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".

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.

Much Ado About Truckers and Building a Canadian White Supremacist Fascist Movement

So what is going on with the truckers. They are calling it a protest. But it is not like any protest I have ever been involved in.

Protests are designed to attempt to make change. While they may be aimed at getting governments to change their policies, gaining public support to pressure government is always an aim of legitimate protests. To get the public’s attention of course you need to get he media’s attention and that usually is done by means of a large protest or some form of disruption.

The truckers are in an excellent position to do that. Large transport trucks take up a lot of space, one truck can taker the space of 100 marching protesters, so they can easily make a protest appear to be larger than it actually is. And trucks can be disruptive. You want attention, block the streets and clog traffic. So do that for a day or weekend and you have the media’s attention and you can get your point across.

Of course the truckers argument against the government protecting the health of it’s citizens is a hard sell to the general public.

So while you might need some disruption to get peoples attention you do not want to alienate the public whose support you are trying to gain.

So blasting neighbourhoods with noise, shitting on peoples lawns, attacking them as they go about their daily business and otherwise harassing and terrorizing them is not what a protest is about. Neither is openly displaying signs and symbols of hate a tactic used to gain the general public’s support. That is aimed at a much smaller target audience.

So what is going on. This is clearly not aimed at gaining public support. Nobody thinks they are that stupid. Something else is going on here.

We have bullies using tactics that appeal to other bullies. I believe it is clear that this is a recruiting move aimed at the worst elements of our society, bringing them together to form some sort of comradeship and solidarity. And one cannot discount the usefulness of this as a dry run for something even more nefarious than terrorizing citizens, but a rehearsal for actual insurrection.

Any actual truckers involved are just being duped and used as pawns in something very dangerous. What we are seeing is just one component of the building of a white supremacist fascist movement in Canada aimed at destroying the very fabric of our society.

Intuitive Lessons from The Pandemic – A Fantasy

This post is not based on comprehensive research or particular expertise on my part. Rather it is more what we would have called “common sense” before Mike Harris completely destroyed the meaning of the phrase.

We start off with the most obvious. We need a public health care system that is not overloaded to begin with. We can solve two problems here, provide pandemic readiness and provide timely life enhancing health care. We currently provide timely care for life threatening situations like cancer, heart surgery and emergency trauma but have created an artificial class of so called “elective surgery” we consider to be of lesser importance. This includes things like hip and knee surgery and replacements and many other types of health care that are necessary to allow people to live fulfilling lives. Health care is much more than preventing premature deaths. If we provided the necessary resources to provide all necessary health care without unreasonable wait times we would have the capacity to deal with a pandemic without putting peoples lives at risk.

Equally obvious is the need to bring long term care into the public health care system. Before the pandemic the horror stories of private long term care were well known even if the body counts were not as inexcusable as they became with the pandemic meeting the profit motive.

And still looking at the health care system, why did doctors offices shut down or become virtual during the pandemic when they should have been part of the response to it. Family physicians provide the first source of diagnosis for many serious illnesses like heart disease and cancer where early detection can be a matter of life and death. The system may respond quickly when these diseases are diagnosed but it does not respond at all when they are not detected. And why was the network of family physicians not used for pandemic testing and vaccinations.

And what of government policies. The big thing we got right was vaccines. In comparison to some jurisdictions to the south of us, all jurisdictions understand the importance and effectiveness of vaccines. The federal government did an admirable job of making vaccines available to the provinces and the provinces did a decent job in administering them. The main things Ontario could have done better was utilizing doctors offices and the school system to more efficiently get vaccines to the public.

As to the timely and appropriate response to the threat that is where we could have done better. We knew it was coming but we didn’t know what it would be like so it was a learning process. There is lots to criticize in hindsight but more importantly is learning going forward.

The biggest lesson was that internationally jurisdictions that put public health first and took strong, even drastic, measures quickly were able to get out of it faster than those that took half measures being more concerned with protecting the so-called economy than the public’s health. Having a provincial leader that considered himself a “businessman first” and by implication a Premier second did not help. We are still stumbling through in Ontario.

What is saving us is our sense of community. This works on two levels. On the personal level, it means in our personal behaviour, such as distancing, mask wearing and getting vaccinated, we base our decisions not just on what will keep us safe but also on what will keep our neighbours safe. This has made the big difference on how Canada has fared, compared to the United States, who arguably had better resources available to fight the pandemic.

The other level is the collective level, our collective actions taken together through our governments.

Here we are talking about three levels of government, federal, provincial and local, sometimes with differing philosophies and priorities. We really need to find a way to make federalism work better in these sorts of, not just national but international emergencies, climate change being another example.

If the pandemic has shown us anything is that individual action cannot replace collective action, and some things are just done better by acting collectively rather than acting individually. This is where we need to do better, particularly by strengthening our health care system and providing social supports. We are not financially prepared for the next pandemic because the political parties in power have chosen to go down the populist road of under-taxation thinking that would buy them votes. This is perhaps the most disastrous public policy position of the last half century.

Fortunately, because of that trend, there is substantial room to increase taxes to fill the void, particularly on that portion of the population that are excessively wealthy and under-taxed. This is a group in society that actually stands to gain more from collective spending by government than they can from individual spending by themselves. There is only so much you can spend on a wealthy lifestyle and the benefits of a better society far outweigh the benefits of people who have everything buying more everything for themselves.

We can be better prepared next time, and there will be a next time, but only if we choose to.

And the fantasy part – the belief that those in power will actually choose to learn these lessons and implement the necessary measures.

The Argument for White Supremacy

It seems that the main argument of the white supremacists is that white western European countries would not have conquered the world if they were not superior societies.

Of course conquest and colonization involved looting, pillaging, plundering, murder, and rape. This theory assumes that societies that excel at violent conquest are superior societies. Interestingly these same societies demonstrate their violent priorities, particularly at times of financial crises, when cutbacks are made to education, health and social services while the military and police, the agencies of the state charged with violence, are prioritized and protected.

Indeed, perhaps the most successful (at gaining wealth and power over others) of these societies, while offering no right to education, health care or housing, provides a constitutional guarantee of the right to own weapons.

They say within every falsehood is a kernel of truth so I am willing to concede that perhaps the white supremacists, and the societies that they worship, may indeed be superior at violence.

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.

Lessons We Must Learn From COVID-19 to Build a Better Society

Community is the key to the future. Those societies that are fairing best in responding to COVID 19 are those with a strong sense of community. America's dismal response is not just because of Trump, but also due to the country's overemphasis on individualism over community.

Our public health care system, part of our collective sense of community, was key to our response. It made our ability to control the outbreak possible. But it is still flawed and could not respond was well as it should have because it is underfunded and incomplete. We saw that particularly in the for profit long term care sector, measured in body counts. We must complete the system by extending it to prescription drugs, vision and dental care and most importantly long term care of the elderly and home care. We must eliminate profit from the provision of health care so that patient care and profits are never competing for funds. Most importantly we must realize that health is the most important priority for everyone and under-funding health care in order to promise lower taxes is in nobody's best interest.

Our economic safety net was the next most important factor in our successful response. Unfortunately we did not have a proper system in place to respond and the government had to respond with a series of patchwork measures put together quickly which, while it managed to avoid the worst of our southern neighbours problems, it still left the most disadvantaged, well still disadvantaged. That series of measures, as necessary as they were, increased both the deficit and national debt because the government, that has been under-taxing the wealthy for decades, did not have the financial capability it should have.

What we needed and what we need is a basic guaranteed annual income, and not just one to keep people barely above the poverty line but one designed to provide a decent quality of life for everyone.

We say 'we are all in this together" but we clearly are not equally in this together and never will be as long as we live in a society of massive economic inequality.

We talk about groups such as seniors being more at risk but in reality the biggest risk factor with COVID 19 is economic status. Those placed at highest risk, our so-called front-line heroes, those responsible for producing and providing our food and goods, are working in cramped and unsafe conditions, along with those working in high risk long term care facilities, are the biggest group of COVID 19 victims. And these are the people most susceptible to the economic consequence of COVID 19, often living from paycheck to paycheck. A few extra dollars per hour for a few weeks is not the solution.

We must deal with the economic inequality in our society by raising incomes at the bottom and reducing them at the extreme top end. CEOs of corporations who make their profits and fortunes from minimum wage earners simply do not earn the millions of dollars per year they are paid. They are paid that because of an unequal economic and political system. We must reform our tax system so that those that can afford to pay more do and those at the bottom pay less at the same time as we reduce the gap between the bottom and the top.

We need to raise minimum wages to a level that provides a decent quality of live and use the tax system to redistribute the wealth of the excessively overpaid. We cannot build the type of community and society we need on a basis of extreme inequality.

We also cannot build the society we need without concern for the environment it lives within and without addressing the challenge of climate change.

We need to build a new society, based on community rather than individualism, if we want to meet the challenges of the future and this includes a move from more individual spending to more collective spending. Fundamental change is required if we are to survive the challenges of the future and thrive within it.

Also of Interest:

THE FIFTH COLUMN: Towards a Green Social Democratic Economy

THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Inequality, Democracy and Taxing the Rich – A Modest Proposal

THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Democracy

Happy New Year – We Are All Going to Die

Yes, we are all going to die and that's it, the end.

Except for the Christians, of course, they get to go to an afterlife of either heaven or hell. There seem to be two schools of thought on who goes where. One seems to believe good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. The other, more scripture based, says it does not matter whether you are good or bad, Jesus died for your sins so if you believe you go to heaven no matter how evil you are, and non-believers, no matter how good they are go to hell.

And then their are those that believe in reincarnation, that you come back in another life form, perhaps in another place, after death. The particulars of reincarnation, depending on belief, seem to be as varied as there are possibilities.

And then we have the Vikings. After death they go to live with the gods in Valhalla. But only if they die trying to kill other people. I do not know what happens to peaceful Vikings after they die.

These are, of course, all religious fables. I believe the technical term is “poppycock”.

As is the religion of individualism being so fervently promoted these days. This is represented by the promotion of the theory that “if everyone acts in their own self interest the best interests of society will be served”. This is just a way of trying to justify greed and promotes the idea that “he who has the most stuff when he dies wins”. Poppycock.

The fact is that our individual lives are just a tiny speck in the space time continuum, so tiny as to be meaningless by themselves. The only way our lives can have any real meaning is as part of a society that existed before we were born that will exist after we die. The only possible hope for any form of immortality, even just symbolically, is through what we do with our lives that leaves our society better after we die than before we were born.

The only New Year's Resolution anyone can make that means anything is “to make a difference”.

On Inequality, Democracy and Taxing the Rich – A Modest Proposal

No doubt many raised in our capitalist society, where inequality rules and excessive incomes and wealth are seen as a right (and where even the NDP only proposes a measly 1% tax on excessive wealth), will consider this proposal to be radical but it is actually quite a modest proposal.

So what is excessive income and wealth. There are many ways to measure that, many statistical, but I propose a simpler definition – the amount of wealth and income where increases have no discernible effect on ones way of life or standard of living, where the increase is simply not noticeable in one's day to day life. Let's be generous to the wealthy in determining such levels. I propose an annual income of $1 million dollars and total assets of $100 million as the level that triggers “excessive income and wealth”. Above that no one notices without reading their financial statements.

The thing about excessive wealth is that it makes minuscule difference to the recipients but could make all the world of difference to the poor and underprivileged and to society as a whole if used for the common good. I will not even attempt to list what all that excessive wealth could do if devoted to the common good of society .

But there is another side to excessive income and wealth – it is highly undemocratic. The rich do not cling to their excessive wealth because it makes a difference to their daily lives. They cling to it because it gives them economic and political power. It is not just a matter of economic inequality, is a matter of political inequality.

Democracy is based on equality, one person one vote. Economic power is political power. Excessive wealth skews political power so that the wealthy have more of it. Excessive wealth is inherently undemocratic.

So what do we do with this excessive wealth so that it benefits society. We tax it away so that it can be used for the common good.

This sounds radical at first. But what do the wealthy lose in this proposal. Their standard of living and quality of life does not change. They only thing they lose is their excessive economic and political power, power that undermines our democracy.

Postscript

In taxing away excessive wealth we cannot just require it's conversion to cash to be paid as taxes. That would obviously be very disruptive to the economic system. Society (through the government) will take ownership of these resources in kind and in many cases maintain them while applying revenues from them to the common good. In some cases they may need to change the policies of entities that are not acting in the public interest or divest ownership of entities where that serves the public interest.

Also this proposal does not address all the problems with our tax system. For it to be truly progressive we need to raise the income level that triggers the payment of taxes and increase the higher marginal tax rates, including adding marginal tax rates at higher income levels (between $200,000 and $1 million).

Primitive vs Civilized Societies

As someone born in 1950 and raised and educated in a Eurocentric culture I learned early that civilized societies are intellectually, socially, and technologically superior to primitive societies. This despite the fact that the indigenous peoples of this land I was born on have for centuries had their own distinct languages, long tradition of passing down oral history, sophisticated social structures, and technologies well suited to the land they live on.

Reflection on actual facts indicates the reality is that the real difference between civilized and primitive societies is that one is based on trying to conquer nature while the other is based on living in harmony with it and only one by it's very existence threatens the future of the human species.

What Are Cyclists Lives Worth

While I cannot answer that question I can tell you what our society and its governments have decided cyclists lives are not worth.

Cyclists lives are not worth the cost of installing truck side guards on all large trucks.

Cyclists lives are not worth the cost of developing and installing better mirror or camera monitoring systems for large trucks and all motor vehicles.

Cyclists lives are not worth the cost of designing and building roads that do not place cyclists in the path of other vehicles such as big trucks and then directs those vehicles into the cyclists.

Cyclists lives are not worth the cost of infrastructure that separates cyclists from motor vehicle traffic where appropriate such as on the most dangerous routes.

Cyclists lives are not worth the political will to require drivers, especially truck drivers, to have a legal responsibility to be able to see where their vehicle is going (and who they may be driving into and running over) before they go there.

And most importantly cyclists lives are not worth the elimination of the get out of jail free card that drivers that kill cyclists get for simply saying they didn't see the cyclist.

So what are are cyclists lives worth.

Note: this post does not refer to any specific incident.

Only in Celebrityland

Only in Celebrityland would there be any debate or controversy over whether a 44 year old who had sex with a thirteen year old after giving her alcohol and drugs should be held accountable for his crime, especially when he was in a position of authority over her.

It just amazes me that people are defending him, including the victim, who at the time certainly was in no position to consent, especially after being drugged, and who since has received a financial settlement from the rapist.

His crime was against society and society has a right and responsibility to hold him accountable in the name of all the other victims and potential victims of such crimes.

References:

CBC News: Polanski to fight extradition

Ottawa Citizen: Polanski held on decades-old charge

Can Sociology Save the World

This column is dedicated to my daughters who are studying Sociology at Ryerson University and Glendon College at York University.

When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s technology was going to save the world. It was going to create a new society of greater productivity, affluence and increased leisure time.

The increased productivity came, but at a cost. The affluence came, but for an increasingly smaller number as the prosperity gap increased giving truth to the proverbial phrase “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.

Those who benefited decided not to channel that increased productivity into more leisure time, or time for family, but instead channelled it into more things. According to capitalist economic theory that is supposed to trickle down to the working classes in the form of jobs creating those things. But even as we were buying more things we were reducing jobs by buying those things, including the basic necessities of life like clothing and food, from overseas where they were produced at below poverty wages. Better to get a good deal than provide jobs for our neighbours.

We are increasing that gap. At first it was low tech trinkets and tourist items that came from cheap labour markets, then it became clothing and household goods. The theory was that it was a waste for our educated highly developed society to produce such goods. I remember when Japanese automobiles first entered the North American markets and the jokes about them. We were shocked when the standard for quality in automobiles shifted from German and Italian workmanship to Japanese technology. And then of course there was the transistor radio and all the consumer electronics that followed.

Not so suddenly we had become a society that imported much of its basic necessities and toys (leisure goods) from overseas while our unemployment, poverty and crime increased. But all was well, as the rich decision makers were still getting richer while being isolated from the impacts.

Indeed we, as a society, led by the elites, began to convince ourselves that we could prosper on ideas alone. We did not have to produce any actual goods. Research and Development was the new Industrial Revolution. All we had to do was design things and have them produced elsewhere at cheap wages and we would prosper, or at least the establishment elites would prosper. So we thought.

But countries like China and India are learning that North America, and to some extent Europe, will not only buy cheaply produced goods but we will also buy cheaply produced ideas, as intellectual technology jobs are now being exported to low wage countries.

The irony, of course, is that to the corporate establishment that does not matter. They will see their profits and wealth increase as the very society they live in is disintegrating around them. And they could not have done it alone. The rest of society, or at least the “huddled masses”, had to buy into it. Considering the massive media and advertising empires the corporate establishment has under its control that is not surprising.

So is technology evil. The truth is technology has nothing to do with the current situation. We are in this state because of social decisions made by both the elites and the masses.

These are social decisions with enormous consequences. We have looked at the impact on the poverty gap but along with that are tremendous social impacts - the biggest being the loss of a sense of community. Why else would we throw our neighbours out of work and into poverty so we could buy cheaper shoes.

The other side of the leisure vs things equation is the environmental impact of the consumerism of those who benefit from the increased productivity. Producing all those things require resources and energy with tremendous environmental impact. Producing all of those things in “developing countries” with lower environmental standards increases that environmental impact and to an extent makes our so-called higher standards meaningless. And of course transporting them from the “third world” to the “first world” adds to the resources and energy used and the environmental impacts.

Increased leisure on the other hand, while having some environmental impact, as more people enjoy the environment, can provide experiences that enhance our understanding and respect for the environment.

Our society is finally beginning to recognize the fragile state of our environment just as we are at a pivotal point between being able to save the earth, and it being too late to stop the inevitable.

So what is the point. The point is that technology is not the issue. It never is. There is always technology. The issue is the decisions we make as a society about living together on the planet. The benefits and problems resulting from our decisions always come down to social ones. It is about how we live together.

The technicians will never be able to provide the answers. It is up to the sociologists to save the world.