Monday, December 14, 2009

The Economic Aspect of Life

-
The society functions on -or in some kind of relation to -an economic basis.

* * *

The persons that are the most influential are competitors who have varying amounts of property and money. Traditionally, within this system there are various ways of being a successful person. The plethora of types is overwhelming ---- a distraction. Clearly, society needs to perform a blocking action, in order to keep certain persons down. Thus, capitalist society appears to be based on the principle of the equality of money-carrying persons (i.e., anyone with money can buy any product), but there is also the reality that there is a method of keeping some persons out of that, or out of the money. That has to exist.

I have already mention what I call "social connection" elsewhere. It is like there is this whole social dimension to capitalism, which is not understood but which is actually very important. This, I would like to suggest, has an accidental aspect. This random or accidental quality, when I think about it, seems to come through very much as a colored balloon or a "Free Gift." Very capitalistic! It comes through accidentally. In the future, in the changes that I think will have to be made, if we are to save capitalism (which is a form of society, not a form of individualism), it is this aspect that I think would have to change. There is, then, an essential aspect, related to normative social life, that comes through like a gift. This social gift -- I guess that's the word for it -- should continue to be there, but not accidentally. I would think that it is the accidental aspect that would have to change. The social side, of course, is essential to capitalism: this is the necessary social side of capitalism. But in the future this has to be enforced. It has to be put there. This is what it means to have "reform" or "regulated" capitalism. I have written elsewhere clearly stating my side of the regulation vs. deregulation debate with no confusing context needed. What I said was that there needs to be conscious intervention.

This is of course just the "intervention in the market" conservatives are philosophically opposed to. My view, then, is that the social or gift aspect, or whatever it is, needs to be enforced. And I also have ideas as to how to do that, which I am explaining starting on last August tenth (and also just recently on December 20th, hint-hint).

Let's reason it out (as follows):

My view is that capitalism produces equality, although limited to some core set of market actors rather than being an equality that is extended to everyone, and thus we have global wealth inequality, deprivation, malnourishment, etc. But given that capitlaism produced equality, no critic (on the left for example, but it really doesn't seem to matter) would say that capitalism produced equality intentionally. Therefore it must be that capitalism produced equality accidentally. That, then, is precisely what must change. If capitalism produces equality accidentally -- in the past, in fact -- why oh why would that continue? Why would it continue? It just happened. It was not done with any intent or purpose. It was accidental to start with. There is no reason to suppose that the system now in force -- capitalism -- will continue to do in the future what it did by accident.

So therefore there does need to be intervention. I would ask the reader to now jump to the characteristic idea of mine, which is to say that world-wide distribution plan that I have begun to discuss on the August 10th post -- and you can fill in the kind of intervention for yourself, because it is obvious.

If you put it all together you get both of two parts, it seems to me. You see the idea about the need for some intentional policy or some intervention, in the economy. You get also the important information on just what the actual kind of intervention would be. So, now we've got both parts.

It should be a process of dividing into two trade parties the two extremes of capital accumulation and deprivation. These become the parties and there is a transfer from one to the other.
Want more details? OK.

There is no direct paying for things. It is therefore a kind of capitalism without money.

Goods are delivered to recipients on the basis of qualification or entitlements. If a person is in the bottom one or two fifths, for example (of globalization), that person is automatically qualified to receive. S /he may -- or may not -- get something but that person is qualified formally.

The theoretical system based on this idea seems to make sense. Whether it will be done I do not know. That's true. I do not know if the program as I envision it will happen but the idea makes so much sense that there must be benefit. Must be benefit, that is to say, somehow and of some kind, in having a discussion of this.

No comments: