Lagayscienza wrote:Elder, let me say at the outset that I find your idea attractive. I agree that capitalism as it currently exists is unfair, wasteful and unsustainable. Inequality aside, we are approaching the environmental limits to the sort of growth on which capitalism as we know it depends. Earth needs a new model of production and distribution if it is to peacefully sustain humans at current, much less higher, population levels.
Realizing this is a good start, Lagayscienza.
Your “new social contract” involving a “two-tiered economy” would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to implement because of the sort of species we currently are. We’d need to change our nature first. Even if we could do this culturally without waiting for evolution I think it would take generations to accomplish.
I have always said: You need to know the best solution, however improbable, in order to know the best possible solution. You need a compass in order to set yourself a direction.
This is not to say we shouldn’t try to change ourselves and implement a fairer more sustainable system. Things could be better. It’s just that I don’t see how a fairer system such as that which you envisage could at present be implemented
The important thing is to realize "it would be a fairer more sustainable system". This is the first step. Not everyone I showed it to agreed. Some said I was recommending 'slavery' and forced labour, by requiring people to work a few hours each day for the common good. This came from people who considered themselves "jungle animals" who owed nobody anything.
To be successful you would need to present your idea to an electorate in understandable terms and to do that you would have to get it past the vested interests which, in the first instance, would be the mass media controlled by the likes of Murdoch and his “Faux News”. Without getting billionaires like him on board, billionaires who depend on the current system for their wealth and power, you won’t get peacefully past “go”.
You are, of course, right -- but I never meant this suggestion to accomplish anything as grandiose as that. I only wanted to show people a possible compromise between Capitalism and Communism. To the best of my knowledge, this has not been done before exactly the way I imagined: Socialism with a rock solid philosophical and legislative foundation under its feet. As it is now, Socialism, as a compromise, is open to interpretation on how and where draw the line between freedom and compassion. Due to this, it always turn into a never ending fight: what I call a multi-dimensional rope pulling contest, often resulting in stalemate and paralysis.
People don’t give up that sort of wealth and power (or even the aspiration to them) without a fight. Humans love power, they cream their jeans over it, which is why everywhere that communism came to power we saw, as well as increases in overall production, the rise of new elites, privilege and great disparities in living standards built upon forced industrialisation, and often with gulags, massive environmental degradation and the death and misery of millions. Communism was a nice idea.
Lagayscienza, I grew up in one of those 'communist' states -- I know what it looked like in practice. The practice had nothing to do with the nice idea.
Socialism is still a nice idea.
As I said in my blog: "Socialism of various kinds try to find a compromise between those extremes, so far without much success, because the compromises were arbitrary, piecemeal, without a clearly defined principle. "
Are our ways changeable? Sure, but not in the short term? I think we’d need to get a whole lot brainier, rationally and emotionally, for a noticeable change to take place and that is going to take a lot of time. Whether we as a species have the time remains to be seen. I wonder if you place too much reliance on our supposed rationality. As much as I hate to say so, I think that, in the short term, emotions like fear will remain much more effective than reason.
No disagreement here.
Imagine a debate about a two tiered economy. It would necessarily be a debate about some people giving up wealth for the benefit of others. I, like millions of other retirees in my country, live on superannuation - a private pension fund I accumulated over my working life. Because of this I don’t qualify for social security which is a pittance I would not want to try to live on.
Tell me about it. That's what I am living on!
What happens to our pension funds? .....Could I still have all that under your new deal? Is it morally wrong for me to want such autonomy? I dunno. Maybe it is. I could be convinced.
The proposal claims that, by eliminating the enormous waste inherent in our current system, our level of scientific and technological infrastructure can provide for ALL basic needs for healthy survival. What you call luxuries now, will be part of this.
This aside, is it possible that these two tiers could operate independently and still provide, as the profit motive does, the funding for research, innovation and increases in knowledge we are going to need to ensure humanity’s flourishing? (Assuming of course that human flourishing is a universally morally compelling goal)
I don't think it is the "profit motive" now that is the moving force behind "research, innovation". I have been a scientist all my life, I know the people who research and innovate things. They do it because they want to know, they want to try out, they are in love with their ideas and they work, often to exhaustion, to see if these ideas are correct.
Don’t you think that humans, being all too human, would do as little as possible in the first tier command economy and clandestinely flock to the second free market tier for profit and power which would result in a massive a black market and huge amounts of a new sort of crime.
This is a very pessimistic look at human nature. It all depends on the system people live. If they live in a crazy, insane system, such as what we have now, they behave in a crazy, insane way. Change the system into a healthy, sane, compassionate system and that is how people will behave. It has never happened yet, so it is only a theory, but new results in neuroscience suggest that human beings are fundamentally cooperative, rather than competitive.
That’s the basic problem. Wouldn’t it be easier to overcome this by just expanding our present systems of progressive taxation so that we can afford better social security for all? That, along with more enlightened environmental policies, seems to me like a much more achievable goal which could produce the desired result with much less opposition.
Sorry, Lagayscienza, this would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The paradigm, and the direction, of the current system is fundamentally wrong and, without changing those, we will keep repeating the same cycle over and over without any hope. One step forward can be followed by two steps backward, as we have seen it happening in the eighties, as Reagan and Thatcher were busily undoing as many of the progressive gains achieved by the previous generations, as they could. And that backswing is still going on.
People can be convinced about the need for higher taxes for better schools, hospitals, transport and air quality but once you start threatening to take land and pensions from them you’re in for trouble. They won’t go for a better system on those terms
I am not threatening to take anything away. I am offering to keep all they need for happy and healthy survival and put it on a safe and sustainable foundation.
I don't debate with the evaders, the hopelessly 'confused' or the too lazy to think -- life is too short!
