Chris Trottier on Nostr: I am a Ricardian socialist. I believe the best form of *business* is a co-operative. ...

I am a Ricardian socialist.

I believe the best form of *business* is a co-operative. It is a *fact* that co-ops tend to be less risky, survive longer, and provide more value to their owners.

Co-ops also have hundreds of years of a winning track record. That's right, we have centuries of data that prove they work.

So why aren't most companies co-ops?

Well, I argue that -- despite what people interpret as capitalism "winning" -- the trend in company ownership has been slowly shifting towards collective ownership.

We see this with the fact that public corporations are, in fact, a vehicle for collective ownership, and the vast amount of wealth that's currently generated is due to the ability of people to collectively own things.

Corporations dominate right now because the average investor isn't looking for sustainability, they are looking for growth. But even in their search for growth, they cannot bear the risk of attaining this through their own *legal* person -- so they create a legal fiction to allow for collective ownership.

But the moment a corporation becomes public, its mission -- whether stated or not -- is to become the "biggest". This is a result of investors' demands to achieve growth. And if left unabated, these corporations become monopolies.

Now what to do if a corporation achieves a monopoly? That's the question.

I personally believe that if a corporation achieves monopoly power, they've fulfilled their fiduciary responsibility towards shareholders and therefore have no reason to exist.

It's my opinion that monopolies should be converted to co-ops where they don't just serve shareholders, they serve stakeholders too. These stakeholders should become member-owners. This includes workers, customers, etc.

Obviously, many people disagree with me, and that's fine. But it's how I believe things should generally work.