Money Money Money Money
(to the tune of that song…)
I was reading a couple of articles today about money and work and thought I’d throw out my own thoughts on possible post-modern solutions to the late stage capitalist world we all love to wallow in and love to hate.
First of all, as has been written about many times, capitalism =/= market economy. Those two concepts are not the same thing. You will find some people who want to abolish both and have a totally state run and state owned economy, but I’d say most people would rather live in a market based economy than not. Capitalism, though, is beginning to show its age as it accelerates out of control and as wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few.
Now, of course, capitalism is ruthlessly efficient. Corporations brutally squeeze every possible erg of work out of their employees and exploit resources to whatever their ends are as quickly as possible. This is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism. It is a runaway engine of progress and materialism. Key word…runaway. A corporation, once it is up and running, might say words through its PR department that sound loving and caring, but they will always just be words. The organization itself would tear down every forest, every jungle, every mountain to grab resources to produce its widgets and sell them to the highest bidder. Efficiently.
A market economy doesn’t have to have corporations or even too much efficiency. It just needs to allow for individual choices as people try to fulfill their wants and/or needs. How capitalistic that economy becomes is a matter of societal choice. Do you want large corporations providing medicine, food, entertainment, clothing? How many? How large? Under what rules?
In science fiction, the most efficient organizations are often the most dystopian. The Borg come to mind. Allowing any type of organization the ability to pursue a goal and grow to any size will always result in ruthless efficiency. You can’t have the efficiency without the ruthlessness.
Today, at least in the USA, we have allowed corporations to grow in power to the point where the people and the government are increasingly subservient to the needs and desires of these large supernational organizations. A rebalancing seems to be in order. Capital has far too much power and laborers have lost too much of the same.
As a starting point, I would recommend a few practical changes that are well within the legal abilities of the current framework.
First, we’ve had a 40 hour work week for almost a century. With the amount of added productivity in the economy, that can easily be lowered. A 20 hour work week, with all the rights and privileges currently given to a 40 hour one, is very reasonable. Far too many jobs are make-work anyway just to fill all of those 40 hours with something to do. Forcing a 20 hour work week on the marketplace would actually create more efficiencies as it weeded out unnecessary work.
Secondly, in order to make a 20 hour work week viable, an increase to the minimum wage to either $25 an hour or $2000 a month would be the next step. Arguments can be made for a lower threshold for workers under the age of 22 or for voluntary apprenticeships with set benefits at the end of term, but in general if someone is doing hard work for 20 hours a week at this point in history they should be able to live a reasonably comfortable life.
Thirdly, if after implementing these changes there are not enough jobs available in the market economy (which would actually show how much the 20 hour highly paid work week was needed in the first place), then some form of modern WPA offering government jobs to all applicants to maintain, build, or improve infrastructure or to care for the elderly or to stay home and raise children or otherwise do work that is useful but not “profitable” in the classic sense would be another reasonable step.
Some would argue for a basic income in place of all of that. I can certainly see that argument. You could literally scrap all of the above and replace it with a universal Social Security scheme. However, I do think that psychologically human beings desire some labor for the good of self, loved ones, or others to give their lives meaning. Making sure that labor is highly rewarded and that capital doesn’t get overly concentrated is the rebalancing that I would argue needs to happen.
There are also plenty of other basic changes that could be quickly implemented. Just bringing back simple laws like Glass-Steagall or enforcing anti-trust laws more rigorously are also good starting points. But in terms of money, the main issue creating instability in the system at the moment is wealth concentration and better rewarding labor is the way to break that cycle.
All of the numbers and ideas here are totally changeable and I would love to hear other ideas. Just, as always, please be kind in your arguments and to each other every day. Kindness is the key.