"While the capitalist mode of production has done a great deal to
accelerate the development of technology and increase the availability
of consumer goods in the last few centuries, it has outlived its
usefulness and has in fact become destructive. Inequality, unemployment,
financial crises, and environmental devestation [sic] all point toward
one inevitable conclusion: we must get rid of capitalism, once and for
all. Hence we ask that the President work with Congressional leaders to
develop a more just and sustainable economic system not based on the
profit motive or the exploitation of waged labor."--petition, WhiteHouse.gov, April 22, 2014
Solution: slavery!
The problem of waged labor is instantly solved, and no one will be working to make a personal profit. Next.
In other news...
"IKEA to Roll Out Vegetarian Meatballs"--headline, Puffington Host, April 23
TOF is not sure exactly what IKEA rolled out, but he is pretty sure it is not a MEATball.
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The petitioners think politicians are better equipped to create a post-capitalist society than economists and anthropologists. I doubt they noticed that slavery is the simplest option that meets the terms they've set.
ReplyDeleteThen again, politicians are in a better position to implement whatever changes they decide on (cf. ACA) than a bunch of, y'know, experts. Maybe the petitioners want an expedient change more than they want a positive one.
Not meatballs, but really! Who wants to eat "Vegetarian Balls"?
ReplyDeleteYou could just call them 'vegeteballs'.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, the only alternative to "exploitation of waged labor" is "exploitation of forced labor". At least if you're not all just going to forswear all technology later than the Neolithic.
ReplyDeleteIn any system whose economy does more than hunting-and-gathering or pure subsistence agriculture, you are never not going to have an elite. (And incidentally, "economy does more than brute subsistence" describes not only "advanced civilizations", but also most "tribal" cultures, e.g. in Polynesia, as well as many pastoralists. Think how old the caste system is, in India—well that wasn't the social stratification of a primarily urban culture for its first several thousand years. And we find the same stratification—warrior, priest, herdsman—throughout Europe, from Roman to Viking and Irishman to Kossack.) Since the "egalitarian" (because all equally hand-to-mouth) hunter-gatherer lifestyle is off the table, the only choices are whether the commoners that work for the elite are freely contracted into their labor, or coerced into it.