The state can very competently own retail and manufacturing companies by simply buying up their stock and acting like an institutional investor.
For instance, a social wealth fund created by the federal government could gradually buy up stock in Amazon and Walmart to get into retail and buy up stock in US Steel and General Motors to get into manufacturing.
The latter is not even a hypothetical because the government did recently buy up almost all of the GM stock during the financial crisis, though it subsequently sold off its stake.
[ > 3P — December 24, 2018 ]
