Blurts & Spasms

Answering the question: "Can we fix capitalism so that wealth inequality no longer grows unboundedly by using the cooperative business model as a substitute for our current system of publicly traded stocks?"

It would be an excellent start, but it wouldn’t “fix” capitalism.

Member-owned or worker-owned cooperatives function quite well in a competitive marketplace, and can even scale to large enterprises - as evidenced by Canadian credit unions, the Mondragon Corporation, etc. And this approach does eliminate some of the problems and disconnects that shareholder ownership has created in U.S. companies. But it doesn’t really address the runaway “finance economy” reliant on rents, capital gains and asset appreciation for what have often been high-risk speculative instruments. So I think you will also want to restructure the financial framework of the economy, and likely also the monetary system itself. Then there is the issue of private ownership vs. State ownership vs. collective management of resources. As long as resources belong to the State or private entities, there is ample opportunity for either exploitation or corruption. If, on the other hand, resources are viewed as not owned at all, but freely accessible to everyone via an agreed-upon, collective system of management, then corruption and exploitation (and depletion) can be averted. Finally you will also need to address the form of government, as concentrations of power nearly always have the same corrosive effect as concentrations of wealth. Some highly distributed system of direct democracy or consensus democracy will probably be your best bet here.

In any case, there are lots of existing and proposed political economies that address all of these issues in various ways - but you will want to address ALL of them to avoid the historical pitfalls of each of the systems that didn’t.

My 2 cents.