jheapsandClaude Opus 5.5
b1ed1b9b13
Adds a Valuation chapter. It covers market price, control-size arm's-length sales, and a formula whose industry multiples come from real acquisitions and whose profit figures are cleaned of related-party games. Disputes stay in court (Monongahela), but each side files a final number, costs follow reasonableness, inflated claims draw a penalty, and workers get an independent public valuation counsel. Conversion brackets now apply to lifetime proceeds and look through foundations and trusts. Open problems are updated for the anticipation discount and conversion-tax durability. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GsSJ98117VXm9t7rBra5NX
2.9 KiB
title, summary
| title | summary |
|---|---|
| Free-Market Democratic Socialism | A working model for an economy where the people who do the work own and govern the companies they work for, while 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, and it shouldn't be treated as the same "property." Everything else in this model follows from that line. Read the thesis.
What changes
- Workers own their company. Every employee gets one vote from day one. A share of the profits grows with tenure until everyone who's been there long enough splits them equally. Worker Ownership
- Companies back each other up. Worker-owned firms pool part of their profits into a shared fund and bank. If one firm fails, its workers are moved into others instead of being left with nothing. The Federation
- Existing companies are bought, not seized. Workers buy their company at full price and pay for it out of its future profits. A steeply progressive tax on the sale proceeds then funds the transition for everyone else. The price is set by clear rules, like the market price or what the last buyer actually paid, rather than by dueling experts. The Conversion · Valuation
- Investment is rented, not owned forever. Investors still fund companies and can still earn huge returns, but their claim runs out and comes with no vote. Capital, After
- Nobody is left behind by low-margin work. Ownership 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 |
|---|---|
| Markets and competition | Companies still compete, set prices and win or lose customers. |
| Salaries | Hard and in-demand jobs still pay more. A surgeon still earns a surgeon's salary. |
| Personal property | Homes, cars, savings and tools are untouchable. |
| Investment and big returns | Investors can still make 10x or 30x. They just can't own a company forever. |
| Rights and due process | The model makes individual rights harder to repeal. The Constitution |
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. The model ends that rule without taking anyone's personal wealth. Making the Case
Honest about what's unsolved
This is a working model, not a finished one. It is being stress-tested against critics from across the political spectrum, and the hard problems it hasn't cracked yet are listed in the open. Open Problems