So we expect social change to happen as easily as putting on socks?
>It is far from realistic to assume that people choose to be wage
> slaves when they could all be part of a worker owned collective
> somewhere if they merely choose to do so.
I can't say that all do want to be part of worker owned businesses, but many might. No reason they couldn't create a co-op. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of co-ops exist in this country and thousands exist around the world. All of them were a matter of people deciding it was a good idea and getting together to make it work. Nothing superhuman here. There's even banks supporting it.
You might want to check some of it out:
http://www.coop.org/ http://www.ncba.org/ http://www.communicators.coop/ http://www.nceo.org/ http://www.ncb.coop/ http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/research.htm http://www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/desc/d13.htm
>Anyone can start one if they only "want" to badly enough?. The
>ability of a few people to do this is contingent upon millions of
>others not doing this.
No contingency. Millions of people can start separate businesses, if they want, and many of them can be started on a shoestring. Any of us has the potential to start a small business and build it to a big business.
>I must work for a boss,
Not necessarily. You can work for your customers if you run your own business or co-op and be your own boss.
>I must buy or consume products from oil companies.
You can become part of an intentional community or live within walking or biking distance to work. You can heat your home with passive solar, geo-thermal, or wood. If you live in the right areas, your electricity can come from solar or wind power or you can have individual panels or windmills of your own and have the utility companies pay you for any surplus electricity generation you feed back into the grid.
>Groceries must come from a capitalist endeavor.
Food and household item co-ops are in all the large cities and in many smaller towns and communities now. CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture) is expanding quickly, too. Don't forget the farmers' markets.
All these ventures need our support to help them expand even further. This kind of commerce could eventually replace capitalism altogether if enough people would purchase from them, work for them, create them, and support them instead of the capitalist sources. In increasing numbers of cases, some of it is cheaper than capitalist sources, such as the CSA. They are also more localized in their production, so as the costs of shipping increases, these markets may become cheaper than items shipped long distances. The more we support them, the more economies of scale we can receive. It's a win-win situation if I ever saw one.
--tully