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Comment by Sniffnoy | Hacker News Reader

> You fundamentally misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm not proposing elected slavery, and truly fail to see how you reached that conclusion. I don't know what part of my pro-democracy comment implied I believe in forced labor, but I'm interested in hearing what process you went through in your mind to reach that point.

This is an unproductive comment. If you say something and you aren't understood, the better response would be to explain.

(I, for one, also have no idea what you might mean by a "democratic economy".)

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A democratic economy is one where the workers control it through cooperation across industries, the form this takes is up to the workers in this theoretical system. An anarcho-syndicalist approach may work, a participatory economic approach may work, a socialist market system is possible (mutualism). Unfortunately I can't really explain more without getting into the nitty gritty which requires an understanding of socialism.

>(I, for one, also have no idea what you might mean by a "democratic economy".)

One in which we workers are rid of all absentee bosses and run enterprises ourselves, democratically. Hence "democratic economy".

So... cooperatives?

Among other things, yes.

Would you care to elaborate on that?

Commons trusts would be another major pillar, and democratic confederations of localities. There are many non-capitalist types of institutions ready to use.

> non-capitalist types of institutions

Common trusts and co-ops are both "capitalist institutions". They both rely on private ownership and voluntary transactions. Not sure what you mean by "democratic confederations of localities".

To be fair, he means "capitalist" in a different sense than you do. If you take what he said but use a different interpretation of the words, of course nonsense will result.

But I do think that despite the above your underlying point is fundamentally correct here; both commons trusts and co-ops work perfectly well under existing rules. It sounds like, aside from the democratic confederations thing, what eli_gottlieb wants is not a different system of rules, but rather to kick the existing system into a different equlibrium. (It really seems like these socialist types tend not to distinguish between these...)

> It sounds like, aside from the democratic confederations thing, what eli_gottlieb wants is not a different system of rules, but rather to kick the existing system into a different equlibrium. (It really seems like these socialist types tend not to distinguish between these...)

Well, I'd love to know where you draw the conceptual boundaries between systems. Lemme guess: it's only not-capitalism when the state controls everything?

So, I'm a little confused here. You're listing individual points of what would be different, and what the overall intended effect would be (democratic control by workers), but I'm not seeing how this all fits together into a coherent system.

You understand that you are allowed to create such companies now, and they do exist? They don't appear to work much better, if at all better, than a traditional company. But you're free to join or start one if you think you'll like it better.

> I, for one, also have no idea what you might mean by a "democratic economy".

Co-ops, probably.

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