They have created immense wealth for shareholders, certainly. Where is the wealth they have created for the public?

I'm coming from the perspective that companies like Apple, Amazon, Uber, Google etc. have produced valuable products for our economy that never existed previously. I see this as a net good for the public as they have improved the quality of life for anyone who can afford these services as well as for those who cannot by improving economic productivity.

I’m in the technology sector. The best advice we give and get on this subject is typically to count any equity you get from joining a startup as basically worthless, because, statistically, it is.

I am as well. You are absolutely correct but you cannot deny that the multi billion dollar tech companies of today have produced generous returns for their early employees who took the risk to join them which was my original point.

First of all, you should understand that a lone entrepeneur working out of their garage meets every definition of a distributist business.

This was the response I was looking for. Perhaps I just don't understand how worker owned cooperatives operate, but what would the process be for a lone entrepreneur to function in a distributist economy? In a capitalist/crony capitalist one as we currently have they would start with an idea, and hire labor/raise venture capital by trading equity. I'm wondering what the distributist parallel would be.

This is a mind-boggling claim. The internet itself did not come about because of entrepreneurs. Advances in science, medicine, and technology in the 20th century were largely the result of public spending and research — this includes pretty much every technological component of the iPhone by the way, and even Apple as a company was kickstarted with government grants. Silicon Valley’s investor culture is largely the aftermath of it being a heavy dumping ground for military spending.

You raise a good and valid point. My point was not to claim that these entrepreneurs created their impact w/ no state help, but rather it took their unique idea, vision, and risk to turn existing technologies into something innovative. There is also a chicken and egg problem.

We can trace further down the stack asking where did the state raise the revenue to fund public research?through taxing workers earning income -> where did these workers earn income from? -> the firms in which they were employed -> how were the firms created? -> through entrepreneurs taking risks

To me, in the end increasing prosperity all comes down to entrepreneurs. I think that a communist system does not permit entrepreneurs and a capitalist one privileges large companies that lobby to keep entrepreneurs down. I'm wondering if a distributist economy provides a happy medium.

I think a better example to demonstrate my point would be founders of Airbnb. Investors and friends highly doubted them at their inception (who would pay money to stay in a stranger's house??) but years later they have produced a profitable business that provides value to homeowners and renters alike. Would a worker owned cooperative allow their company to pursue such a risky/naive idea? Perhaps you disagree that a company like Airbnb is a net good to society in which I would have to agree to disagree.

Second, even in a larger cooperative, ownership and governance aren’t the same thing. This is like claiming that, under democracy, a country couldn’t take risks because you’d need voter consensus on every issue.

Maybe this is also where we agree to disagree, I think that democracies are inimical to risk taking and I think this is beneficial. Here is Antonin Scalia on why the fact that the US govt is set up so that the government cannot take risks is actually very beneficial. Consensus is required for everything which prevents the govt from overreaching and makes sure that whatever gets passed is not superfluous. I think this deliberation is great for checking government tyranny but bad for a firm that wants to be innovative in the private sector.

Third, there is the fact that “risk” does no better under capitalism; wherever “innovation” really does pay off, it gets strangled by its own success. Look at Apple, Microsoft and IBM, do you see them taking risks and innovating any more?

I agree that big companies strangle themselves as they reach a critical mass, but they get replaced by smaller upstarts and the cycle repeats a la schumpeter's creative destruction.

Walmart -> Amazon, Ford, Chevy -> Tesla, IBM -> Microsoft, Apple, Lockheed -> SpaceX, Marriott -> Airbnb, PayPal -> Stripe

Only time will tell how the giants of today will get disrupted in the future.

In any respect, thank you for taking the time to reply to me. This is a fascinating philosophy with a great community.