>I think a no-patents system would probably be more innovative and competitive than what we have now.

Glad we agree at least on this point

>Are you talking about somebody charging a toll on a road they don't own and don't maintain? Because that's not what I'm talking about or proposing.
>I mean, who built the road? Someone has to build it and maintain it.

The road analogy is specifically dealing with the idea that land itself can be an exclusive good and thus individuals who naturally exclude others (someone's home, factory, farm, etc are the property on the land but not the land itself) should cover for the loss through the exclusion. Allowing people to exclude others but also to extract rents through mere passage or occupancy without actually producing any value (land speculation and slum lords are an example of this). This ultimately leads to a social order where those who own title to land can reign supreme over others who rent the land.

>Capital is not a fixed pool of items or goods. Owners of capital are not inherently rentiers.

If you have a monopoly on the capital goods in question then you are a rentier. There's no way around it and it needs to be addressed if you want to fix the fundamental problems that plague society.

>Well, now you're back to, essentially, private property.

Property is a necessary but not sufficient condition of capital. And property isn't the issue (read Proudhon) but rather the title acting as impersonal property over personal property as use. Meaning that one with title can exclude others from its use even if they're not using it or even care to use it ever (again land speculators and patent trolls are a great example of this).

>Some "radically local" entities are going to be more successful than others, and become more prosperous, making membership in them more valuable.

Cooperatives in themselves are a union among workers thus you can't elevate yourself above fellow workers in the cooperative in terms of economic primacy. All have their say in equal capacity (as in shares != more votes).

>They will have to trade between themselves, making prices and property (even if collective) necessary.

And none of this is capitalism. I think the onus is on you to show me how a market needs a capital owner and not the other way around. Because at it's heart two individuals free of exclusivity that comes with capitalism trading among themselves is no more a capitalist than is a musician a capitalist just because they're paid big bucks to sing at concerts. You're not a capitalist either just because you decide to use your car to drive Uber fares part time because the act of work itself isn't excluding others from working (i.e. being Uber drivers themselves). A capitalist by definition can and will extract rents from capital and exclude others from its use (be it labor, machines, factories, ideas, or land) via the State or equivalent institutions. None of this in any form is necessary to the definition of a market system. A market system is merely free exchange of goods at some price (social credit, barter, money, etc). That's it, nothing else defines a market. And as such it takes a capitalist to make capitalism; no ands, ifs, or buts.