Futurismic

Honestly, I think it is the fundamental structure that is broken, and not just the manifestations thereof. We ought to have a transition that is at least as radical as the transition from monarchy to representative democracy.

In my opinion, our problem stems from two conditions.

First, the size of one’s impact, regardless the field in which the impact is to be made, is a product of our effort, our talent, and our access to capital (in the broadest sense of the word – economic, political, social, etc.). This means, very insidiously, that capital is much easier to maintain than it is to acquire, and that this is self-reinforcing. This means that unless capital accumulation is periodically broken up, it will inevitably centralise into an hourglass distribution with a few players holding all the cards.

Second, we enter the world without capital (and when we die we do not take any remaining capital with us). The question then becomes one of capital allocation. The original solution was inheritance (for all sorts of capital – political with monarchies and aristocracies, social with castes and racism). Indeed I would argue that a lot of social strictures (patriarchy, lifetime monogamy, etc.) were created to facilitate capital transmission through inheritance. The centralisation effect took place with kings gradually coming to own everything and the size of their kingdoms expanding.

The revolutions of the 18th-19th Centuries lessened the importance of inheritance in politics (though there are still plenty of political dynasties today). The Civil Rights movements of the 20th Century lessened the importance of inheritance for social capital. Economic capital, however, remains fundamentally tied to centralising, atemporal forces – both inheritance and the new solution of the corporation – a person-like actor in its ability to gradually build up capital, but without any limit of a natural lifespan.

What we need to do is break the means of centralising economic capital and transmitting it across generations, instead distributing capital equally to people at the start of their economically productive lives. This capital could then be used for entrepreneurship or be brought along to one’s chosen organisation of employ (and withdrawn at the end of employment), for a truly employee-owned structure. Moreover, provided the amount of the initial capital injection is large enough, poor people who are poor because they started out life poor (which, I would argue, is the vast majority) would no longer be around and in need of social assistance. Chesterton and Belloc were, in my opinion, quite rightly exploring similar ideas, though their exact suggestions (with a focus on the family) can stand to be improved upon.

There are other things to tweak when it comes to education (better if parallel with paid work – from a young age – and lifelong), healthcare (focus on prevention), and politics (stop the now-pointless geographical representation and switch to area-of-expertise representation, so instead of electing members of Congress for a district we elect them to handle foreign policy, or domestic economy, or law enforcement, etc.), but the capital access is the biggie.

Privilege should not be abolished outright, but neither should it be easier to keep than it is to get.

“Make lobbying with money of any kind illegal. Repeal laws that say corporations are people, too. Stop the need for vast fundraising machines (cap funding, fund candidates on the taxpayer dime, only at a much lower level, cap contributions more tightly – this can be done).”

In thinking about this over the course of the past few years I am extremely pessimistic this will ever happen. There’s no motive, no incentive for the majority of professional politicians to ever divest themselves of the money that flows through government. I’d love it if a Senator or congressperson the likes of Bernie Sanders was able to make this happen, but it’s too much for one person in such a system. I think the Wisconsin collective bargaining fiasco highlights this dramatically.

My only hope in a solution to this problem springs from the fledgling strategies of utilizing the tools that the internet and mobile connectivity can offer. If removing big corporate money from politics is improbable, we need to incorporate something completely different to do an end-run around it all. Both Ron Paul and Obama have leveraged small online donations to raise large sums of money; we need to look to something akin to this. Perhaps a free mobile app that tracks congressional debates and meeting schedules of all members of congress. It would alert you to when so and so is meeting with that large corporation that you believe is not serving the interest of the public. It would give you the email and phone number of said congress person so that active citizens could call before, during and after the meeting to relay voter concerns directly focus on allaying that specific lobbying effort. I’m just spitballing and hoping something sticks.

Thanks. Btw, I don’t spend much time on Facebook anymore, but I wonder if anyone from the Occupy movement (or related efforts to get word out) has considering buying targeted advertising on Facebook. After seeing stats on how many people are spending time playing Farmville alone, a small ad targeted to those players might help get the word out….

The majority of people are very very very reluctant to change and there hasn’t been nearly enough pain yet for the change to occur. Enough pain to create the Tea Party and Occupy, but not enough for them to accomlish anything. Not even enough pain for the Tea Party to fight off being co-opted by the crazies, which Occupy will have to face at some point.

Plus, more of the boomers need to become old and feeble, so they can’t put up any roadblocks.

Well, I’m a boomer. A lot of us were on the streets or sympathetic last time around in the 60′s/70′s. Tail end, mind you, but I believe we need change… I think we need hope, and big ideas. Thanks to Atimoshenko and Sam M_B for offering good conversation (Sam – these are the right kind of things to tweak the system hard if we can get them through. That’s the hard part). Atimoshenko – do you have links to Chesterson and Belloc, or other links to the idea you present in comments?

BCs sentiments are common. And the desire to dissociate political power from wealth – 1 “man”, 1 vote – has been around as long as a middle class has existed in Western society. A fine ideal but contrary to human nature. Power always gravitates toward wealth, and wealth is increasing more concentrated. (Read the Wiki article on “distribution of wealth” yourself)
The US Constitution was written with the specific intent of discouraging radical change. It’s writers were too shortsighted to foresee a time when rapid response to rapid change would be necessary.
And we – the USA, the West, what have you – doesn’t have time to “get it right”. The confluence of the depletion of natural resources, overpopulation, global warming, and the proliferation of WMDs will divert energy from solving problems toward the more immediate need to survive them. It’s going to go Darwinian out there.
“Sheesh, this guys depressing” Obviously, hope for the future lies with people with more positive attitude than me. In the meantime, I gotta call ‘em as I see ‘em.

I lived all my life at the subsistence, welfare, disability level. I never ‘overconsumed’ as much as people that couch-surfed at my place from the third world indicated that my consumption levels are not far off from third world consumption levels or general lifestyle.

I can’t see how my life would have to get much more ‘lean’ than it is. I can’t save on rent, energy or getting clothes – and I’d have less spending power the immediate consequence would be not having money to eat, or not having a roof over my head. Or not having access to rather heavy pain-control medication.

I will vote fully on laying a reduction of societal savings, and ‘lesser expectations’ somewhere else in society. You can’t take it from my end. If they’ll try I’ll freak out. Reduced expectations on my end will not translate to me starving or being homeless.

@Brenda
A lot of you might have been in the streets then, but the overall attitude of the boomers changed drastically from the 80′s on. I think Strauss and Howe got the big society arcs correct in their book The Fourth Turning.