I have come to believe that there are two anti-social groups of humans that must be controlled for any system to function.
I think you can judge the viability of any governing and economic system by how they control these two anti-social groups.
Group 1, law breakers. Those that don’t follow the rules everyone else agrees to.
Group 2, commons spoilers. Those that can never be satisfied and take and take or waste and waste the resources of the society for personal gain.
Western capitalist society has answers for these two groups.
For group 1 we have a partial answer. If you have a low degree of power the state will beat, imprison, or kill those that break laws. If you have a high degree of power, you are likely able to break most laws with impugnity.
For group 2 we have a partial answer. Capitalism attempts to convert greed into productive ends for society. It’s ok if you can never be satisfied or if you are always trying to figure out some way to gain a little bit more, that’s the profit motive and a side effect is that it will produce more good for the system than bad.
I think both constraints in western capitalism are insufficient and a lot of the structural problems we face are due to these two groups being insufficiently addressed.
Could communism, the collective ownership of the means of production in a stateless society, work? I suspect it wouldn’t have the capacity to sufficiently constrain either group, while we fret about group 1 because a murderer can do a lot of damage to an individual, group 2 tends to be the people that actually destroy societal systems.
Now could collective ownership work with better controls, yes. In fact many human societies work this way, most family units work in this way (very rarely does a father charge their 8 year old for crackers from a pantry, within the household most things are collectively owned)
Smaller communities and intentional communities can function in a communal fashion, often using a mix of rules but more often social norms to prevent these groups from acting out against the societal structures.
Every system is at risk from these two groups, and what you do with them and how you control them determines the contours of your society and how well it will function.
In my ideal world you would provide enough to group 1 that they wouldn’t need to commit crimes to meet their basic needs and they would have fulfilling enough lives that losing access to society would be sufficient deterrent, although for those that truly want to do harm some kind of state violence is likely required, be that prison or reeducation. For group 2 it should be socially unacceptable but also the main role of government to prevent those people from ruining the commons. A billionaire is a much more dangerous threat to societal order than a shoplifter and the majority of the focus should be on preventing people from exploiting the system so that they get a massive pile of wealth and power they can use to corrupt society.
I have come to believe that there are two anti-social groups of humans that must be controlled for any system to function.
I think you can judge the viability of any governing and economic system by how they control these two anti-social groups.
Group 1, law breakers. Those that don’t follow the rules everyone else agrees to.
Group 2, commons spoilers. Those that can never be satisfied and take and take or waste and waste the resources of the society for personal gain.
Western capitalist society has answers for these two groups.
For group 1 we have a partial answer. If you have a low degree of power the state will beat, imprison, or kill those that break laws. If you have a high degree of power, you are likely able to break most laws with impugnity.
For group 2 we have a partial answer. Capitalism attempts to convert greed into productive ends for society. It’s ok if you can never be satisfied or if you are always trying to figure out some way to gain a little bit more, that’s the profit motive and a side effect is that it will produce more good for the system than bad.
I think both constraints in western capitalism are insufficient and a lot of the structural problems we face are due to these two groups being insufficiently addressed.
Could communism, the collective ownership of the means of production in a stateless society, work? I suspect it wouldn’t have the capacity to sufficiently constrain either group, while we fret about group 1 because a murderer can do a lot of damage to an individual, group 2 tends to be the people that actually destroy societal systems.
Now could collective ownership work with better controls, yes. In fact many human societies work this way, most family units work in this way (very rarely does a father charge their 8 year old for crackers from a pantry, within the household most things are collectively owned)
Smaller communities and intentional communities can function in a communal fashion, often using a mix of rules but more often social norms to prevent these groups from acting out against the societal structures.
Every system is at risk from these two groups, and what you do with them and how you control them determines the contours of your society and how well it will function.
In my ideal world you would provide enough to group 1 that they wouldn’t need to commit crimes to meet their basic needs and they would have fulfilling enough lives that losing access to society would be sufficient deterrent, although for those that truly want to do harm some kind of state violence is likely required, be that prison or reeducation. For group 2 it should be socially unacceptable but also the main role of government to prevent those people from ruining the commons. A billionaire is a much more dangerous threat to societal order than a shoplifter and the majority of the focus should be on preventing people from exploiting the system so that they get a massive pile of wealth and power they can use to corrupt society.