Both the right and left wing have failed. They have failed to uphold the most basic principles that they stand for. The right wing increases government spending and surveillance. The left wing increases the income gap and social conflict. This is in fact related to their economic outlooks.
The right wing fails to understand that “laissez-faire” capitalism in its current form is based around the capture of a strong central government. The left wing fails to realize that people can’t buy their way into a new reality, and that the government will never move as long as industry doesn’t.
I think we can all sense that we’re at the end of an age. The question is how painful the transition to the next one has to be. I think part of the angst people feel is that they can’t even imagine a way out. There’s no clear vision for a future that preserves personal freedom and the welfare of the majority of people in the face of the pressures we see. And I don’t see many people who seem to expect to maintain, let alone improve upon, our current quality of life.
I believe it can be done in a relatively peaceful way if we can embrace a particular technology-fueled reimagining of our socioeconomic system. I call it distributism because that most readily aligns with the fundamental organizing principles. Those being:
Common goods and services are managed at the most local possible level
Profit sharing, Partnership and shared ownership are the primary labor relationship
Participation in any institutions involved should be no less voluntary than it is currently
Federated collectives are used to “bubble up” funds and control to higher levels
Work should be incentivized by potential for exponential yields, rather than desperation or the threat of homelessness
Distributism is the foundation for this vision. I personally also have ideas that are influenced by cybernetics, Georgism, and Ostrom’s theory of common pool resources. However it’s the federated collectives which would implement any of these policies and allow them to jockey for position with other philosophies. Through distributism I can peacefully interoperate with groups who share completely different views and negotiate a mutually beneficial outcome. There are indications we’re already heading in this direction. It hasn’t boiled into a full trend, but there are clear signs popping up like buds on spring. For example:
Companies are giving more equity, via startup-culture and employee stock grants
Trump created a sovereign wealth fund and Ted Cruz is giving stock grants to every American child. These will grow.
Social media outlets are profit sharing with contributors/users
AI companies will need to incentivize people to create valid training data
DAO’s are a form of decentrally-governed collective
The subscription-based economy is a small step away from a form of profit-sharing
We’re still lacking on:
Collective bargaining & governance for gig workers - traditional unions won’t work because part of the big draw to gig work is voluntary participation
Democratic governance of corporations - central management still outcompetes collective governance despite biases. The tech is not there
Federation of collectives - we need the collectives to share some universal protocols to interoperate, and users need to be able to seamlessly change contexts
Let’s be clear: this is not a a utopian vision. It’s a practical step in the a direction meant to preserve self-determination for as many individuals as possible in a world where pressures from all sides are quickly eroding that. It will invariably have its own drawbacks, especially when it reaches maturity. The goal is simply to swap out the employer-employee relationship as the primary organizing structure of our society with something involving *some* shared ownership in a sustainable way that can compete on its own terms.
This post is to illustrate what this would look like when we get there.
Before the illustration, I want to make one point which in my opinion is the most critical thing to consider in any proposal for change: The process is the product. The institutions that are created in order to coordinate and fuel the actions to create the change are the institutions which will persist in that new reality. There’s no “ends justify the means”. The means are the end.
So let’s imagine a day in the life of someone living in a modern distributist system:
Barlow Tropcircle wakes up, showers, and gets his kids ready for school. Though he doesn’t make much money, his children attend a good school because he has allocated a significant chunk of his personal fund to the school. On a good month, this means he's paying significantly above average, but it ensures that the kids will still be able to go to school if he loses his job.
Barlow starts making his kids' lunches. When he buys food with cash, he takes income. This moves money from his fund into his checking account. When he does this, a certain fraction automatically gets allocated to the school and his house. He could also create an essentials grocery subscription where he's guaranteed the basics in exchange for a similar arrangement as his house and the school.
He calls a car. It drops them off at the school and then he starts to look through the notifications on his phone. In the work app, he sees that a customer wants to make a change to their order. They want to change the table use walnut instead of oak. Barlow can seamlessly and automatically create a new purchase order to the lumber distributor and adjust their fraction of the profit upwards a bit. Barlow's share of the final profits is often a bit lower than arrangements where he buys the lumber outright, but if the customer doesn't like the table or runs off without paying, he doesn't take the full loss
He takes the car to work. When he gets out he sees another notification. The local councilman for his district has asked for approvals for his proposal to create a park near the neighborhood. That sounds great, but Barlow sees the proposed design of the park and it includes tennis courts and basketball courts, but not much room for smaller children to play. He looks through the proposal changes. He sees one that proposes to make it a community garden and downvotes it. He scrolls a bit down and sees another one proposing more children's equipment and upvotes it.
A bit after lunchtime he gets a call from school. His kid Tony broke his arm at recess. The school sends a set of tasks to his phone that he can accept which includes all the reporting, and even calling a car for him to get to the school and take him to the hospital. He accepts the tasks and in a few minutes a car pulls up. When they get to the hospital, a pre-triage has already been done as the school has sent the information.
Barlow has insurance for his children through what is called an "incubator" collective. They provide things like health insurance and unemployment, etc.--reducing risk in general for people who start businesses in exchange for a similar arrangement to the house and school. There's a federal incubator program too, but Barlow prefers the collective because they give access to better doctors and it's a little easier to switch out of it if he wants to change
While Tony is taking a nap after getting his arm set, he is scrolling through his phone. He sees a notification about a new law to add CCTV cameras around the town. He clicks in and scrolls through the comments. Some people are complaining about surveillance. Others are complaining about crime. He clicks through the change proposals. One suggests that everyone should be able to log into the CCTV cameras and see who else is logged in. That's an interesting idea. He comments "Interesting. But probably needs to be tested out first and I don't really want my family to be the guinea pig on that."
After he's discharged, he takes Tony for some ice cream, and they keep chugging along.
As you can see, this is a world we have the capacity to create. The only real differences are in the way things are paid for, as well as some better coordination technology that facilitates it.
So how can we move in this direction from where we are? The fact is, the pieces are starting to come together without much intervention. It appears to be something of a natural evolution from capitalism. But there are other forces which are also in motion which oppose it. However, here are some things we can do:
make profit sharing arrangements easier - currently there is a lot of regulatory burden for them
inject shared decision-making into our workplaces
create technology which allows collectives to interoperate
do experiments like this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17113, while also developing software to help others replicate
The process is the product, yes but also that means the product is the process.. let’s take the way we want to collectively operate in the future, and create those organizations now in order to make it happen
Get in touch if you’re interested. I’m working on things or might be able to connect you