay for protects workers' last paychecks and part of their savings if the co-op fails. Membership comes automatically after a short probation, so co-ops in high-turnover work like home care don't end up run by the few who stay. Worker Ownership, When People Don't Stay Long, Member Capital Accounts, Protecting Members' Savings and Investing for the Long Run
- 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. Spain, Italy and the US have all tried versions of this, and the pilot is built around what went right and wrong. The Bank and Has This Been Tried?
- Owners who want to sell to their workers can. The bank lends for these sales on a separate track, with its own $100 million and its own test. Only healthy firms qualify, there's no new tax break, the price is capped at an independent appraisal, the seller shares the risk, and the whole workforce votes. When an Owner Wants to Sell to the Workers
- 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. An independent lock-holder can veto any attempt, including selling the business off piece by piece. The Lock
- 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. It's built so that a hostile government can't quietly freeze it or rig the result, though Congress can always repeal it. It also tests, by lottery, whether serious help before launch gets more co-ops started. The Test, The Pilot, in Numbers, Help Before the First Loan and Making It Last
- 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
- 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
What stays the same
| Stays | Why |
|---|---|
| Existing companies | Nobody's company is bought or taken. Conventional firms keep conventional ownership. |
| Markets and competition | Co-ops and conventional firms compete for the same customers and workers. |
| Salaries | Hard and in-demand jobs still pay more. A surgeon still earns a surgeon's salary. Pay bands are open, and high pay needs the lower-paid half to agree. Who Sets the Pay |
| Personal property | Homes, cars, savings and tools are untouchable. |
| Investment and big returns | Investors can still fund co-ops and make 10x or 30x. Their claim just runs out and carries no vote. Capital, After |
Why it matters
This isn't mainly about money. People deserve a say in governing the place where they spend most of their waking lives. Today most workers are ruled by distant owners who answer to nobody who works there. Co-ops are rare, and one likely reason is that nobody will lend to them. This model fixes the financing and lets people choose. Making the Case and, for one real company worked through, What If Conservice Had Been a Co-op?
Honest about what's unsolved
This is a working model, not a finished one. The biggest open question is whether strong founders will start companies they can never sell. In the success case, a co-op founder ends up with a fraction of what a conventional owner would, because the rest goes to the people who work there (The Founder Problem). The full list of what isn't solved yet is kept in the open. Open Problems