Capitalism has essentially hit a wall and a very different conversation needs to take place

[txlibdem]

What we need to recognise now is that the world is a very different place from what it was 100 years ago when we had one billion people.

With a current population approaching seven billion, things will have to change.

A fundamental issue that the world will have to recognise, and which Western capitalism has conveniently ignored, is that the goods and services which companies and economies seem to thrive on are based on under-pricing resources and externalising costs.

That game is over and we need a fundamental restructuring - essentially about how people will live, and we need to move beyond simple notions about growth to more sophisticated, nuanced discussions about human progress.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14972015

How should the world be restructured? What would you do???

[Drew Richards]

1. for starters kill all the lawyers...

And the politicians.

Then put 1000 scientists smeared with bannana paste and 1000 monkeys in a locked room and tell them they have 90 minutes to devise an equitable world government that owns all the resources in trust for all of humanity.

/snark

Ok, sorry, just late night goofyness...i'll think about it after some sleep and get back to you.

[txlibdem]

2. Snark is always appreciated... by me anyway!

:-)

Get some rest and have a glorious tomorrow!

:grouphug:

[tama]

3. My vision

is an old one - networks of small relatively self-sufficient communities with great variety. Would be nice and if that is what we and our children want, it is a long process.

What I want is to avoid dystopian futures and peacefull rEvolution. Fair chance for every child to live a good human life.

[tavalon]

9. I should have read this first

You and I are not on wholly different pages.

[sam11111]

4. co-ops can produce everything....no Boss taking all profits

Credit Unions
Grocery co ops
Auto parts factory..Spain
Lite bulb factory..Sweden
Refinery..McPherson KS
Electric co ops...USA

No outsourcing

No automation layoffs..just shorter hours with same pay

[tama]

5. Co-ops are fine

but let's think further - payed by whom and how, where should money come from and how?

[tavalon]

8. Let's think about something other than "money"

I really think the dirty hippies may have had it right. Of course, choosing to live communally in an age where that's an anathema may unduly prejudice me. I just think it's time for us to join together and leave this stupid system behind. In groups, we can feed ourselves and take care of one another. I think rugged individualism has cost us greatly and it's time for a reboot.

There are two other communal households who have weekly dinner gatherings. I use to joke that if nothing else, I was learning prison cooking (cooking for 50 or more). I don't know that it's a useful skill but I don't know that it isn't.

[tama]

11. It's a usefull skill

how do you like washing dishes? I've made a "career", published books, but my proudest achievement (besides fathering two handsome and wise boys) was when I moved to a community that was a disaster, started cleaning the kitchen, washed all the dishes practically solo for weeks, never nagging and complaining and all the time in good cheer. All I said and showed by example is that kitchen is the heart of the house and community, and slow by slow also most others started to participate.

If you already know that the kitchen is the heart, you know what is really important and will be most valuable member in any community. <3

[tavalon]

13. Yup,

We have a rule here that the one or ones who cook do not clean the kitchen. Unfortunately, before the newest member came, that meant the kitchen was often messy. She has somehow transformed an all boy (exception of me) household into a group who cleans the kitchen, wipes down toilets and vacuums! She's even got me picking up after myself in the bathroom and cleaning the mirrors. I was never the worst offender but she is quite the influential dynamo. That, and it's fun to see my hubby, with whom I am about to celebrate my tenth anniversary, in the throes of new love.

I hope, when the sixth month trial period is up, that she decides to move in. I've had to stretch and adjust but it's been good.

I know the kitchen is the heart. Luckily, each of us brings skills to the hearth and home. As it should be.

[handmade34]

6. bookmarked for intelligent discussion after work...

"...You could argue that slavery was the first attempt to under-price resources. When slavery came to an end there was colonisation, which was again an attempt by the capitalist model to use resources cheaply. With the end of colonies, we had the globalisation argument of economic growth and then the globalisation of finance...

...The myth of growth has failed us...It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival.

...Fixing the economy is only part of the battle. We also have to confront the convoluted logic of consumerism. The days of spending money we do not have on things we do not need to impress people we do not care about are over...Living well is about good nutrition, decent homes, access to good quality services, stable communities, satisfying employment.

Prosperity, in any meaningful sense of the word, transcends material concerns. It resides in our love for our families, the support of our friends, the strength of our communities, our ability to participate fully in the life of society, a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives..."

[tavalon]

7. Ya think?!

I was raised a capitalist. I was also raised southern baptist. I got better.

These days I'm vacillating between socialism and anarchism with a healthy dose of participative horizontal democracy. It's convoluted but easier than being on either of the main teams. Those being The Batshit Crazies and the Enablers. A great band but a sucky political "system".

[Fantastic Anarchist]

15. Anarchism *is* socialism.

It's libertarian socialism or "socialism from below."

[WinkyDink]

10. The question is not well-suited for a message-board, since entire Schools of Economics are tackling

it.

[LWolf]

12. Some random thoughts:

I like response # 4.

I'd like to see an economy that's based on stability, not growth.

The growth model depends on using more resources, making more stuff, selling more stuff, just to keep up.

The planet can't sustain that.

I'd like to see the profits made from people's work be returned to them, not directed up. Nobody should own the means of production except those doing the producing.

I'd like to see a system that guaranteed basic needs like safe and healthy shelter and food, health care, clothing, child care for working parents, and education preschool - trade or university, to all. I'd like to see jobs available to all who wanted them, and I'd like to see everyone's contributions valued.

I'd like to see better hours, better working conditions, and more down-time for all workers.

How to patch all of that together into a system? I don't know, but I'd love to see people working on it.

[txlibdem]

20. making more stuff (cheap throwaway crap mostly) just to ensure more profit

That is a big part of the problem. Profit motive must end; it is a cancer and serves only to create a race to the bottom of morals, values, time with family, quality in everything, community, etc. Money must be outlawed.

This is a golden quote:
I'd like to see a system that guaranteed basic needs like safe and healthy shelter and food, health care, clothing, child care for working parents, and education preschool - trade or university, to all. I'd like to see jobs available to all who wanted them, and I'd like to see everyone's contributions valued.

From your typing fingers to God's ears!

[socialist_n_TN]

14. Yeah, I've asked for this for a while now.......

We need a robust and healthy debate about a post capitalist world.

For myself, even as a Trot, I have some anarcho-syndicalist tendencies when it comes to practical day to day working. At least for small scale companies.

In order to feed, house, clothe and provide for the general welfare of the masses though (and that includes defense of those masses from capitalist counterrevolution), we need larger concerns that will need to be run for the benefit of the ALL of the people. However. as long as they produce what's needed for the welfare of the people, I don't really care how they're organized internally. I could see factory committees in state owned businesses being practical.

However it turns out though, we need this debate to get the ideas out into the consciousness of the general populace.

[TBF]

17. I have anarcho-syndicalist tendencies as well -

really believe in workers running their own enterprises. I guess I would say state-owned without the dictators we've seen in previous times. I'm not quite sure how to do it either because we know the Paris Commune only lasted 2 months, but the USSR was a little too authoritarian. They did have great production and took care of the people though - and that is more than we have here for most folks.

I agree we need to get the debate out there ... capitalism is not only killing us but also our planet.

[starroute]

16. You start by taking the corporate model out of the system

In the days of feudalism, wealth was based on owning land and having serfs who worked it for you and handed over a share of everything they produced. That system collapsed under its own weight and was replaced by one in which wealth was based on providing essential goods and services and underpaying the workers.

This is the model of capitalism that Adam Smith promoted and Marx ranted against, but it doesn't completely account for corporate capitalism as we know it today. The corporation began as a method of funding risky enterprises, such as sending ships to the Spice Islands. If they made it back, you got a windfall based on the rarity and desirability of what you had to sell, but if they didn't you lost your shirt. In the corporation, instead of one person taking the entire risk, many people would wager a small amount and split the potential windfall. Basically, it was a form of gambling, and that is why its expansion beyond its original purpose has proven so toxic.

At first, the corporate model only had a few limited applications, but in the 19th century it was extended to building canals and railroads and extracting coal or oil -- anything where the venture was speculative but there were potentially large profits based on the desirability of the product. But in the course of the 20th century -- and this is where things really went off the rails -- corporations started gobbling up the old single proprietorships and partnerships and attempting to extract from them the type of profits that would normally come only from some rare new discovery or invention.

This is what has destroyed the newspapers and old-line publishers, for example -- corporate owners trying to get 15% profits out of a business that might reasonably provide 3% -- because the only way of doing that is either by slash-and-burn methods, that eventually destroy the business by extracting profit rather than reinvesting, or by going back to the tried-and-true system of exploiting the workers. Or most often both.

And meanwhile the financial industry, because it can produce amazing profits out of thin air, has put itself at the top of the pyramid and is sucking up investment that might otherwise be going into more productive ventures.

Taking the corporate model and its expectation of obscene profits year after year would not resolve all the ills of capitalism. But it would go a long way towards fixing both our current bubble-based economy and the problem of environmental degradation.

[moondust]

18. *****

I wonder what business schools will teach then?

Good historical perspective. And many if not most professional politicians followed the money and helped to facilitate that corporate model while abandoning the general public along the way. :(

[jobendorfer]

19. it's even worse than that

"... the goods and services which companies and economies seem to thrive on are based on under-pricing resources and externalising costs."

Even if you fix that, there's still a problem: mechanization.
The world-wide demand for almost any kind of product can be met by a tiny fraction of the population.
In 1880, 80% or more of the U.S. population worked in agriculture. Today: less than 4 percent.
I think the Great Depression was largely due to the mechanization of agriculture; it wiped out the family farm as a viable enterprise.
Now automation is doing for industry generally what it did for agriculture a hundred years ago.
The question isn't so much, "How do we get our jobs back from < insert cheap labor fad location here >?"
But rather, "How do we make society work in a world where the manufacturing and service demands of 7 billion people can be met by
a few hundred million of them?"

J.

[txlibdem]

21. Excellent point

I am not sure that the part about mechanization causing the dust bowl, though, I think that was more a result of poor land-management practices. But we learned from it and we haven't had another.

Wise management of current resources and robotics, tele-presence, and a small number of workers can indeed provide the entire population with a European lifestyle, perhaps even an American lifestyle or even better.

Maybe we'll start talking with our neighbors again... holding block parties and bringing back a sense of connectedness that the top 1% don't want us to have.