So to be clear I’m not talking about UBI or nationalization. I agree there’s big problems with that. Nationalization can work well for things like railroads, bu

So to be clear I’m not talking about UBI or nationalization. I agree there’s big problems with that. Nationalization can work well for things like railroads, but I’m talking about something else. Specifically I’m advocating for an economy comprised of a federation of cooperatives. There would be no nationalized Walmart, instead there would be community owned cooperative stores that achieve economies of scale through voluntary federation with similar stores in neighboring regions, or across even wider areas. Health care could be managed by regional cooperatives, again federated. An important part would be a culture that avoids buying from businesses outside of this federated arrangement. Traditional businesses controlled by a small board of directors can under pay workers and try to undercut competition, but businesses in the federation would understand the importance of building their own solutions to these problems to prevent control by large entities. This might work similar to housing in Vienna. There, the city government owns about 50% of all housing units, and this keeps the privately owned housing prices in check. In a federated economy, perhaps 50% of the businesses would be cooperatives, but they would keep workers rights and wages at privately owned businesses in check. One thing about cooperatives is that workers will have a tendency to want to automate their jobs. For profit businesses are happy to under pay workers and only automate if it makes financial sense. But cooperatives may have more incentive as more automation can mean less work for them personally. Cooperatives also may have less incentive to create artificial demand and low quality products. If they are essentially making products for themselves and people like them, they will appreciate quality products that last longer, reducing waste. I’m happy you’re working on more solutions to fund F/OSS. Nothing I’m talking about will support developers in the near term. I prefer solutions that make our economy more like F/OSS rather than the other way around, but one is easier to change than the other.