quickleft, 2 years ago

it would be kind of like that except that

• spez et al wouldn’t be able to choose to keep a controlling number of shares. all the shares would be offloaded. he could have 1 share just like any other user.
• laws that govern publicly traded businesses would not apply. it would be a coop or other model. details would depend on jurisdiction(s) but many do have separate legal structures for such entities. In the US, REI and in Canada, MEC are buyer coops which are fairly well known. There are also housing coops and other structures for inspo.
• shares could only be owned by people who had a specific kind of interest in the project, such as being individual users, mods etc. furthermore, individuals would be limited in number of shares (e.g. 1 share each)

This is not a fully formed proposal. :) but in terms of thinking about how the world could be I think a worthwhile train of thought.

a person who was interested in this kind of thing could do a websearch for “the cooperative movement” for historical context. not to be overly rosy about it, the movement basically failed to accomplish its goals at the end of the day. however, it did make a lot of good interventions while it was existing. for example the famed (if crumbling) canadian health are system is a result of cooperative farmers’ movement. furthermore, coops which continue to exist under capitalism experience a lot of tensions and can become corrupted.

also lookup: Mondragon in spain