What if capitalism and socialism both are unsatisfactory?

Take any industry. Let’s take the automobile industry. Our economy is capitalist, so the enterprises within that industry are owned privately and run for profit (Ford, GM, Stellantis, Tesla, etc.). The alternative is for them to be owned socially and run for the good of the general welfare. That latter way is called socialism.

An issue about that latter way is that social ownership in practice means governmental ownership and control. Small businesses might be amenable to cooperativism (worker self-ownership), but industrial-scale enterprises are not. If they were then the Mondragons of the world would be proliferating, but they aren’t.

Socialism may be better than capitalism, but the track record so far is problematic. Some say the problems can be attributed to the fact that socialism is relatively new. Improvements can be made. Also, the pro-capitalist global elites have done all they can to subvert the success of socialism. Going forward, given implementational improvements and more popular support socialism will prove to be the superior way to run a modern economy.

Maybe. But what if, after some centuries of experience with capitalism and socialism, a consensus develops that they both are unsatisfactory. Is there a Third Way? It seems to be an either/or proposition: Ownership can be private or it can be public.

Few Greens seem to even be aware that our key value: Community-based Economics … has the potential to constitute a desirable Third Way. It can embody both private enterprise and public enterprise. It revolves around the idea that scale needs to be considered as an essential factor. It implies that our post-capitalist ideology ought to be eco-communitarian rather than socialist.

“Eco-communitarian” might be an unwieldy phrase. We could just call it: Green.

[We need to live more simply, more lightly, and more locally. Maybe there just wouldn’t be an automobile industry. Great. We’d be happier.]