The idea of having the workers own the means of production is hardly new, it's just not very popular in the West. Not surprising that the NYTimes missed mentioning that entirely. It would be deliciously ironic if socialist China was the nation that would show the rest of the world how to deal with pervasive automation socially and economically.
How do you prevent them from getting bought out?
I also would probably not invest if I were in their position.
We have a better way of socializing wealth. It's called the public stock market. Workers can buy shares of any corporation on it, not just their own, and they are protected by regulations.
Having said that, I think that we should tax the machines. We are building a cage for ourselves with machines empowering organizations to monitor and control us better. Like China making a rating for every citizen. Organizations aren't people and they use people to perpetuate themselves - those people who have other ideas (like "enviroentalism" or "concern for the elderly") have to acquiesce to the corporation's interests first. And with machines, the corporations will pursue profits ahead of loyalty to workers.
My point is, we should use our democratic governments to tax the corporations for benefiting from automation, and redistribute the money to the population as unconditional basic income. As machines replace people I won't need those taxi drivers and mcdonalds workers to do anything for me. I want them to have a check coming so they can educate themselves or just go consume things they need.
It would also be nice if countries would quit being in the mindset that every generation must be more numerous than the last - social security will be taken care of by increased automation, while overpopulation is not something you can take care of that easily.
Want everyone to be richer and better off? Have less kids.
I think you have nailed the critical dynamic as well as any can.
This is a good idea in theory, and indeed I've often wondered why unions don't actively invest in the market and use their voting rights to ensure themselves a seat on the board - but my radical idea about the future of unions is another topic.
The problems with the stock market approach are twofold. First, if workers are not paid very much then the extra income they derive from stock ownership, even in the aggregate, is unlikely to make them competitive with existing forces of capital, unless the labor force owns 50% of the company, and even then individual workers are easier to buy out. Second, everyone in the markets faces a principal-agent problem where management involved in the day-to-day running of the company exerts far more power than shareholders because management can shape how shareholders perceive the company and which information they receive, such that it is very easy for managers to get shareholders to do what they want. Sometimes managers go overboard and become subject to criminal charges when they are too blatantly corrupt. In the US that just gets fines and maybe a short stint in jail; in China people can be given the death sentence for corruption, and yet it still occurs, notwithstanding the ongoing anti-corruption campaigns of Xi Jinping's administration.
My point here is not about China in particular, but to suggest that the mere existence of capital markets is by itself insufficient to make capitalist structures responsive to the public interest.
I mean from this, current world, that is not only, but also thanx to US command-and-conquer approach burning, and that fire will hurt many of us for generations to come? Some iterative, realistic steps please, that could be voted through on various parts of this planet, by populations with vastly different mentality than yours (and mine).
> I want them to have a check coming so they can educate themselves or just go consume things they need.
How do you know that McDonald workers want just this and don't have higher aspirations? And btw I am not aware of any country that has McDonald franchise open that people are dying from hunger on streets, there are always options for survival. In many of those, people can reach practically all human knowledge with a tap on screen of a phone. What if they want a brand new ferrari and feel like they really need it? or "only" BMW? who will decide what is good or not? YOU??
Many doomsday stories here don't reflect fuildity of our existence - things really don't change overnight, more like over generation. politicians have a lot of power, and last time i checked they still got voted by humans. so for example why don't you consider this slight possibility, that when situation will come worse, something will change in our system and we won't continue same direction blindly? I for one have +- confidence that, with some oscilations, will move in proper direction, whatever that will be.
I say start supplementing them all with a basic income financed by an automation tax. The more automation, the more companies benefiting from it are taxed. They still get to keep 60% of the savings from automation but the other 40% would be taxed, say. The key is redistributing it to EVERYONE. At first it would be very small but it would be help cushion demand shocks in the economy.
We just need this wealth redistribution scheme in place. Have a formula. And on a related note I would have the nation be run by polling, not democracy. Representative democracy is super corrupt and political drama is wasteful. Direct democracy is bad because those who bother to vote can get one over on those who don't. Instead, the government should do randomized polling of the population and report the results, which would be verifiable by independent polling organizations. In fact we could just have publicly accountable polling organizations which make all their results available publicly. Several of these polling organizations would be enough basis for the government bureacrats (eventually replaced by mostly computers) to take the opinion of the public in various issues and just implement them.
How much redistribution should we have? Do polling every year. How much carbon tax? Polling etc. That is a real participatory democracy without the stupid waste of time going to a polling booth. If you want me to vote, GIVE ME AN APP as an option. If it's secure enough for my finances in a bank it's secure enough for my vote in an election. But better yet just do the work for us and POLL the public on what they want.
If you say represenative democracy is able to accomplish more and polls would just vascillate wildly between different positions, then I think you're too married to the current ideology. You can still have the executive branch take a firm direction every few years, or months. That and everything else can be changeable by polls instead of a legislative branch. Polls are better than referendums.
One legitimate fear is that polls can be falsified. That's why we need many independent organizations doing the pollin. Better than one organization doing the vote.