Yes, that could throw a spanner in the works. Making it an option to pay taxes or other fees in Borough Bucks, maybe offer a discount too, would still be effective, especially with people at the bottom end who find getting hold of dollars difficult and those who cater to them.

I've not seen the details of Yang's proposal but in general if the issuer of a currency fixes it to another currency they don't really have a currency.

So to make it work all he has to do is not do that and make it obligatory for local taxes to be paid in it. Another possibility would be to only sell certain government services for Borough Bucks. Curitiba in Brazil successfully paid people in bus tickets to collect rubbish.

Individual holders would be free to sell Borough Bucks for Dollars but the city won't buy them.

Antifa itself is descended from the street gang / freikorp militias of the German Communist Party in the 1920s

The Freikorp were corporate death squads whose job was to assassinate Communists.

UBI is inflationary in itself. If you peg it to inflation you create a positive feedback loop.

Contrary to the widespread scoffing, the Limits to Growth model is still largely on track: Is Global Collapse Imminent?

I wouldn't equate stockocracy with one-man-one-vote democracy.

I have read his paper and it goes further into the question of ownership. One particularly telling point is that a shareholder's creditors can't go after the corporation's assets. The mirror image of limited liability.

He is constructing a Theory of the Firm, a recognised thing in economics. Which is to say there's more than one. The one you describe as "what everyone knows, what all of the books say" was constructed at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. Ciepley points out some problems with it and draws on more traditional notions for his.

Yes, I missed that. My brain reflexively shut off for a few seconds at the mention of Apple.

But he is talking about profits and, I have just discovered, "residual claimant" does not just refer to liquidation but also normal operations. A (minority) shareholder cannot demand the company pay him some dividends even if it has made some profits. They cannot claim that residual.

The shareholders give the corporation its assets, but the state has to (at least) recognise its authority to control them.

Clearly, what he's saying needs to be carefully parsed. Bear in mind he is a professor giving a one hour talk, presumably he is summarising years of research and somewhere there is a fully referenced academic paper supporting it. Perhaps this one (I haven't read it yet).

I remembered that I have a handy pdf of my local statute and searched it for the word "own". There is no instance of it that can be interpreted as referring to the company. The closest is a "share or interest in the company".

Hmm. He doesn't actually say "of course" at the start of that passage.
Not every person has a proprietorship, which may have employees (as he mentions), a trade name, some kind of separate identity from the proprietor. If he closes his business he still exists. It is true that it has no legal separation, that does not mean we cannot distinguish between them, which is all he his saying.

I also noted the bankruptcy thing, but he does not say "residual" either. You get to own your share of the residual assets after the corporation is closed down. While it is running you have none of the normal rights associated with ownership, as he says. It's a bit like an inheritance. You may feel like it's yours but while Grandpa still lives it ain't.

I probably misspoke when I said "legally speaking". I should have said "practically speaking".

A glance at the Wiki page will show there is a bewildering range of views on Socialism. Marx didn't invent it or define it. He didn't even describe it nearly as much as he did Capitalism.

The Bolsheviks got it wrong and most people just follow them. Public ownership of the means of production is only one kind of Socialism out of many. On the Wiki page you will see it referred to as State Capitalism, which fits with my view. You can also take my view yet still favour public ownership of all capital. You can not favour it and still be a Socialist. Capitalists don't get to define what Socialism is.

My source on shareholding/ownership: David Ciepley. He is Canadian, perhaps the US is different. I do wonder how the various grades of stock can all be considered ownership. Incidentally, I also have a limited company, though when I read our statute I was not looking for clarity on ownership as I only have one other minority shareholder.

In Socialism everyone gets an old age pension of course. No need to trust your twilight years to Wall Street.

Heh, yes I shouldn't have picked on America, Capitalist propaganda is popular worldwide. A one sentence dictionary definition is not really the best place to go for an understanding of a whole ideology. Just the lead of the Wikipedia page is four fat paragraphs, and I'm still not happy with it.

Owning a few shares does not make one a Capitalist really, not if you still have to work for a living and have no say over how 'your' company is run. A Capitalist is someone who controls capital but pays someone else to operate it then controls the output. Legally speaking shareholders do not actually own a company, they only own a claim on a share of the dividends when or if the managers decide to disburse some. Limited liability, see.

Only if you own more shares than anyone else can you get control of a company, which you will promptly turn over to some manager who is functionally the Capitalist these days.

Socialism says the fruits of your labour are rightfully yours. The Capitalist says the fruits of your labour are his because you used his tools.

There are different kinds of Socialism and Socialists are experts at disagreeing with each other. I believe I have boiled it down to its essence here.

The trouble with getting your definition of Socialism from Merriam-Webster or any American media is you are reading Capitalist propaganda. Although, even the Wikipedia page on Socialism begins with this focus on ownership of capital which I believe is not the real nub of it. It accepts the Capitalist framing, creates a rhetorical handicap and a gap in understanding that can only be filled with pointless disagreement.

Capitalists should get something for the use of their tools, but not everything.

Workers should aim to own their own capital when possible and work for themselves or each other in coops and syndicates. The gifts of nature and natural monopolies should be owned and managed communally. Laws and institutions should be arranged to facilitate this rather than hinder it, and given that workers far outnumber Capitalists, this can all be done in the normal democratic way, no dictators required.

Your ownership, everyone's ownership, is currently enforced by government thugs. Laws define the parameters of ownership.

Government power enables the Capitalist to appropriate the workers' share of output.

You have not justified this, just reverted to talking about ownership and control of capital which is not the point.

Socialism says the workers who create the output have some claim on it too, that ownership of the capital does not confer total ownership of its output.

Workers can secure their share through collective bargaining, or codetermination, or other methods that do not deprive the Capitalist of his capital. Your rant is strawmanning.

Owning the means of production means controlling it, deciding.

That is the Capitalist's credo. But it is a sleight of hand.

The central issue is not control of the capital. The issue is control of the things the workers make with the capital.

The Capitalist (implicitly) claims that owning the capital means he owns its entire output and the workers own none. This looks like a ripoff to me, can you justify it?

I do not see that workers having more control of their workplace, and of the disposition of the fruits of their labours, logically requires that politicians have any more powers than they currently do. Obviously, they would use them somewhat differently.

Venezuela is still a Capitalist country.
Democratically elected Socialist governments tend to enact Social Democratic reforms. So far as I'm aware none have tried to abolish Capitalism like the revolutionary Socialists have.

Capitalism is embedded in the laws and institutions of Capitalist countries. Changing that requires politicians, workers coops can't do it. Merely having a Socialist government does not a Socialist country make, it is necessary but not sufficient.

Of course most people shop around using the imperfect information (contrary to economic assumption) they can get. They don't all want the same things (contrary to economic assumption) and there is more than one thing to choose from (contrary to economic assumption).

What you are describing is not Capitalism but merely commerce, some form of which exists in every economic system. Mainstream economic theory is designed to describe the operations of commerce in a way that justifies and supports Capitalism, to make alternatives unthinkable.

But at root Capitalism and Socialism are simply different ways to decide how to divide the surplus wealth created by industrial production. In Capitalism the owners of the capital decide, in Socialism the workers decide.

There are successful and long lived worker cooperatives around so clearly the governance question is not insurmountable.