But it can. There are companies with workplace democracy in place today despite the capitalistic nature of western society. There's also the fact that the Social Democrat option literally does what you're asking: "Select democratized businesses from a selection of industries gain government subsidies in order to give them a head start and see how they play."
Well, you can certainly do that but I'd really prefer it if you didn't. I'm sure there'll be more votes before Poptart closes the vote so you don't really need to change your vote to be a tie-breaker.
EDIT: Like the dude right below me.
Social Democracy still leaves businesses in place that can be swayed by foreign capital, are run by a small group of owners who are
much easier to subvert than a whole workplace and are driven by the profit motive to maximize profits by whatever means they can get away with. Workplace democracy, in the form of worker co-ops, don't do that. They, by contrast, are required to maximize the benefits for the members which depending on the situation could mean not laying people off, using rotational systems, donating a portion of their revenues or products to the local community and a whole host of other things. There's loads of studies showing, along with worker co-ops being more productive and efficient,
that worker co-ops are better neighbors because the people making the decisions are the people who live in the community in question.
Also what is going to protect our democratic process from being corrupted by private profits? That's a big part of what undermined the pre-collapse United States to the point that academic studies
show it is much closer to being an oligarchy than any sort of representative democracy. Do you really want to reproduce a system that makes a pretense of democracy while actively representing the interests of those who can afford to buy their own pet legislators? That, to me, looks like a system that would be easily subverted by the Victorians simply by exploiting the divisions between what the elected government is doing and what people actually want.
There's also two problems with the Social Democracy model that show it would actually be pretty unsuitable given our current circumstances.
The first is that we don't actually have the mountains of capital, a developed economy and other factors that would make such a system even remotely possible. Sweden, for example,
depends heavily on an export-based economy that sends high-value weapons, pharmaceuticals and other commodities to an active, healthy global market to make their system work. We don't have that. Norway makes their model work
based on the wealth of North Sea Oil and, again, exporting it to other countries. We definitely don't have that.
Denmark also relies, though not to the same extent, on having healthy and dynamic trading relationships with other developed, wealthy economies.
Who is it we're supposed to be trading with who can produce such wealth to sustain our economy and society? The Victorians who hate all things that are more sophisticated than the transistor and revel in selling people into sex slavery? The even more impoverished communities nearby who we're hoping to bring into the fold anyway? The ruins of Canada? The New California Republic who sends most of their wealth and goods off in the form of tribute to Russia?
How exactly are you going to make a trade-based model work when
there's no one to trade with?
The second problem is Social Democracy can and has been hollowed out before by the interests of the market. Just look at Margaret Thatcher if you don't believe me or, even better, Ronald Reagan. What is it about our hypothetical Social Democracy that's going to make it more secure against such actions when we're in a weaker position, don't have the trading relationships that made the Nordic Model, France, Germany or the United Kingdom actually wealthy enough to implement such policies and will be facing businesses who I guarantee will be howling bloody murder just as they always have when the government tries to enforce the welfare state with insufficient resources?
The simple fact is, as nice as Social Democracy may
sound on paper, the model proposed simply cannot work without a global context
that does not exist.
Socialism, by contrast, will be focusing on building up the resources we have, bootstrapping the resources of workers and communities with direct intervention and support from the government and encouraging business structures that will be far more focused on people's needs and community welfare over private profit. It won't need the outside web of trading relationships the vaunted Nordic Model requires to be viable in the first place. In fact, ironically enough, through robust industrial and economic development it will put us in the position of becoming a trading power. It also won't, as some have implied, destroy market-based relations or trade. Private enterprise will still exist but it won't be operating in a position where it can either crush worker enterprises using the same methods big business has always employed or subvert the democratic processes we hold dear.
Social Democracy is, in our current circumstances, a pipe dream. Socialism will actually deliver everything it promises. If you want a healthy, functional Chicago then I say vote for the model that will actually
work and won't depend on either virtuous corporate magnates or outside trade relationships that don't exist. If you want a Chicago that can actually united America again then vote solely for the system that will do the job.
