A Creative, Co-op Culture: The Details

#214: Additional Details
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For a brief bird's eye view: link.

The six elements that would likely produce a creative, co-op economy, and how they'd fit together:

1. A hefty corporate tax
The argument is often made that your favorite big box store merely passes on its corporate tax to you in the form of higher prices.  While true, this misses the effect that a big business tax has on the comparative price for hand-made, 'artisanal', local goods.   The more corporate profits are taxed, the more space there is for a creative economy that values excellence in local craftsmanship.  For example: a wilted vegetable shipped across country, instead of a locally grown, fresh version found at a farmer's market.
2. A secure safety net (financial, medical, educational)
Having security in life allows liberty, which leads to true self-expression, and value placed on meaningful and better made products.
3. Tax breaks for co-ops and residential businesses
Encouraging co-ops means more workers owning the business they work for, and profits remaining in local communities; the same goes for owner-occupied farms, and other small businesses tied to a particular place.
4. Overall equalization (opportunity for everyone)
So much human potential is wasted simply because not everyone has a real chance at participation and success.  But opportunity can be built-in to our society.  Randomly assigning payouts (Savings Bonds) by congressional district could encourage participatory self-expression (see below); and, competitive prize monies, also assigned by congressional district, would help move workers into a creative economy, as the corporate, work-a-day economy sheds human labor thanks to robotics, A.I., etc.
5. Military and 'corporate welfare' spending re-directed to 'pay for'
The financing to pay for our safety net, tax breaks, and opportunities would come from re-directing federal government spending.  The more we cut back, the greater the chance that a voter might receive the opportunity of a lifetime; this means more voters favoring less wasteful spending.  Additional financing would come from large tax hikes on billionaires.
6. Vigorous enforcement of current and enhanced anti-monopoly legislation
To both encourage smaller, worker-owned businesses, and provide a competitive jolt to our current corporate monopoly culture, big businesses should be down-sized.  This is because monopolies, left alone, have no reason to do better.  Localizing business activity would instead ensure that our country doesn't hollow out; that the economy doesn't leave behind all but the very richest corporate headquarters with their ultra-wealthy CEOs and shareholders.

Summary
Ideally then, all children would have a bright future to look forward to: not only the financial, medical and educational security allowing them to follow their passion, but encouragement to actually start a creative enterprise, or join a locally rooted business.

Farms and ranches would become smaller, meaning local processing and consumption are more likely, allowing for the dramatic re-populating of rural areas and smaller cities.  Businesses would offer high-quality alternatives, along with the hand-crafted, and the meaningful shopping experience, this, as consumers aren't necessarily captivated by the cheapest import.

Underlying the shift to a co-operative, creative future could be a political renaissance as well.  The most likely way to ensure a level-headed electorate is to have nearly everyone immersed in the decision-making process; otherwise, fake news and other trickery can take root.  But why would the vast majority of voters care to voice their opinions--aside from the occasional vote in a polling booth?  Because those who participate in online decision making would be eligible to win both random and competitive prizes.
  * Random Drawings.  Paying out $1,000 in savings bonds every month to 100 participants in each Congressional District would only cost 1,200,000 x 436 = $520 million per year.
  * Competitive Opportunities.  Similarly, each year could see a competition for best entrepreneurial
start-up in each Congressional District, voted on by that district's constituents.  The cost for these $1 million prizes would be: $436 million a year.
As I've outlined elsewhere, online decision making can be merely instructive (telling one's representative one's opinion does not require voting booth secrecy), and if opinions are tabulated by a reputable pollster, and if the relevant House member needn't necessarily listen to the will of the people (though that may be advisable), we have an online politics that is possible, an engaged electorate, and something approaching real democracy.  All for a mere $1 billion a year.

In practical terms, the above agenda is a Democratic approach, in that it's based on an extended safety net, tax increases for corporations and billionaires, and re-directing military spending to bread-and-butter concerns here at home.  But, it also speaks to Republican strengths: small business, farmer and ranch interests, and the anti-monopoly policies of previous presidents like Teddy Roosevelt.  So, it's actually populist, rather than being partisan.

Perhaps this agenda's greatest advantage is that it deals with the coming wave of robotics, A.I. and tech in general; a dramatic change that will likely displace much labor (self-driving vehicles are the usual Exhibit A).  Of course we don't have to surrender all person-to-person business interaction to automation.  But, it may be that supporting the hand-made, high quality, artisanal, locally sourced over the mass-produced import is all it would take to separate expendable, laborious work from the personal attention we truly value.

There is one question remaining: is a creative, co-op cultural agenda any better than a universal basic income (UBI)?  With UBI, everyone receives a guaranteed income from the government, provided that is, the government has the funding.  The effect is the same: to support incomes as jobs are lost to automation.  And both systems could start small, and be ramped up over time.  The obvious difference: a UBI that could provide an adequate income for everyone would be too expensive, and if it somehow were affordable, who's going to do the remaining necessary work if everyone can afford to retire?  Simply writing every US adult an annual $50,000 check would cost something like 250 million x 50,000 = $12.5 trillion.  For 2019, our President proposed $4.7 trillion in spending, with revenue at about $3.6 trillion.  So, a UBI that allowed early retirement to balance out jobs lost to automation wouldn't be possible.  It's only when combined with a creative, co-op culture that a modest UBI of say, $1,000 a year might make sense.  That amount would of course assist everyone, but especially artists, crafts people, small farmers and assorted part-timers who make a living outside the corporate economy.  Even so, that level of UBI would cost $250 billion.

Meanwhile, the move to a creative, co-op culture would transform America from a society in which corporate greed predominated, to one in which business was rooted and owned locally; all individuals were secure, and opportunities that kept hope alive were abundant.