Who owns what produces common, held by those who use it held, but under a standing expectation that it circulates household or community use-rights over land and tools member-owned firms — by workers, customers, or producers mixed — key industries public or worker-controlled mixed; the proposals are about scale and throughput rather than about who owns what mostly private, with public ownership where markets have failed repeatedly no absolute owner — land is held from a superior in a chain of obligation no fixed position no fixed position; preference for domestic ownership private and absolute, including roads, courts, and defence private but conditional on conduct private firms, publicly disciplined private ownership of the marketplace itself rather than of the goods traded in it private ownership of what you build; community claim on the value of the location private ownership, state direction private workshops, with the right to practise controlled by the guild private, and deliberately spread as widely as possible private, concentrated in land private, including the means of production private, inside limits written above ordinary law private, lightly regulated private, near-absolute private, regulated private, strongly protected, inheritable private, under chartered monopolies granted by the crown private, with an obligatory annual claim on accumulated wealth private, with regulation private, with workers seated on the boards of large firms public or undefined; the proposals concern allocation rather than title public; private productive property abolished social or worker ownership of firms; no private claim on the capital social ownership; no private claim on productive assets state holds controlling stakes in strategic firms; private ownership elsewhere state ownership of the means of production the industry, by the workers in it, federated across trades the resource is state-owned in most cases; downstream activity private the temple, palace, or state holds the land; households hold use-rights
What decides who gets what a central planning authority setting physical output targets a priestly or royal administration an insulated planning ministry picks sectors; firms compete for the support and lose it if they fail assemblies with recallable delegates buyers and sellers, one transaction at a time coalition bargaining, agencies, courts coalition bargaining, states, courts contracting parties; no public authority above them custom, kinship, and standing democratic bodies setting physical limits on resource use and emissions, with markets inside them elected mandate executed by expert agencies elected representatives, constrained by courts electorate plus organised labour families, small firms, and the smallest competent body — subsidiarity firm managers responding to prices, elected or appointed by workers firms compete on price; wages and conditions are bargained sector-wide between employers and unions individuals through contract and price landowners and the sovereign, guided by a natural order the physiocrats held to be discoverable legislatures, bounded by an entrenched economic constitution and an independent competition authority local institutions first, then representatives markets for most goods, elected governments for the rest, with the boundary permanently in dispute masters of the craft, collectively, within a town charter members, one vote each, electing a board ordinary commercial parties, within religious-law limits reviewed by scholars ordinary democratic government, funded differently technical specialists and measurement systems rather than owners or voters the household, within community custom the leader the lord within the manor, the crown between lords, custom over both the party the party or executive sets direction; managers run the firms on commercial terms the platform, through terms of service and ranking algorithms the sovereign, through charters, tariffs, and navigation laws whoever controls the resource revenue, which is usually the executive whoever is accepted as the people's authentic voice whoever speaks for the nation workers' councils and consumers' councils together, through iterated rounds of proposal workplace assemblies, coordinating through delegates who can be recalled
How far the state reaches bounded bounded but active — the state sets and polices the rules rather than running the firms bounded, preferring local broad extensive over trade, shipping, colonies, and specie lagging — most rules governing platforms were written for something else large and funded without taxing anyone large and negotiated large enough to enforce a physical cap large in credit, trade, and industrial policy; smaller in consumption large in insurance and bargaining law, restrained in running firms minimal minimal beyond property, contract, and defence minimal in trade, singular in taxation — one tax, on land no separate economic state — the councils are the mechanism none none — the state is abolished, not limited ordinary; cooperatives operate inside a market economy sets the rules and holds the capital stock; does not set output small but active in preventing concentration the state is to be replaced by the federation of unions, not captured the town, not the nation — guilds held delegated public authority locally total total over allocation, minimal in the traditional political sense total over production and storage total over production, investment, and prices unchanged in kind; changed in how it raises money usually distant and weak usually no state at all variable varies; the rules bind transactions rather than prescribing a state form very large — the state is the largest shareholder in the economy weak central state; power fragmented among landholders
How power changes hands acquisition, and network effects that make displacement very hard appointment within the party appointment, not election, at the top of the firms apprenticeship to journeyman to master, and inheritance of workshops control of the resource, by whatever means death or defeat; no mechanism depends on host regime dynastic succession and priestly appointment election election among members, and open membership election for the public part, purchase for the private election inside the firm, and political election outside it election, and negotiated succession inside the bargaining system election, then increasingly contested election, with the economic rules deliberately placed out of an ordinary majority's reach generosity converted into standing, and standing inherited inheritance and custom inheritance and purchase, with policy pushing against accumulation inheritance of land inheritance, marriage, and conquest internal party succession; never by public vote purchase and contract purchase and inheritance, under prescribed inheritance shares purchase, inheritance, and bankruptcy recall; no standing power to transfer recallable delegation and rotation rotation and direct participation royal grant and inheritance technical appointment and expertise varies — the model has run under both dictatorship and democracy
What constrains the state a hard physical cap on materials and energy throughput anti-monopoly law, tax favouring small holdings, and the associations competition and the risk of loss competition between firms, and a hard budget if the state will allow one competition between protection and arbitration agencies, and reputation competition law, so far applied slowly, and the possibility of users leaving together competition, and the members' own vote constitution and courts constitution, courts, elections constitution, courts, elections, federalism constitutional entrenchment, courts, and a competition regulator insulated from the government of the day custom, the church, and the practical limits of coercion elections and organised labour elections, regulators, courts, and the budget export performance, which is a test the ministry cannot fake harvest failure, revolt, and the physical limits of record-keeping nothing nothing outside the party physical accounting — energy and material budgets that cannot be argued with prohibition of interest, of excessive uncertainty, and of gambling; obligatory almsgiving reputation, shame, and the obligation to reciprocate rival powers, and smuggling sectoral bargaining, codetermination, competition law, and social insurance social pressure and refusal to cooperate statute and regulatory agencies the general strike, and the right of any assembly to withdraw the guild's own courts, the town, and rival towns the leadership's own audit and discipline machinery, and export markets that will not accept a bad product the mandate, which is not a constraint the market and contract law the natural order itself, which the physiocrats believed penalised interference automatically the plan's own targets and the physical availability of inputs the planning procedure itself, and balanced job complexes the tax itself, which makes holding land idle expensive the weather, the soil, and the community the world price, which nobody in the country sets tradition, local institutions, courts whatever the host regime provides
How dissent is treated central — the tradition is built on refusal central; the design is built around voice commonly restricted — a government that does not need your taxes does not need your consent deplatforming ends participation in the market entirely eliminated exclusion from the circle of exchange exit — take your custom elsewhere expressed by not buying, and by leaving expulsion from the guild, which ended the right to work in the trade flight, revolt, or absorption into the ritual order historically restricted during the catch-up phase in most cases leave, or be excluded from the commons not a developed category in the doctrine poorly specified in every version, which is the tradition's standing weakness protected protected in the democratic versions, restricted in the Yugoslav case protected in the democratic versions; critics argue the cap invites coercion protected, and institutionalised — the strike is part of the machinery protected; exit and voice are both available protected; the entrenched rules are themselves the standing subject of argument protected; the tradition is suspicious of every large institution including the state punished restricted where it touches the firms or the leadership restricted; reporting a shortfall was itself dangerous revolt, flight to a town, or nothing suppressed; smuggling was the practical form of it tolerated to discouraged; reclassified as elite behaviour under strain tolerated to punished, depending on the definition of the nation varies widely by country; the financial rules are not themselves a political doctrine
Where the individual stands a consumer, a worker, and a claimant on public provision at once a holder of an energy or resource entitlement rather than of money a household with an obligation and a claim a householder with productive property a market participant whose ability to compete is treated as a protected interest a member of a craft before an individual seller of labour a member of a household, which is the real economic unit a member of a network of obligation, not an independent contracting party a member of both a workers' and a consumers' council a member with a vote, not a shareholder with a stake a person with sufficiency rather than a consumer with growth a place in a hierarchy, not a party to a contract a producer or a member of the 'sterile' class, by occupation a recipient of distributed revenue rather than a taxpayer with a claim a saver and a worker in a national project a self-owner and a party to contracts a subject whose commerce serves the treasury a user, a seller, and the product being sold to advertisers at the same time a worker with a direct vote in the place they work a worker with a seat, not only a wage a worker-member with a vote in the workplace an assigned role within a plan an employee, a consumer, and a subject of the plan's priorities an owner and a chooser an owner of their own labour and its products, and a tenant of the earth an owner with duties attached to what they own cell of the national organism citizen with entitlements class member free associate individual and family member member of family and community national member part of 'the people' sovereign sovereign, absolutely worker and citizen
How work is coordinated an explicit plan in physical quantities, with prices set administratively conscious social planning; the market abolished in the developed stage custom and obligation — what was done last year, done again custom and season — grow what was grown, share what is customary federated bargaining between industry unions rather than prices or a plan let it alone — the earliest systematic case for laissez-faire measurement and computation — real-time physical accounting instead of prices no fixed method — whatever is judged to serve the nation no fixed method; hostility to whoever is seen as extracting obligation in, redistribution out — accounted in kind rather than in price participatory planning — successive rounds of proposals converging without prices set by markets prices and ranking, with the ranking set privately and rarely disclosed prices for consumption, public decision over investment and key industries prices for goods, negotiation for labour prices for most goods, state direction for credit, land, and strategic sectors prices only — no public correction of the result prices, among many small owners rather than few large ones prices, arrived at without anyone deciding them prices, bent deliberately by directed credit and protection with a deadline prices, corrected wherever the outcome is judged unjust prices, distorted by a revenue stream unrelated to domestic production prices, for every good including adjudication and security prices, generated by firms competing, with capital allocated socially prices, in ordinary markets, with the firm answering to members instead of investors prices, operating inside a fixed physical envelope rather than an open one prices, plus the inherited institutions that already work prices, with land rent collected publicly rather than privately prices, with public planning in health, defence, infrastructure, and insurance prices, with public provision and regulation where markets fail prices, with regulation kept minimal prices, with regulation where markets are shown to fail prices, with risk-sharing contracts in place of interest-bearing debt prices, within a framework the state guarantees will not be rewritten every election private prices under state direction, sectors organised into corporate bodies quality standards, fixed prices, and controlled entry rather than open competition reciprocity over time, with no prices and no immediate settlement state-granted monopoly and tariff, with prices inside the licensed channel voluntary association and federation, with neither a market nor a state above it
Where the surplus goes a percentage of every transaction, plus the data the transaction generates allocated by the plan, overwhelmingly to heavy industry and defence claimed for the ordinary person against the insider distributed as entitlements to energy or goods rather than as income distributed by effort and sacrifice, not by output, bargaining power, or ownership extracted upward as rent, labour dues, and military service given away — status accrues to the giver, not the holder held by those who produced it, distributed by agreement held in common, distributed by need kept inside the nation little by design; stored against a bad year, shared through kin private profit plus tax-funded transfer private profit, with a share bargained into wages and a share taxed into insurance private, and transmitted across generations private, and untaxed beyond the minimum the state requires private, but concentration itself is treated as a harm the state must break up private, less an obligatory annual levy on wealth held above a threshold private, redistributed at the margin through tax private, subordinated to the national project private, taxed lightly private, taxed progressively private, taxed substantially to fund public provision private, with no taxation of any kind profit, to whoever owns the capital reduced by design — work time cut and consumption redirected rather than expanded reinvested by policy — high forced savings, low present consumption resource rent, distributed by the state as subsidy, employment, and patronage retained by the household or the small firm that produced it retained by the state through dividends and by managers through position retained by the workers in each industry, with federated transfer retained inside the trade, with mutual-aid funds for members' widows and sick returned to members as patronage dividend, or reinvested by member vote shared among the firm's workers and returned to a social capital fund shared by the people who produced it, or taken into public hands stored centrally, and spent on monuments, armies, and famine relief the net product of the land, taxed once at its source the unearned part — location value — collected publicly; the earned part left alone to the crown and the chartered companies, in bullion
