One trouble is that efforts at shared ownership of the means of production have their ups and downs.

When I was a kid the Co-op ran retail stores where you could buy most things and get buried when you died. In the 1960's, with the rise of the supermarkets, they lost the plot and some town-centre locations. They seem to have got their act together over food sales once more, but what a fiasco their banking was. Apparently they are still tops for burying you.

Some of the municipal services that Maggie privatised were mind bogglingly inefficient and kept that way because the unions had more influence than ratepayers as 'service users'

If that sort of thing is going to work explain to me how its way of doing things is going to be that much different from the private sector. Assuming that in both cases the unions can play a sensible role in looking after employees' interests.

Civil servants are not trained to provide services and they don't even seem to know how to buy them without getting ripped off.