Nationalise the banks, set a $100,000,000 limit. - Make loan

[Robbie]

I say we do the following things to save the world

1. Nationalize all banking instiutions
2. Set a $100,000,000 (100 million) limit on personal wealth
3. make it so no one can give away more than $500,000,000 (500 million), $400 million for family members.
4. Make loans virtually interest free and make it so not everyone can get loans, they would be like a lottery, except a targeted one where only those who can show they will do more good than harm to the economy will be given loans without much question....

This way people can still get wealthy, without hurting anyone else. My golden rule is do what you like as long as you dont hurt anyone...
I think this system is better than all out socialism because socialism can severly retard economic growth in any country...
To work, this system must be global in scope, so huge multi nationals like mcdonalds and microsoft cant just fuck off somewere else to get around it.....

large companies would still exist, they would just be more tightly regulated and would have more owners, the government would also be able to control such companies at its will.

Comments are welcome

-Robbie Cahill of Sydney, Australia

[redstar2000]

"This way people can get wealthy, without hurting anyone else."

Well, no.

Without bothering with the details (which are tedious), people have been trying to "tinker" with capitalism for more than a century to make it less inhumane. With the exception of the Scandinavian countries, this has largely been an exercise in futility.

In particular, finance capital and personal fortunes have been "easy targets" for "reforming capitalism". To control them, to place some kind of upper limit on their accumulation, etc. has been seen as a way to both make investment decisions more socially rational as well as trim some of the more outrageously unequal disparities in personal wealth.

Even if such schemes could actually "work", it would be a moot point; no capitalist ruling class is going to permit this kind of thing to be done in the absence of full-scale revolution.

And if we've reached the point where that is possible, why settle for partial measures?

"...socialism can severely retard economic growth in any country..."

Perhaps it "can", but usually it hasn't. All of the first generation of communist countries had growth rates that were quite respectable and some did very well indeed.

Besides which "growth" is, in economic terms, a very slippery concept. It depends on an arbitrary selection of indices which, in turn, are rather easy to "fudge".

If a lumber corporation cuts down a huge mountainside full of old-growth trees, for example, that "counts" as an economic "plus"...the environmental damage from that activity doesn't get counted as a "minus".

It will be necessary, no doubt, to do a considerable amount of "bean counting" after the revolution; I don't see much point in concerning ourselves with such matters now.

:cool:

[Saint-Just]

'socialism can severly retard economic growth in any country...'

Your suggestion that socialism retards the economy of a country is abolutely false.

An attempt at an instant transition to socialism is indeed problematic and would retard the economy of a country. Socialist economies are subject to imperialist attack. All socialist revolutions have achieved great successes economically in countries that were previously undeveloped.