Post by salamut2202 on Nov 11, 2011 12:40:27 GMT
Capitalism encourages people to better themselves, and it encourages people to find ways to improve things. There is nothing wrong with that if you can avoid the negative impact... people bettering themselves at the expense of others.
Indeed, in many ways 'playing the game of life' is like a drunken walk trajectory. To get an idea of what I mean by this, take a coin and say that heads is +1 and tails -1. Then flip the coin a number of times adding the results. Graph the results and you will get something like;
Intuitively we would think, that because both heads and tails are equally likely, that the sum to N events should be 0. This is not the case as the simple above experiment shows. This is because, the current value, is dependent on the history of the past N-1 events.
Life itself is very much similar to this, what your current value is, is a product of all your past history, as well as your present situation.
As nobody lives forever (the limit where SUM^N does actually equal zero), then we will all end up with a positive or negative number. Therefore at any single time there will always be the better and worse off even if we all started from the same starting point assuming that everybody acts independently from one another.
But of course, we don't act in our own little isolated worlds, we are always influencing everybody else as well as ourselves.
Hence we could do a simple modeling of altruistic societies, dog-eat-dog societies and a mixed society and see how the trends play out. True analysis would require math knowledge that is probally a bit beyond me as much as anybody here, but doing the situations with numerical methods isn't (plus it produces graphs);
Let us consider the three societies outlined above, with 5 participants in each.
In the altruistic society, nobody ever decrements from another individual. In the dog-eat-dog society, participants always decrement -0.25 from all other members of society went they score a +1. In the mixed society, we have 4 altruistics, and 1 dog-eat-dog participant.
The results broadly follow what we would expect, the altruistic society oscillates around the zero line with a drunken walk trajectory, likewise so does the mixed society, the 'leech' participant in this case not being able to influence the group greatly over this small number of events, but in the dog-eat-dog society we see a marked decline in two of the participants, and a great divide drawn between the 'haves' and 'have nots'. This is just like what we have seen over the last century.
From this type of scenario, it is clear to see that capitalism is not good for society in general, as if we were to draw on the 'average lines' over an event timescale of 100 events, the dog-eat-dog society, would have a negative gradient, the mixed society would have a minor negative gradient, while the altruistic society would have a near zero gradient.
It's just like playing a game really, for any individual player it is better to maximise him/herselfs gains, at the expense of other players, because then the divide is made greater, therefore it become easier to 'win'. But for all players this decrements the overall gains. As being part of humanity is the greatest game we can play, surely it is in everybodies interests to help all of humanity so that we can all gain, rather than leech off the worst off in the world.
And let me remind everybody, that world poverty and the disparity gap (which this simple scenario shows above) has increased dramatically over the 20thC. It is not theory, this is world fact.
What social Ideals Can help combat this inherent flaw where capitalism becomes feudalism?
In my mind socialism is about the workers owning the means to production, and that your property is a result of your work. Not that your work is your property. Centrally, this implies jack-shtlk-all about the government.
In my mind, my 'perfect society' (I'm not even calling it socialist), Public Services are run by the government in a corporate manner. Your Public institutions are run by government in a civil manner. All commodity sectors are privately run. In such a system; Transport, Energy, Water and Civil construction Services would be run by government bodies, but would fund themselves. They wouldn't get taxpayers money, apart from in my world you would be able to 'buy' tax bonds towards these corporations. Essentially you become a share holder in the corporation.
The corporation would be honour bound by its sustainable production board (our experts), that any policy has been thourally vetted prior to implementation. The experts are working for the people, within the corporation, but because the contracts come from government policy, and government policy would require vetting and corporate insurance/liability for error. It is always in the service corporations best interests to listen to their experts to insure they are not in contravention of public policy.
Also because the corporation would work on a cooperative principle, profits are shared when made, and when times are tight everyones wage bracket goes down in proportion.
Civil Institutions would be run on Tax payers money because at their core, they are unprofitable and can't make money from just people. This would include; Education, Healthcare, Social Support, the Police/Fire/Search & Rescue and the Military and Justice departments.
Of these, apart from the Military and Justice, all such services would be funded on a regional, as opposed to a national taxation policy. For instance, the flats of East Anglia don't need a mountain rescue helicopter. But then Cumbria doesn't have as many children needing to go to school. Again rich people in comunities would be encouraged to put money into local government schemes to buy needed assets as part of a local government movement, to decentralise some of the big government bodies.
This is what I see the modern world needing, a decentralisation movement. Today technology does so much of our communication work, we don't need centralisation anymore. We don't need big vertical institutions with managers and sub-managers. We need local experts and the fact that we have so many graduates these days allows that! We need people to look at a community where they live and go; this is a problem, we have thought up these solutions, and of course they are solutions that they know the community will like, and they like.
The community acts on the democratic principle with their local elected council and small scale public consultation/referendum period on how their comunity pot of money is spent.
If the community pot isn't quite big enough, but the scheme fulfills national investment criteria. Such as say the building of a new hospital. Then they can apply for a government grant. The government approving (from general taxation) a certain percentage towards such a national pot.
On those grounds, I would force government borrowing to stop. Only in times of national emergency/disaster would the government be allowed to borrow. Such a move would increase the value of the currency straight away and also send a message of sustainability. I would also seek to remove taxes that tax everybody. Such as VAT, but I wouldn't eliminate road tax. Instead transport and technical services would set the road tax rate as they see fit essentially a road toll, but rather than booths everywhere claiming your money, it could be done on your milage, and fuel economy.
Afterall with MOTs and DVLA and all that, there is so much information stored on your vehicle, it might as well be registered and treated like a taxable object.
Finally I would seek to reduce income tax to only starting at modal wage bracket, and above. Therefore you don't pay tax if your in the bottom half of society. But I would also insure that it was a sliding scale, that would bring your actual taxation in gently, and make it your employers responsibility, rather than your own.
Cash in hand, not illegal any more, nor would casual work have all that bumpf that come with it.
In one swoop you get rid of one of the most inefficient institutions in HM Tax & Revenues office saving a fortune. However I'm not an expert on taxation, so I'd get somebody in the know to do that for me. But essentially I don't want people paying tax, unless they are living comfortably enough, that they can afford to do so without feeling it much at all. I also think that taxes that tax everybody equally like VAT are immoral, and that part of an egalitarian society is that taxation is discriminatory.
You are more equal than the next guy, so help him out man.
Also there would be consestions for being publically/politically active, for having a family, for staying fit and healthy (Oh yeah, would make quarterly visits to a 'doctor'/GP/Dentist compulsory, so that public health records could be best maintained, and that preventative meassures to cancer/organ failure/heart attacks etc. can all be made, far more than they are so.)
Would this be a 'nanny state' type affair, sounds it doesn't it? and who is going to do the bureaucracy? Well, record unemployment, the fact that we have computers to do much of the work, and the fact that we would use the carrot means its in everyones best interests and hopefully you would have people walking themselves into this brave new world.
The irony is with the extremes of both left and right ideals achieves the same thing. Here's what I'm talking about;
Libertarianism - Little to no government control as people are responsible for almost everything. People invest and work and employ. Your place in life is determined to what you contribute and you get the fair share for what you work for. Every thing is privatized and everything is owned by the people.
Communism - Large government organize the wealth and work to be distributed equally amongst everyone. Everyone works the same in a job suited best to them and gets the fair share of the rewards that everyone is entitled to. Ultimate goal is for the state to phase out and everything is owned by the people.
In pure economic terms, capitalism is the accelerator and socialism is the break and steering wheel. I like to think that natural resources are the road. These roads are disassembled behind us and re assembled before us, some roads faster than others. As I see it a long with many other people, we're growing beyond the means of such resources and the car of economy is moving faster than any of the roads rate of reassembly. We need to apply to the break for now. That's why I'm a socialist - If the world had the resources I may move away from the left.
Trouble is, todays money is far from standardised value, in fact we give money itself a price and treat it as a comodity! Therefore you've got no road before you being made, only road being destroyed behind, your fleet of trucks is getting bigger and so you have to jump onto another road every now and again to keep the convoy going.
The more trucks you have, the more road needed. If you want to be traditionally conservative - Sustainability, not socalism, will reduce the rate of road destruction and take the pressure of your convoy of trucks.