Douglas Rushkoff makes the case for a slight tweak (!) to our current economy:
But this changed the shape of business fundamentally. Instead of thriving on innovation and progress, corporate monopolies simply sought to extract wealth from the regions they controlled. They didn’t need to compete, anymore, so they just sucked resources from places and people. Meanwhile, people living and working in the real world lost the ability to generate value by or for themselves.
The reality is that most of my circle are several steps removed from jobs generating physical value. A “knowledge worker” class is leading indicator of a first world nation. Scientists, engineers, teachers: all produce nothing of physical value but are critical for modern civilization. While I tend to agree with him that modern corporations are given way too much latitude in the US (they are NOT people!), I don’t see him offering an alternative system or a path to get there. It’s easy to call for revolution; much harder to plan one.