Reply #37: What we're talking about here is an evolutionary process [View All]

[IrateCitizen]

One of the biggest factors, it seems to me, that compels some people to seek much greater compensation than others within a market economy is the issue of class. When one group is able to view another group of people as somehow "lesser" than they are, then they find it much easier to exploit them. If the people in that former group are in a position in which they are forced to recognize that this "other" group is made up of human beings not really any different than they are, that exploitation becomes much harder.

Given the current social sensibilities in the United States, would I expect an instant transformation to a cooperative market economy? Hardly. I fully recognize that, in order for a market economy based on cooperative enterprise to grow, it must grow from the ground up. However, the place in which the macro can make a slight impact on the micro is by providing incentive to make this transformation.

One thing that IS becoming painfully clear is that our current system is a failure. Sure, it has "created" a lot of wealth. But, increasingly that monetary wealth flows upward, creating a much less egalitarian (and more unhealthy) society. It also wreaks havoc on the environment, blowing through natural resources as if they were an infinite quantity, while trashing the air, soil and water as if they were self-healing. It's a completely short-term system, with absolutely no regard for future implications due to a laser-like focus on short-term profits while blind to anything else.

Now, people here like to speak of "regulated capitalism". My question is, regulated by whom? By a state that must continually grow in size and power in order to match growth in size and power among corporate entities? How would this, in the end, be that much different than the centrally-planned economies of the Soviet Union and Red China? The idea of particpatory economics is just one part of evolving to a system based on smaller scales, in which power is diffused throughout the society rather than consolidated and centralized away from it. Will it look exactly like the theorists have proposed? Of course not. But it does present some interesting ideas as to how to become a better society than we are right now.