Lincoln welders once exported to the world. The workers earned well above the average and the profit stream remained consistent and healthy. Why?

Well because it was run as a co-op with no debt to service and no drone shareholder to divvy up skimmed profits?

I heard a story about a Brazilian manufacturer, facing ruination and bankruptcy? Because a joiner partner and his wife were engaged in some skulduggery and cooking the books to try and hide their criminal activities?

Anyhow this was one tech savvy industrialist who bugged the boardroom, his home and the suspect partners office?

Then arranged to be conveniently out of the way as the pair hatched a plot that would see a compliant bank withhold essential operating capital? Allowing the joint to be sold by the bank to recover a miniscule loan? Then resell for a handsome dividend/profit?

Anyhow, the industrialist was privy to all their plans almost a soon as they were hatched and decided on a course of action of his own?

Namely, to gift a 51 % control to his workforce in lieu of wages?

Which they accepted, then with inventory in hand, put the production line into overdrive and sweethearted many new deals. To get a very good cash flow situation happening, from which they were able to cancel the firm's bank debt inside a month.

Who then lost their business as a first consequence, with another smaller bank reaping the rewards.

Anyhow the minor shareholders tried to undo some of these arrangements, only to be informed that would be met with a strike and a picket line of unheralded length?

And then were put right back in their box by a lawsuit that filed for divorce, alienation of affection and theft of company funds?

The last I heard had the firm going from strength to strength, opening up a company criche and a employee housing co-operative.

And the industrialist jetsetting around the world following golf tournaments, his special passion!

And from his fully franked share of the considerable and growing profit? He'd never been so well off?
Alan B.

Alan,

With all due respect, if these systems were so great they would be worldwide. I bet if you dig a little deeper the reality is far less than the hype.

Dear SM,

«The only way these systems would work universally would be to use draconian laws to enforce them.»

Nah, this wouldn't work, it would just create corruption.

Alternatives can only work when the participants share common values.
Some examples are the monastic vows in the merino-breeding case that you mentioned, the combination of socialism and Zionism in the case of the Kibbutz, and family values in the case of family businesses.

As it stands, we have no morally-acceptable tools to stop even the worst expressions of predatory capitalism, but if we could have smaller states whose citizens voluntarily agree to participate, based on shared values rather than on geography and coercion, then there would no longer be any moral impediments for those new states to intervene and fight capitalism, perhaps by producing most goods and services by the state itself.

Socialism failed because the people involved had no common values and thus no reason to freely consent to any common effort.

Rubbish Yuyutsu. Socialism failed because it was obvious right from the start that working for a living was unnecessary, & there was no reward for working. About 15% immediately chose not to work.

Very quickly an increasingly large percentage of people got jack of keeping the bludgers & also stopped working. Very soon no one was working, & they could no longer produce enough food to feed themselves.

The USSR collapsed, & China moved to a capitalist system of production & reward.

Capitalist states were very successful in harder times. You had to work if you wanted to eat. Then the rot of socialism started to creep in. We went from poorhouses to unemployment welfare, & the bludgers started to realise they could vote, rather than work for a living.

Capitalism & democracy are now so far down the socialist path, it is very doubtful if they can be salvaged before a total collapse as in the USSR.

Pity it was a great system before the socialists & the do-gooders [& greens, communists by a new name] infiltrated & sowed the seeds of it's destruction.

Dear Hasbeen,

You are right, because nobody would work for free for others who do not even share their own values.

However, if everyone in a mini-society did share the same values, then this could be different.

When you respect the family, the neighbour, the street, the neighborhood, the suburb, the state.....in that order,...... is how you end up with a unified community.
Thinking up words to describe ideological values is a mug politicians game.
Nothing replaces 'respect'....the problem is that most Australians think 'respect' is a new brand of soft drink or the latest betting ap