That's called communism and we all know what happens there.
I think you do injustice by extracting one paragraph out of context. Perhaps this is some of my fault- as I extracted a few paragraphs out of hundreds of pages of text. I urge you to get a copy and read the original author's words in full, so that you'll have the complete picture of the paradigm fault, and the future alternatives.
Also from what I chose to extract, the post in which you replied to:
Achieving this structural reform does not require the expropriation anyone's existing wealth
That I'm willing to embrace new ideas shouldn't result in attacks on my character, IMO. Perhaps you mean to attack the idea that in the future, ownership of capital may be required to ensure survival.
This idea does not preclude private ownership of property. Is not the lack of private ownership essential to the communist paradigm? If so, what is proposed is not communism, but an increasing embrace of capitalism by all citizens at every scale. In fact, teaching our fellow citizens how to embrace and manage capital wisely may be our most important gift to the future. As you point out:
The idea that capital is some entity like gold which can simply be shared around is false. If you give everyone some of that capital, they will divide up into the lucky, unlucky, smart and stupid and some will have capital and expand it. Others will destroy their capital by bad decisions
This is further elaborated in a followup to KastleCo.
Let me quote a bit more from Greider's book:
The question does rest, finally, on what one thinks about human capabilities-whether one believes that societies can alter the economic systems that frame human behavior and that people have the capacity to adjust intelligently to new circumstances, new possibilities. Many, of course, do not believe in this human potential. Their visceral reaction to the idea of universalizing the wealth is that most of their fellow mortals wouldn't be able to handle it.
Poor people would rush out and sell their shares for quick cash, just as impoverished citizens in Eastern Europe have sold their equity vouchers.
The security of wealth would make people lazy or greedy, or perhaps both. Wealth that was not directly derived from human toil and savings would encourage people to indulge in wasteful conspicuous consumption or else turn them into miserly misanthropes, nervously counting their money and craving more.
In the fullness of human variety, all of these personal responses to owning wealth are, indeed, sure to occur. We know this with certainty because these are some of the behavioral traits already visible among people who own great wealth. Some of them are foolish and arrogant, some are malevolent and grasping. Yet it is likewise true that some rich people are modest and wise, some are creative and generous, some even saintly. Wealth by itself does not determine human character, nor does the fact of owning wealth exempt one from the human condition.
The illusions surrounding money are so powerful and enticing, it is difficult to escape from them, especially if one has little and needs more.
Accumulation has become a totem of spiritual blessing, especially in wealthy secular nations, and many people still implicitly believe in the old Calvinist fallacy that if one becomes rich, God must have wanted it that way. Owning wealth does allow more choices in life, a more pleasant material existence than being poor, but in the end rich people die, too.
Three generations ago John Maynard Keynes prophesied that only when humanity finally escapes the ancient fears of scarcity and puts the economic problem behind it will people at last be free to discover what it truly means to be human. "For the first time since his creation," Keynes wrote, "man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy his leisure, which science and compound interest have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well."
Keynes was a profound optimist who believed that the day of general abundance was approaching faster than people imagined. He was also a realist who warned that, once freed of their economic preoccupations, people would face a profound reckoning with self-discovery. Who am I? What is my life for? If people are no longer bound to endless toil, what is their real work and purpose here on earth? If survival and accumulation arc no longer the challenge, where does one find meaning and pleasure? As wealthy people can attest, these are the hardest questions.
In the spirit of Keynes's optimism, I believe most people would learn to cope with this new condition and that the wealth problem, once resolved, opens new vistas for human development beyond any that societies have yet imagined. If the class struggle can be disarmcd, if domination and dependency lose their relevance, human conflict and folly will certainly not disappear from the earth. But people generally will have more space in which to imagine their own individual possibilities and to pursue them, more freedom to build enduring social relations.
In time, perhaps over many generations, people may learn to become social beings on a larger scale, discarding some of the old barbarisms and moving modern societies a step closer to what may rightly be called civilization. At least, people will have a new material confidence that allows them to experience the world's wondrous variety and enjoy their place in it. There is a lot to see and understand in the world, many strange connections to explore. If this thought sounds too wishful, it describes approximately the actual history of how societies and peoples have gradually evolved and expanded social consciousness in the past. Everyone started in a small village somewhere, fearing the unknown others, confined by tribal taboos.
Everyone has now-or might have-the chance to become an inquisitive citizen of the world. |
