Incidentally I talk about how someone can come in with nothing and end up with part ownership in The Machine in its follow on essay, The Corporation.
Public ownership of means of production is as easily overturned (doing so is called “privatization”) as wealth redistribution; in fact, it's been done many times in places that had established public ownership of some or all of the means of production. So, your objection to redistribution seems to apply at least as strongly to your alternative.
To be clear, I’m not talking about state ownership of the means of production, I’m talking about direct ownership through democratically controlled private corporations.
Property rights, no less than taxing and spending, is a feature of law subject to the whims of the State.
Thanks!
It's not an entirely unreasonable approach; it's been used with some notable success in, e.g., the Mondragón system.
OTOH, tax-and-redistribute is even more well-established an approach, being a feature of virtually all modern mixed economies.
> I’ll have to look in to the reform you speak of in Mexico. Do you have any more details to guide my search on that?
The ley Lerdo of 1856 (especially it's application to indigenous communities) and the Constitutional amendment to allow privatization of land held in ejidos that were formed as part of the land reforms of the Mexican Revolution under President Salinas in 1992 are the two notable Mexican examples.
More importantly, how does your solution of inventing a new machine to solve poverty help anyone in the decades before we're able to build it? What's the backup plan if you're wrong about the feasibility of this machine?
You seem to be trying to get rid of economics by solving scarcity rather than come up with solutions to economic problems.
The follow on essay to The Machine is The Corporation, which talks a little about the logistics of such a thing.
http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
Certainly, I’d like to write a book on these ideas, and I have a lot more to flesh out. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing!
Much of what I want to accomplish is not to get rid of economics, but make it work for regular people. I think that can be done by making sure the people own the means of production and making sure that no one is unfairly exploited for their labor. That is not in my mind getting rid of economics.
And surely, I believe we can realize the benefits of these ideas almost immediately, and I advocate for doing that on my website, http://Reboot.love. Specifically, I think that we can encourage robotics engineers to develop open source solutions, and we can encourage investors and policy makers to fund training so more people can understand how to benefit from these open source designs. I foresee real economic benefits to these ideas helping people within ten years. I believe the reach of these ideas can be broader and more immediate than a UBI. Even if a UBI were implemented in, say, France or Canada, billions would still be without it. But if we design open source productive machinery that can be made in a small shop, everyone from Kenya to Bangladesh to Detroit and Watsonville can benefit.
That’s what I’m working towards.
Also it’s kind of comical to insinuate that such shares issued by a government that just appropriated a huge chunk of private corporations would somehow be more secure than cash issued periodically because they are harder to take away, I mean they would litterally signify that this government will take whatever they wish without recourse.