Comrade-Z
3rd July 2013, 05:18
An Incredibly Simple Socialist Economic System
An economic system needs to do three things:
1. Identify the scarcity of a good or service (how much of it there is vs. how much of it people want) so that resources can be channelled in greater relative proportions to the more scarce things.
2. Actually deliver the physically available goods and services to the people who want them.
3. Give people an incentive to contribute to producing socially-desired goods and services.
Capitalism, for all of its historic accomplishments, does not do any of these things very well.
1. Capitalism identifies the scarcity of a good or service in terms of how much of it there is relative to "how many dollars want it," not relative to how many people want it.
2. Capitalism does not deliver physically available goods and services to those who want them if those people don't have the money for those things.
3. Capitalism gives people an incentive to contribute to producing goods and services that are "desired by the most dollars," not goods and services that are the most socially-desired by people.
I have come up with a socialist economic system that accomplishes all three of these things much better. Call it "Facebook Socialism."
Principles of "Facebook Socialism":
1. Goods and services that are in abundant supply (supply > desire for it) can be freely taken (or freely taken advantage of if they are services).
2. For goods and services that are scarce (supply < desire for it), people wanting the goods and services can create and sign up on "ration lists."
3. Means-of-production assets that are scarce will be reserved for producing ration-list goods and services and will be put under some level of local/regional/national/international public authority trusteeship.
4. Groups that want to volunteer to produce for the "ration lists" can approach some public authority that has trusteeship over a set of means-of-production assets. (Public authorities at various local, regional, national, and/or international levels will be the trustees of all scarce and important means-of-production assets. Some types of assets will naturally make more sense than others to administer at a local or international level). These public authorities and their trusteeships of these assets will be managed by elected and immediately recallable delegates. These public authorities can authorize a group with a credible plan to use the means-of-production assets (at no charge, of course). Public authorities can, of course, take the resources back and bar the groups from using the resources if the groups are deemed to be doing something dangerous or incredibly wasteful with the resources.
5. Groups that volunteer to produce for the "ration lists" must ration their product to those on the ration list in a quasi-random way.
6. This quasi-random rationing will be somewhat (but not totally) weighted in some statistical way towards: A. People who signed up at an earlier date on the ration list, and B. People who get a lot of "thumbs ups." (See below). If you have already been selected from a ration-list and sign up again (for, let's say, a 2nd XBox360), your name goes behind all of the people still waiting on their first copy.
7. Everyone is entitled (but not forced) to have an official facebook-like public profile attached to something like a social security number so that multiple "puppet" accounts cannot be created.
8. On these profiles, people can consensually propose, approve, and thus register relationships with other people in their social network, like on facebook.
9. For anyone in your social network, you can give them a thumbs up or thumbs down for whatever reason. Ratings could be capped by law at maybe 5 per day (with 1 per day towards any particular person). The number of contacts could be capped at something reasonable like 1000. (In reality, nobody personally knows more than a thousand people).
10. Possible reasons for giving a thumbs up/down: So-and-so volunteered to work towards a much-needed product with a long ration-list, and he/she contributed usefully to that project...or, so-and-so is a really nice person...or, so-and-so is really rude (thumbs-down)...and so on.
11. Relationships can be unilaterally cancelled as long as neither party has made a rating on the other within the last...say...month.
12. Labor will flow towards the larger ration-list projects in order to pursue thumbs-ups. (Your profile would naturally be a way to publicize what you are working on).
13. People can sign up for as many ration-lists as they want, although a person's number of accumulated thumbs-ups gets diluted between all of the ration-lists to which one is signed up. One can assign all of one's "thumbs-ups" to one ration-list if one really wants that item above all else.
14. Priority for production will naturally flow towards basic necessities and towards the ration-lists that are the longest because people will earn the most thumbs-ups for contributing to those much-needed projects.
15. Labor and resources will flow away from goods and services that are being produced in huge excess. For example, continuing to produce useless size 17 shoes will not earn you thumbs-ups if there's a backlog of 100,000 of them still unused. People will look at you like, "What are you doing, are you crazy?"
16. For every niche ration-list that never have a good prospect of attracting much interest (for example: "Ration-list for lifesize inflatable rubber sex doll of Buzz Lightyear"), one would have to rely on a person or group working on that project just for fun, as a personal favor to you. Or, make it yourself. If one were looking for a cure for a very rare diseased, one might approach a charitable medical research institution to get them to try to find a cure. (Of course, the people participating in that charitable medical research institution would receive a lot of thumbs-ups for being such nice people).
17. There will be a minimal militia/police force to guard against petty personal theft, ensure that rationed goods get distributed in accordance with the ration-lists, enforce public authority decisions over their means-of-production assets, and guard against external aggression.
Potential drawbacks:
1. Black markets for rationed goods. Those with earlier access to rationed goods sell those goods to others in exchange for favors and/or facebook thumbs-up vote-rigging. Could cause some petty-cronyism, but corruption of the system would become obvious and would cause an uproar long before any systemic power became cemented. The 1000-person cap on one's social network would put a limit on the possible number of thumbs-ups one could get, and thus one's potential "Boss-Tweed"-like patronage and centralization of power. Plus, if all of the essentials of life (food, housing) are free, and only unessential niceties are rationed, then would it really be worth the risks or effort for most people to get involved in the black market to get a good that they could just wait a little longer for anyways?
2. Whoever administers the technical computer-side of this network could mess with people's accounts. Obviously, the technical administration of this network would be under strict public oversight.
Any other potential drawbacks that I have overlooked? Especially, with this scheme is there any potential for:
1. The re-emergence of capitalism?
2. "Stalinist" takeover of key levers of public authority and/or control over the means of production?
An economic system needs to do three things:
1. Identify the scarcity of a good or service (how much of it there is vs. how much of it people want) so that resources can be channelled in greater relative proportions to the more scarce things.
2. Actually deliver the physically available goods and services to the people who want them.
3. Give people an incentive to contribute to producing socially-desired goods and services.
Capitalism, for all of its historic accomplishments, does not do any of these things very well.
1. Capitalism identifies the scarcity of a good or service in terms of how much of it there is relative to "how many dollars want it," not relative to how many people want it.
2. Capitalism does not deliver physically available goods and services to those who want them if those people don't have the money for those things.
3. Capitalism gives people an incentive to contribute to producing goods and services that are "desired by the most dollars," not goods and services that are the most socially-desired by people.
I have come up with a socialist economic system that accomplishes all three of these things much better. Call it "Facebook Socialism."
Principles of "Facebook Socialism":
1. Goods and services that are in abundant supply (supply > desire for it) can be freely taken (or freely taken advantage of if they are services).
2. For goods and services that are scarce (supply < desire for it), people wanting the goods and services can create and sign up on "ration lists."
3. Means-of-production assets that are scarce will be reserved for producing ration-list goods and services and will be put under some level of local/regional/national/international public authority trusteeship.
4. Groups that want to volunteer to produce for the "ration lists" can approach some public authority that has trusteeship over a set of means-of-production assets. (Public authorities at various local, regional, national, and/or international levels will be the trustees of all scarce and important means-of-production assets. Some types of assets will naturally make more sense than others to administer at a local or international level). These public authorities and their trusteeships of these assets will be managed by elected and immediately recallable delegates. These public authorities can authorize a group with a credible plan to use the means-of-production assets (at no charge, of course). Public authorities can, of course, take the resources back and bar the groups from using the resources if the groups are deemed to be doing something dangerous or incredibly wasteful with the resources.
5. Groups that volunteer to produce for the "ration lists" must ration their product to those on the ration list in a quasi-random way.
6. This quasi-random rationing will be somewhat (but not totally) weighted in some statistical way towards: A. People who signed up at an earlier date on the ration list, and B. People who get a lot of "thumbs ups." (See below). If you have already been selected from a ration-list and sign up again (for, let's say, a 2nd XBox360), your name goes behind all of the people still waiting on their first copy.
7. Everyone is entitled (but not forced) to have an official facebook-like public profile attached to something like a social security number so that multiple "puppet" accounts cannot be created.
8. On these profiles, people can consensually propose, approve, and thus register relationships with other people in their social network, like on facebook.
9. For anyone in your social network, you can give them a thumbs up or thumbs down for whatever reason. Ratings could be capped by law at maybe 5 per day (with 1 per day towards any particular person). The number of contacts could be capped at something reasonable like 1000. (In reality, nobody personally knows more than a thousand people).
10. Possible reasons for giving a thumbs up/down: So-and-so volunteered to work towards a much-needed product with a long ration-list, and he/she contributed usefully to that project...or, so-and-so is a really nice person...or, so-and-so is really rude (thumbs-down)...and so on.
11. Relationships can be unilaterally cancelled as long as neither party has made a rating on the other within the last...say...month.
12. Labor will flow towards the larger ration-list projects in order to pursue thumbs-ups. (Your profile would naturally be a way to publicize what you are working on).
13. People can sign up for as many ration-lists as they want, although a person's number of accumulated thumbs-ups gets diluted between all of the ration-lists to which one is signed up. One can assign all of one's "thumbs-ups" to one ration-list if one really wants that item above all else.
14. Priority for production will naturally flow towards basic necessities and towards the ration-lists that are the longest because people will earn the most thumbs-ups for contributing to those much-needed projects.
15. Labor and resources will flow away from goods and services that are being produced in huge excess. For example, continuing to produce useless size 17 shoes will not earn you thumbs-ups if there's a backlog of 100,000 of them still unused. People will look at you like, "What are you doing, are you crazy?"
16. For every niche ration-list that never have a good prospect of attracting much interest (for example: "Ration-list for lifesize inflatable rubber sex doll of Buzz Lightyear"), one would have to rely on a person or group working on that project just for fun, as a personal favor to you. Or, make it yourself. If one were looking for a cure for a very rare diseased, one might approach a charitable medical research institution to get them to try to find a cure. (Of course, the people participating in that charitable medical research institution would receive a lot of thumbs-ups for being such nice people).
17. There will be a minimal militia/police force to guard against petty personal theft, ensure that rationed goods get distributed in accordance with the ration-lists, enforce public authority decisions over their means-of-production assets, and guard against external aggression.
Potential drawbacks:
1. Black markets for rationed goods. Those with earlier access to rationed goods sell those goods to others in exchange for favors and/or facebook thumbs-up vote-rigging. Could cause some petty-cronyism, but corruption of the system would become obvious and would cause an uproar long before any systemic power became cemented. The 1000-person cap on one's social network would put a limit on the possible number of thumbs-ups one could get, and thus one's potential "Boss-Tweed"-like patronage and centralization of power. Plus, if all of the essentials of life (food, housing) are free, and only unessential niceties are rationed, then would it really be worth the risks or effort for most people to get involved in the black market to get a good that they could just wait a little longer for anyways?
2. Whoever administers the technical computer-side of this network could mess with people's accounts. Obviously, the technical administration of this network would be under strict public oversight.
Any other potential drawbacks that I have overlooked? Especially, with this scheme is there any potential for:
1. The re-emergence of capitalism?
2. "Stalinist" takeover of key levers of public authority and/or control over the means of production?