On Reforming Capitalism

 These are the conventional definitions of capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit.[1][2][3][4][5] This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth.[6][7][8][9][10][11] Capitalist economies may experience business cycles of economic growth followed by recessions.[12] (Source: Wikipedia)

What is capitalism?

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Capitalism is a widely adopted economic system in which there is private ownership of the means of production. Modern capitalist systems usually include a market-oriented economy, in which the production and pricing of goods, as well as the income of individuals, are dictated to a greater extent by market forces resulting from interactions between private businesses and individuals than by central planning undertaken by a government or local institution. Capitalism is built on the concepts of private property, profit motive, and market competition. (Source: Encyclopædia Britannica)

Capitalism

A term coined to describe the use of private capital to finance economic activity. Investors and entrepreneurs use their money to create businesses, hiring workers, renting property and buying equipment as needed. Any surplus, or profit, belongs to the entrepreneur or investors. Communism is seen as the obverse of capitalism, as all economic activity is controlled by the state. (Source: The Economist)

However a more to the point definition of capitalism can be expressed this way.

Capitalism: an economic system designed to transform the labour of the working class into the wealth of the owning class. (Source: The5thColumnist)

Capitalism started unrestrained until workers organized and at the cost of thousands murdered by capital (and the Pinkertons) forced employers to bargain with them, arguing for amongst other things a fair day’s pay for a fair days’ work. Workers union organizing also led to political victories including collective bargaining and labour standards legislation, as well as workplace health and safety legislation, and of course the weekend and extending the middle class beyond, doctors, lawyers and merchants.

The capitalist class was not content with earning a fair profit and invented the belief that corporations must seek the maximum return for shareholders with no regard to the workers, the community, or the environment and found ways to do this.

It included moving production abroad to countries with lower or no labour or environmental standards and where jobs could not be moved such as the service industry converting wage jobs to piece-work jobs or co-called “independent contractor” jobs in the so- called gig or app industry.

The result has been unprecedented inequality .

So what is the solution

A purist Marxist would suggest we just wait for (or hasten) the inevitable collapse of capitalism and then “bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old”. But such a strategy esquires the collapse of society as we know it and it will not be just the 1% (or 10%) of the wealthiest that may deserve to suffer but everybody in the middle. Only those with nothing to lose will lose nothing in this scenario.

This leaves the dreaded incrementalism as a practical solution that may even be able to achieve the political will to make it happen if done strategically.

Let us look first at the issues we want to address and I see two main issues.

Corporate concentration

The first being, despite capitalism’s claim of promoting competition, the reality is that it has lead to economies of monopolies and oligopolies with increasing corporate concentration driving the small businesses it was suppose to encourage out of business. Government regulation has been continuously weakened regarding corporate concentration particularly as it applies to the media, weakening one of the main pillars of democracy, an independent press.

This needs to be addressed and it is not a radical idea to go back to legislation and measures that existed previously while capitalism was thriving.

Economic and Political Inequality

The other being that, along with this, it has lead to massive personal economic inequality, and this massive economic power held by a few has become political power where even in so-called democracies the concept of one person one vote has been replaced one dollar one vote as far as the reality of political decision making is concerned. See: Economic inequality leads to democratic erosion, study finds | University of Chicago News.

One of the easiest ways to address inequality and redistribute wealth is through the income tax system and again I suggest we start by going back to taxation levels that existed while capitalism was thriving.

Marginal Tax Rates

Today in 2025 the marginal tax rate on the highest earners in the United States is 37% while in Canada it is 33%, but it has not always been that low.

  

Source: Comparing Income Taxes: Canada vs. USA in 2025

 Between 1951 and 1963 the United States marginal tax rate on the highest earners was over 90%, while in Canada during the same period the marginal tax rate on the highest earners varied between 90% and 75%. Capitalism was thriving over that period, albeit without the ridiculous levels of income and wealth inequality we see today. As a first (incremental) step in tax reform I propose we go back to those levels.

Source: Bradford Tax Institute

Source: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Wealth Tax

The next (incremental) step in tax reform to address excessive individual income and wealth inequality should be a wealth tax. As of 2021, five out of 36 OECD countries implement a wealth tax on individuals. The New Democratic Party and Canadians For Tax Fairness both propose a modest wealth tax of 1% to 3% depending on level of wealth. The United States Democratic Party does not appear to have a consistent policy on wealth taxes, but both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have proposed wealth taxes of 2% to 3% depending on level of wealth. I would propose we start with a wealth tax similar to those proposals.

Final Stage of Tax Reform

The existence of billionaires (and now trillionaires) is, to put it bluntly, immoral. The final stage of (incremental) tax reform, after people have been eased into the idea of a wealth tax, is to use the tax system to tax back all income over a million dollars a year and all wealth over 100 million dollars. I consider this to be modest proposal as it still allows for a considerable level of inequality but not the blatantly excessive and immoral levels we currently have.

Reigning in Capitalism

Render unto the public sector the things that are the public sector’s, and unto the privater sector the things that are the private sectors

There may be a place in the economy for capitalism and the private sector but it should not dominate our lives and society as it currently does. It needs to be put in it’s place.

Health Care

Nobody should profit from someone else’s misery. It is a simple matter of ethics and morality. Health care should not be provided for profit but should be funded and delivered by a single-payer public system that provides is better health care and better economics.

Source: Canadian Medical Association

Water

Water is essential for human survival so our access to it should not be dependent on someone else making a profit. As water becomes scarcer it becomes vital that governments protect our vital water supplies and not sell them off to the highest bidder. Our water supplies should not be put at risk for data centres to store the high tech industry’s (or even government’s) surveillance data on us and certainly not for it’s ill fated so called artificial intelligence dangerous LLM bullshit. Local water supplies should not be privately owned but preferably be municipal utilities. Water resources should only be made available to the private sector when there is a surplus to public needs.

Food

Access to food should also not be dependent on monopolistic corporations making excessive profits. Something needs to be done about the corporate concentration in the oligopolistic corporate agrifood industry.

Corporate Control of Agriculture – Farm Aid

GRAIN | Top 10 agribusiness giants: corporate concentration in food & farming in 2025

The Monopoly Problem at the Heart of Canada's Food System | Perspectives Journal

Corporate concentration | Food Policy for Canada

The best way to do that is to support family farms as well as agricultural cooperatives (agricultural cooperatives in Canada) and the supply management system including marketing boards

At the retail end of the food chain, the grocery sector. there is a similar oligopoly corporate concentration problem.

Canada's grocery business doesn't have enough competition — and shoppers are paying the price, report finds | CBC News

5 takeaways from the Competition Bureau’s study into Canada’s grocery sector - National | Globalnews.ca

Increasing Retail Monopoly Power Poses a Threat to Canada’s Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery [Op-Ed]

Walmart’s dominance of groceries should receive antitrust scrutiny, group says | CNN Business

The best way to counter that is for consumers to have a real choice to not support the monopoly grocery industry. Governments can best aid that by supporting non-profit food food co-operatives to ensure all consumers have a choice.

Grocery co-ops an alternative to corporate grocers amid anger, mistrust: experts

Co-Ops, Mutual Aid, and the Movements Against the Grocery Industrial Complex | Loose Lips Magazine

Toward fair and sustainable food systems: The role of food cooperatives and solidarity grocery stores – Food Secure Canada

Housing

North America’s dependence on the private sector for housing has not helped the current homelessness crisis, indeed it probably contributed to it. On the other side of the ocean in Finland at the end of 2021 long-term homelessness only affected 1,318 people and that is considered unacceptable under Finland’s Housing First Initiative which is not only the right thing to do but less costly than providing the social programs need to deal with homelessness.

North America needs to adopt a more European approach to public and social housing where public housing is not just for the very poor but also for ordinary working people.

Canada is facing a housing crisis. Could it take a page from Europe? | CBC News

What European housing models could do for Canada’s affordability problems

Europe’s affordable housing revolution: The power of leading by example - Affordable Housing Initiative European Partnership

We need to provide enough public or co-operative (being preferable) housing so that all Canadians that want to can access affordable housing on a rent geared to their income without being forced to deal with the predatory private market. The private market can still compete in niche and higher end markets and of course home construction will still be dominated by the private sector. Governments should also provide incentives and assistance for families that want to purchase their own modest homes.

Energy Choices and Climate Change

No discussion of capitalism would be complete without dealing with energy policy and climate change. We built an economy based on planned obsolescence and waste because that was good for capitalist profits. And we powered that economy with fossil fuels. The result:

• Climate change is real.

• Climate change is caused by human’s energy choices.

• Climate change has done irreversible harm, and

• Climate change s poised to do catastrophic harm.

All of this is true and highly documented. I am not going to insult the intelligence of those of you who choose to be informed by citing pages and pages of proof. Those who choose to be wilfully ignorant of the facts will not be swayed by any proof.

We need to act. The solutions are known. We need to phase out fossil fuels. No new projects. Governments that continue to support fossil fuels are putting private profits (and short term economic indicators) above the health of the planet and it’s human population.

We need to put a “price on carbon ” and disincentivize it’s use while providing support and incentives for the development and use of renewable energy. We also need to build a more sustainable economy that does not depend on waste and planned obsolescence. But that is a whole other book.

Failure of High Tech as Saviour

This section will be primarily informed by my own personal experience and observations (and research) over the last 60 years or so from first using punch cards to program Statistical Package for the Social Sciences on the Laurentian University mainframe, as part of my Techniques of Political Inquiry course, to my first personal computer, the Osborne 1 accessing Bulletin Board systems and freenets up to today’s Windows 11 machine accessing the Internet. For this reasons it will not include many, if any, citations and because doing so could overwhelm the user once I started. I was considering making this a separate blog post but I believe it belongs here.

There was a time when we made things in North America, even electronics and computers, and then the capitalist owners of the means of production thought it would be more profitable to make everything abroad in low wage countries with lax labour, health and environmental regulations. But don’t worry they assured us we were becoming a post industrial society with a knowledge economy and an information super highway. We would no longer work in factories with our hands but in offices with our minds. High tech was the new thing and it was going to save us all. It was great for awhile for a few who got the new high wage jobs, but many of the jobs turned out to be lower wage tech support jobs that did not replace the higher wage manufacturing jobs that were lost, and that they soon discovered could be sent overseas as well.

However it was a boost to planned obsolescence, with a twist that the electronic waste created was much more hazardous than broken down furniture and appliances in our landfills. Computers had to be replaced ever 18 months and smartphones every two years. At the beginning there probably were enough computer advances to justify that, though I got away with upgrading every three years but lately it has been more like every 7 years. However it was remarkable how capable those early PCs were. The Osborne 1 or original IBM PC, were capable of running full office software like Wordstar and Supercargo and even Dbase II. Programmers worked hard to get every bit of capability out of the software and hardware. Lately it seems the goal has been to bloat software and add unnecessary options to force users to upgrade their hardware. This is even more so in the smartphone industry where a new phone is needed so you can have rounded coiners.

At one point, because of a few successes, people were blindly investing in any company based on the web, regardless of any actual earning potential and then the “dot com bubble” burst. We are seeing the same thing with AI now, billions being thrown at to produce a massive GIGO machine that just makes stuff up, resulting in a massive waste of water and power and environmental degradation, not to mention the suicides caused by AI addiction or the AI directly telling them to kill themselves. Of course when the “AI bubble” bursts it might take the rest of the economy with it.

And high tech gave us the corporate and government surveillance state with the corporations saying they are doing it to make our lives better and the state saying they are doing it to make us safer, when in reality it is to consolidate their wealth and power.

Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, no need to detail the harm caused by them. Then we have the so-called gig industry which is just a way to avoid unions and exploit workers and the high tech billionaires exercising their political power to the point of buying the United States Presidency. More could be said but let’s leave it at that for now.

High tech saviour, my ass, just a better way to exploit workers, destroy the environment, and buy politicians,

Necessity of Government Regulations to Protect Workers Rights, Public Heath and The Environment

Deregulation is the darling of the capitalist media that argues all our economic problems would be solved if we did not have those pesky government regulations and just trusted corporations to put workers rights, public safety and the environment ahead of maximizing profits. They like to claim the market will regulate everything but the only thing the market regulates is maximum profit in the short term. It cannot even ensure a corporations’ long term growth or success. The market is very shortsighted and focused on profit only. So fuck the market.

The best proof of the need for government regulations to protect public health, the environment, and workers rights (including a minimum wage that is a living wage ), it is what happens when we deregulate.

10 Unforeseen Effects of Deregulation - UMA Technology

Disaster in the Making: he Quiet Erosion of Canada’s Regulation System

The Dangers of Deregulation – State of the Planet

The deregulation gamble: When worker safety becomes a political pawn | HR Law Canada

Trump’s crusade against health and safety regulations endangers workers, hobbles the environmental justice movement, and sets the stage for our next public health crisis | Economic Policy Institute

Public Ownership and Worker Co-operatives

The best way to counteract the power of the wealthy capitalist elites is to not give them the power that private ownership of the means of production gives them The best way to do that is to turn that ownership over to the actual workers that, to put it obviously, use the means of production to produce, whether that is things, services or information. The best way to do that is through worker co-operatives.

Worker cooperative - Wikipedia

What is a Worker Cooperative

History of Worker Cooperatives

Canadian Worker Co-op Federation

U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives

That being said, there are situations where centralized public control is preferable for strategic national interests, such as the creation of a nationwide electricity grid, or a nationwide electrified rail system, although I am sure there are others. There may be other sectors where a public presence, but not dominance, is desirable, including a public broadcaster, a public renewable energy agency and likely others.

Universal Basic Income

Capitalism’s secret (well maybe not so secret) weapon is maintaining a level of unemployment that forces workers to take underpaid exploitative employment. Universal Basic Income is the counterbalance to that. While Universal Basic Income does not deter people from seeking employment it empowers then to refuse to be exploited.

(Source: UBI Works - Canada's advocate for Basic Income)

Further references on Universal Basic Income:

Universalbasic income program could cut poverty up to 40%: Budget watchdog |CBC News

Universal Basic Income In Canada 2025 - Active Programs And Pilots You Should Know About

Why UBI Works: Hard Evidence of its Impact on Poverty

People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report | CBC News

Universal basic income is having a moment. What is it?

The Final Stage: Workers Control

In the final stage of reforming capitalism we give workers the right to seize the means of production and take control of their workplaces.

Workers of the world, unite!

Cryptocurrency and War – Cousins in Absurdity – Challenged by AI

Cryptocurrency – a way to supposedly create wealth by wasting massive amounts of water and energy to do meaningless computer calculations that solve no actual real life problems or serve any useful purpose but somehow create economic wealth for a few select people.

And War – a way to stimulate the economy supposedly creating economic growth, not by creating anything but by destroying infrastructure and killing people, while creating wealth for a few select people.

Both are absurdities of capitalism recently being challenged by so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) which also wastes massive amounts of water and energy to create gibberish and wealth for a few select people.

Ain’t capitalism grand.

The Non-Profit Small Business Model

The non-profit small business model provides interest free start-up loans to individuals or groups who apply to start a non-profit business. The application must include a business plan with a timeline to pay off the loan. The business plan must commit the non-profit small business to pay employees (including a designated manager) a living wage with appropriate benefits and pensions. The business plan must also commit the business to meet designated health and safety and environmental standards.

Any excess of revenues over expenses may be used to pay down the loan sooner or expand the business, or it shall be paid equally in bonuses to all employees.

I do not know if the non-profit small business model exists anywhere, but it should.

Doug Ford: Should we be thankful for small mercies ?

So is there anything good to say about Doug Ford.

Well he is not Pierre Poilievre or Danielle Smith. At least Ford does not seek votes by appealing to people’s fears and hatred. He is more of an old fashioned corporations know best, privatization will solve all our problems, capitalist conservative.

He doesn’t attack people for who they are or go after women’s right to bodily autonomy.

Yes, he wants to give the province to his business cronies, destroy the environment and dismantle our public health care and education systems, but no one is perfect.

Housing As A Right

Should housing be a right. That is the question. But the real question is what would that mean and how do we make it more than a token right but an actual effective right.

In North America we had this mythology that everyone could own their own home. That has never been true. The closest we have come is at the peak of unionization when unions brought much of the working class into the middle class. But then the capitalist owners of the means of production moved the means of production to low wage countries and left the auto industry as the remaining remnant of what was once an industrial economy. They then transformed the service industry to a piece-work model, much of it based on “apps” that pretended low wage workers were independent contractors not entitled to the protection of employment and labour laws. This returned us to a state where the dream of home ownership was limited to the wealthy and professional classes.

However this myth led governments to create tax advantages for home ownership that distorted the housing market leading it to be dominated by much larger than necessary energy wasting homes which contributed to the creation of urban sprawl.

So how do we create housing as a right for everyone.

If housing is actually to be a right then everyone one must have access to decent and properly maintained housing at an affordable cost. The private sector will not provide this.

North America needs to take a more European approach where public sector housing is not relegated to the poorest of the poor but is available to the general population. Funding needs to be provided to eliminate public housing waiting lists and provide necessary maintenance. Co-operative housing needs to be encouraged and facilitated with government assistance. Living in publicly provided housing has to be normalized rather than stigmatized.

Fortunately the solution to the funding problem is the same as the solution to all public expenditure programs. Society has the money, it is just improperly distributed through an economic and political system that has created excessive financial inequality. The answer lies in taxing corporations and the wealthy appropriately, especially the excessive wealthy.

The private sector can still play a role as long as they realize the slumlord model is no longer an option with affordable decent publicly provided housing available to everyone. And they must accept that with housing as a right no one can be evicted without somewhere else to go.

The Election Issue That Dare Not Speak It's Name

What election am I referring to – whatever one is next in whatever jurisdiction you are in.

Yes I am talking about that which we dare not speak – the need to change our economic system before its ultimate collapse.

Karl Marx predicted the collapse of capitalism, and it was happening, only to be rescued by of all things socialism – the pooling of the masses resources to rescue their exploiters.

However unless we act to change the system we can only put off the ultimate demise of capitalism as we know it.

It is not so much private ownership or even profit that I am speaking of, although they contribute to the problem. I am speaking of something much more fundamental – the need to redefine what we consider to be a successful economy. The problem is we currently measure economic success as continuous and increasing unsustainable economic growth based on the continuous unsustainable exploitation of finite resources.

Capitalism also only values wage employment discounting all activities not done for a paid wage as economically meaningless, including the caring for children by parents and volunteer work or other unpaid creative work. How capitalism values work is also subjective and very fucked up, someone playing playing a game earning a million dollars a year contributes 10 time as much to the economy as someone earning 100 thousand dollars a year finding a cure for cancer. The actual value of work to society has no relation to the economic value capitalism gives it.

We also have to rethink our historic attitudes to what we call civilized and primitive. I was brought up within a society that taught that our industrialized societies built on dominating and exploiting nature were far superior to those “primitive” societies where people lived simpler lives in harmony with nature. Unfortunately our civilization is bringing our society and planet to the edge of collapse.

Capitalism has it’s religious tenets as well, the most revered being the belief (very much in a religious sense, being based on faith rather than evidence) that competition is superior to co-operation and promotes innovation.

The belief is if you have a problem and tell ten people to solve it, it will be solved faster if each person works separately inspired by the fact they will make a fortune if they succeed or become a bankrupt failure if they don't. Indeed under capitalist dogma money is the only possible motivator.

The rational understanding that ten smart people working together, and off of each others ideas, striving for the common good, will be more successful sooner than ten individuals working separately is simply capitalistic heresy. The idea that people might be motivated by something other than money is anathema to our greed based economic system.

According to theory competition is supposed to result in multiple campaniles competing for customers business resulting in the ones that provide the best value for money thriving. In reality we see that what happens is the most powerful (most ruthless) driving out the weakest in an increasing move to a more monopolistic economy, with a few dominant corporations that are deemed to big too fail and must be saved by the socialism of taxpayer funded corporate bailouts.

Whether it was the aim or expectations of it’s creators, the most important and evil result of capitalism has been the rapid increase of inequality to the point of immorality.

We have moved along way from the original promise of capitalism, if it ever existed, where entrepreneurs formed businesses to make products or supply services to customers at decent quality for a decent price paying workers an honest days pay for an honest days work, in return for a fair profit. Today’s corporations (with a few exception) are only in one business, maximizing shareholder profits.

And that is not serving the needs of society or the people.

The only real election issue (except perhaps where democracy itself is the election issue) should be what do we replace capitalism with.

Imagining A Post Capitalist World

This is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis but an imagining of some of the features of a post capitalist world.

OK lets get this over with first. The first thing we will notice is the numbers we use to measure the success of a capitalist economy, GDP, GNP and economic growth will look bad. That is because the goals of the new economy will not be excessive production, consumption, energy waste and unsustainable growth. The new economy will be based on people not stuff. While our so-called standard of living will decline our quality of life will increase.

Because of higher minimum wages and a Guaranteed Basic Income everyone will have at least a comfortable modest life with adequate housing and all their basic needs met because there are enough resources to provide this when there is not excessive inequality and waste by the excessively wealthy.

Excessive inequality will be eliminated because of an aggressive progressive tax system based on the principle that everyone should contribute to the society/economy based on their ability.

Everyone, not just the very wealthy, will finally benefit from the use of machines to increase productivity and most drudge work will now be done by machines. The effect will be that everyone will have reduced working hours for a shorter period of their life. Work will no longer be a necessity to survive but something people crave for the fulfillment it brings to their lives.

Because of a societal decision all work requiring intelligence or decision making will be reserved for human beings.

Elimination of the exploitative capitalist practice of producing goods in low wage countries will see the elimination of excessive wasted energy transporting goods as most food will be produced within 100 kilometres of where it is consumed and other goods within 500 kilometres.

With increased time for themselves education will be an important part of everyone’s life and as with health care, treated as a public good and paid for collectively. Arts and culture, theatre and music, will be emphasized with the emphasis on local artists and productions (rather than overpriced “superstars”) as well as outdoor recreation.

Small businesses, where the owner earns his income by working in the business, will be encouraged and supported. For large enterprises, ownership and control of the means of production (factories, computer facilities, etc) will reside with the workers producing the products or providing the services, most often through co-operatives, except for public services like education, health care and public utilities where control and ownership will reside with the people through their democratically elected governments. All workers will have an effective, not just theoretical, right to join a union and bargain collectively.

The overall philosophy of the society/economy will be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

The stages of corporate social media

Corporate social media essentially goes through three stages.

The first is new, free and wonderful, lots of functionality, user friendly and free, or at least pretending to be free. It’s purpose is to build a customer/product base (as the customer is the product).

The second stage is monetization. The purpose is to make money so once the free loss leader period is over measures to create revenue are introduced. These are usually things the users can live with and are introduced along with measures to make the customer dependent on the product.

Once that is achieved we move into stage three, equivalent to the final stage of capitalism. We move from earning a fair profit to profit maximization with no regard for the user, the assumption being that by this time the user is convinced their very existence is dependent on the product, also known as the Facebook effect.

With the introduction of Brand X, EvilElon is clearly telling us he is moving Twitter into Stage Three as capitalism moves into it’s final stage.

Should We Bring Back The Lord’s Day Act

No I am not going all religious on you This would be more of a Day for Humanity, a day that would not belong to the billionaires and millionaires but to the common people and the community.

This would be a day where all profit making activities would be banned except for activities necessary for essential public utilities and community and social services. Large scale profit making entertainment (including sports) would be banned except for local community based activities.

Perhaps most importantly all social media would shut down for the day and being constantly plugged into devices would be prohibited. Disable texting too and make people actually talk to each other

This would be a day for families of all kinds and the community to come together as people, not just as customers (or contacts), a day when our interactions with each other would not be transactional, a day that would proudly not contribute to the so called economy or the GDP or GNP.

A Day for Humanity, once a week.

Left, Right or Centre – Explainer

In today’s age of populism, with ideology apparently dead, how do you now if you are on the left or right or in the centre. There are indeed some basic philosophical positions that determine if you are on the right, left or in the centre.

If you are on the right you believe in individualism and the free market. Individualism rules supreme and there is no such thing as collective rights. You believe in the mantras that “acting in your own self interest is in the best interests of society” and “what is good for General Motors is good for America”.

You believe that almost everything, except perhaps policing and the military, is done best by the private sector and that the profit motive is the best motivator of people. Competition is the best way to provide progress and create wealth.

You believe in inequality because that is the best way to reward intelligence, talent and hard work. The poor are poor because they do not work hard enough.

You believe in small government whose role is essentially to protect private property rights. You think of taxes as something an outside entity (the government) takes from you, you may even refer to it as stealing. You may also believe in unfettered free speech.

If you are on the left you believe in community. You believe that individuals are not completely fulfilled unless they are part of a community. You believe in co-operation and working together for the common good. You care for others and believe everyone deserves respect and human dignity.

You believe everyone deserves a decent life and all work should receive a living wage with employment benefits, especially decent pensions. You believe the level of inequality in our society is immoral and billionaires should not exist.

You believe government exists to serve the common good by providing public services efficiently and reducing economic inequality in society. You believe taxes are how we collectively spend our money for the common good.

You may even believe that we have a responsibility to contribute to society according to our ability and society has a responsibility to provide for our basic needs, including food, clothing, housing, education and health care.

Those of you who claim to be in the centre are probably actually on the right but you believe government has a role in reducing the worst aspects of capitalism and providing a social safety net for the victims of capitalist excesses.

SocialCoin – The Socially Responsible Alternative to Bitcoin

 I am placing this concept in the public domain for anyone with the necessary technical skills to create the structures and necessary algorithms to implement it.

Wikipedia provides an extensive section on Bitcoin and in particular Bitcoin mining.

Essentially Bitcoin is created by an energy wasting computer process they call mining. The value (profit) is based on “proof of work” provided by the computer process and not by any product mined, as no product is produced in so-called Bitcoin mining. A computer algorithm determines the amount of value (profit) that accrues to the Bitcoin “miners:

So how does SocialCoin work. Mining SocialCoin involves utilizing energy, resources and labour to create social housing, But based on the Bitcoin model the value (profit) is not produced by the product created, so the housing created can be given freely to public or non-profit housing agencies, housing co-ops or directly to those needing housing. Like Bitcoin, the product created is irrelevant to the creation of SocialCoin. Like Bitcoin the value (profit) derived from mining SocialCoin is based on the work done and derived by a computer algorithm and accrues to the SocialCoin “miners”.

I challenge any economist to demonstrate that this concept is not as feasible as Bitcoin.

How to Make Credit Card Purchases Safer – Banks, Are You Paying Attention

Do you worry about the security of your credit card information when you provide it to lesser known merchants to make payments ? Do you worry that the information you provide to well known major merchants could be stolen as their databases are hacked as seems to happen regularly ? Do you wonder why merchants need to have access your credit card information ?

What if when you went to pay for goods online, or using merchant point of sale terminals, you were diverted to your bank’s credit card site where you could make payment using a secure transaction and have the bank send confirmation to the merchant that payment was made, without having to provide any personal financial information to the merchant. For recurring payments like monthly service fees the bank could provide an ongoing confirmation that expires on a date set by the purchaser. Would that make you feel more comfortable and more secure ?

I refuse to believe that in this day and age the technology to do this does not exist and I refuse to believe that nobody has thought of this before. I can only wonder who profits from retaining the current unsafe and insecure system for making credit card purchases.

Banks and credit card companies, are you paying attention ?

Build a Better City – The Ultimate Reality Show

The worlds biggest reality challenge - two groups of 10,000 workers in 100 groups of 100 each face of to see who can build the better city on two separate plots of virgin land.

The first group has each team of 100 competing with the other teams each trying to build a better section of the city as quickly and least costly as possible. No collaboration is allowed and absolutely no social engineering is allowed. Shareholder rewards is utmost. This is the free market group.

The other group, the central planning group, has all 100 teams meeting and planning together before working on their individual sections where they communicate all lessons learned to the other group. Social engineering is required and the groups are required to consult with the people that will be living in the city in the planning process.

Who will build the better city ? Will it be the capitalists or the socialists ? Will the result be Ottawa or Copenhagen ?

Happy New Years

Community

My New Years Resolution for our society is to no longer worship at the twin altars of individualism and technology but rather to embrace the saviour of community.

From the industrial revolution to the high tech revolution we have deluded ourselves that technology would solve all our problems. While technology may indeed have made the lives of the wealthy better, those at the bottom see much fewer of it's benefits and I have no doubt that it has contributed to the growing inequality in our society.

Individualism has been just as disappointing a solution to our problems benefiting only a select few individuals at the top with very little benefit “trickling down” to the bottom.

The fact is our problems are not technological but social and require sociological solutions. We are at our best when we work together as communities to improve the lives of everyone. If we want to build a better society we have to build better communities that serve everyone not just the privileged few.

We could even call this “communityism” but that's a bit awkward sounding so instead let's just go with social democracy.

Postscript

Philosophically thinking about the meaning of life and how our lives are just a tiny speck in the space-time continuum and how if you are someone who believes in community you will realize the only rational reason for living is to make other peoples lives better, while if you are an individualist you had better just hurry up and acquire as much stuff as you can before your time runs out.

Can America Be Saved

 I am writing this as a citizen of a world that no matter where we live are strongly impacted by whatever America does and whatever happens in America

America is celebrating but it will take a lot more than the end of the Trump presidency to save America. Trump promoted and encouraged, and even used the office of the presidency to legitimize the worst of America. The worst of America existed before Trump, was made stronger with Trump, and will continue after Trump. It's proponents may even become more strident.

Saving America will require government policy changes, legislative changes and even constitutional changes, but most of all cultural changes.

The toxic and partisan nature of American politics is not going away quickly or easily and the politicians are not going to solve America's problems. Toxic partisanship means ideas from the other side are rejected and fought against because they came from the other side and are thus seen as evil. In the rare case they may be seen as good ideas they are opposed rather than supported so the other side cannot take credit for them.

How are Americans to come together to solve their problems in this political atmosphere. I would propose a constituent assembly of Americans to propose solutions together. This assembly should be diverse, include all incomes, occupational groups and the unemployed, come from all regions, religions, including the non-religious, and include people of all sexual orientations and gender identification. It should also represent a broad variety of political philosophies while purposely not considering party affiliations in the choice of participants.

They should sit down together as Americans to find away to make America the country that it can be and their political leaders should commit to implementing the required changes no matter how difficult it will be politically.

Now I can stop here and say let Americans fix America, but being who I am I cannot do that without proposing some solutions for some of the most obvious and worst problems facing America.

We just came through an American election so let us look at that first.

Election day is when almost all elected American officials are elected, federal, state and local. Nobody talks about this but that in itself is a major problem for democracy. Voters are expected to be able to make choices about who they want to represent them for a large multitude of offices. Can they really absorb and analyze all the information necessary to make informed decisions. This system, I believe, encourages voters to just give up on deciding who to vote for and just vote a straight "party ticket", further strengthening the hold of toxic partisanship on America's political culture.

The other fact, strange to me and I suspect the rest of the world outside America, is that America holds 50 separate elections for federal offices each with separate rules. How can every vote be equal when there are 50 different sets of rules for voters.

And then there is the election of the President by the Electoral College where some states elect more than twice as many electors per voter as other states, not to mention the fact that the winner take all system means close to 50 percent of a states votes may not count at all in the presidential election if the parties are close in that state.

The Electoral College supposedly protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority but is that not the Senate's role where Senators elected by a minority of voters have a veto over legislation passed by Representatives representing a majority of voters. The Electoral College system is more akin to the Tyranny of the Minority. Everyone voting for President should have an equal vote otherwise the President does not represent all Americans equally.

We have not even mentioned the fact the elections are run and controlled by (state) politicians where gerrymandering, voter suppression and other shenanigans are considered fair game as long as you can get away with it. American elections are simply a power game with only lip service played to democracy.

Other countries do it differently. Elections cannot be fair if they are controlled by one of the parties seeking office. America needs to have an impartial non-partisan agency to control their elections, and for federal elections the rules must be the same for all Americans. America should look at the Elections Canada model, perhaps the fairest and most effective model in the world, that not only ensures elections are fair but facilitates encourages the electorate to get out and vote.

‘A crazy system’: U.S. voters face huge lines and gerrymandering. How Elections Canada makes a world of difference north of the border (Toronto Star)

Elections Canada says its system protects Canadian voters from U.S.-style drama (CBC News) 

And then we have the American justice system where we have a misguided understanding of what democracy means.

In a democracy the laws should certainly be written by the elected representatives. However the application of those laws and the adjudication of them is something that must be done according to those laws, not according to the whims of public opinion. The police and prosecutors should enforce the law as it is written and judges should interpret it that way. There should never be a conflict between doing the right thing and keeping their jobs. But this is exactly what making these positions elected positions does. It makes law enforcement and the courts a matter of political partisanship and public opinion where they should only be guided by law and fact. We see this extended to an extreme in the appointment process for the United States Supreme Court.

The United States must depoliticize the legal and court system if it wants to be a true democracy and it must reform the Supreme Court appointment process.

They would be wise to look at the Canadian experience where one cannot predict how Canadian Supreme Court justices will rule based on who appointed them.

Nothing separates America from the rest of the western world more than the violent nature of their society, and in particular American gun culture, which is somehow grounded in the Second Amendment, considered part of the United States Bill of Rights.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed [Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia]

Oddly most Americans, apparently including their Supreme Court, seem to ignore the first part of that statement.

Why a clause providing a right to own the means of mass murder would be included in a document intended to protect human rights only the Americans can answer, but I suspect the answer would not be very convincing.

The most compelling argument seems to be that America has become such an irreversibly dangerous and violent and lawless society that it is a necessity for everyone to be armed. I prefer to retain hope that America need not be such a society. However, regulating and reducing gun ownership is an absolute necessity to eliminating American's crime and violence epidemic.

The rest of the civilized world seems to manage quite well by considering firearms ownership to be a highly regulated privilege similar to automobile ownership but America seems to believe it is still living in the era of the wild west.

Compounding the problem of the Second Amendment is the American absolutist approach to rights, which makes it not only impossible to properly regulate gun ownership but also makes it near impossible to outlaw hate speech or prevent terrorist white supremacist war lords from forming private armies and using them to intimidate other citizens, usually non-whites or non-Christians, not to mention their threat to democracy itself.

A charter of rights need not be absolutist, as clause 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms demonstrates:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982]

I must say that the Supreme Court of Canada has done an admirable job in interpreting that clause in a reasonable fashion, without any sign of political partisanship.

We have looked at issues that have the most obvious legislative and constitutional solutions. We are not going to attempt to deal with all the challenges facing America today, including race relations, police misconduct, misogyny, sexual inequality, LBGTQ rights, Islamophobia, anti-science attitudes, and on and on. Most of these issues require changes beyond public policy, changes to the social culture of America.

But we would be remiss if we did not examine the two pillars that make America what it is, and I believe hold it back from what it could be, the worship of unbridled capitalism and individualism, coupled with an irrational fear of "socialist" ideas.

Interestingly enough U.S. News & World Report has just issued it's quality of life ratings and the top 10 countries are countries with "socialist" ideas.

Meanwhile, under American capitalism income inequality today may be higher today than in any other era. As an example, Amazon's Jeff Bezos made 1.2 million times the median Amazon employee in 2017.

Of course he receives that income because he works 1.2 million times as hard as the workers that actually provide the services Amazon sells. It has nothing to do with worker exploitation or predatory business practices.

Amazon is only one example of how American capitalism has come to work. America is a long way from the theoretical pretense of fair profits and and decent wages and working conditions.

American capitalism is inextricably intertwined with American individualism and the idea that not only can anybody, but everybody, can become a millionaire. There is no need for redistribution of wealth when capitalism can create an unlimited amount of wealth. There is no such thing as limits to growth as the earth has unlimited resources and energy and the planet has an unlimited ability to absorb the effects of unbridled industrial capitalism. All of this of course is what the experts refer to as bullshit but it drives the American capitalist philosophy because it is a simple answer to so many complicated questions.

It is this frame of mind that links capitalism to individualism and the idea that if everybody acts in their own self interests the interests of society as a whole will be served and the somewhat related credo that "what's good for General Motors is good for America". This is what enables so many Americans to put the interests of the wealthy and corporations before all else and explains why so many voters tend to vote against their own self interests.

It also explains the hesitance of so many in America, during this global pandemic, to make small sacrifices of individual freedom, like wearing a mask, for the sake of saving the lives of their fellow Americans and their willingness to simply disregard the advice of experts when it is inconvenient for them. Contrast that with other western countries where the sense of community is much stronger than individualism and the infection and death rates are much lower.

Electing a leader that does not depend on the worst of America for his base of support will certainly help but if America wants to solve its problems it needs to build a sense of community. America has massive problems that will require much more than people seeking to serve their own self interests. They require people working together for the good of the whole society.

It is becoming obvious that the measures necessary to fix American society will require a tremendous amount of political will and fundamental cultural changes. No doubt the usual political observers and experts will all agree that that simply is not possible. We know who failed to even try, but can the American people Make America Great Again.