The End of Capitalism
Today, the capitalist economy is accepted, in which the means of production are privately owned. The capitalist form of production, based on the competition of private entrepreneurs, has created the most efficient allocation of economic resources ever. Thus, capitalism has achieved the highest productivity in economic history, establishing the highest growth in living standards. However, the competition among private entrepreneurs has considerable disadvantages. The better producer wins and pushes the less competitive producers out of the market. Winners take all, and the losers get nothing. That is why capitalism is brutal. Its byproducts are fear, greed, and the struggle for survival in the market. This struggle is objectively unnecessary because current production is strong enough to meet people’s needs efficiently.
Capitalists systematically exploit workers by taking a part of the income that should belong to workers. Although there is no objective method for determining the level of exploitation, one can say that exploitation is the difference between the cost of work freely formed in the fair labour market, where workers may choose their jobs, and the cost when they must take jobs because they need to earn money for a living. Unemployed workers must accept any job to feed their families. That is why capitalism deliberately maintains unemployment at around 5 percent. There are various ways to regulate this unemployment rate, including importing labour and raising interest rates. High-interest rates increase the cost of production, reduce demand for goods and then, of course, decrease demand for work. Capitalism relies on the free market, but it consciously narrows the labour market to exploit workers more effectively.
Exploitation can be eliminated by removing unemployment through state regulation. If governments set shorter working hours in proportion to the unemployment rate, this would balance job posts and workers. Workers could then request wages they consider appropriate for the tasks they perform, and they wouldn’t be exploited. This measure would improve relations in the production process, provide workers with more stable income, and, consequently, stabilize production. Society as a whole would greatly benefit from this. So why has nobody ever proposed such a simple measure? This is because increasing workers’ incomes reduces capitalist profits, which is why capitalism opposes it. Capitalism is immoral, and that is the reason we live in immoral times. Such immorality must end if humanity wants a promising future.
Capitalism is very demanding in its deprivation of people’s freedom. In today’s society, virtually only capital is free. People have developed only consumer freedom on which capitalism bases its survival. Therefore, excessive consumption has become established in the modern world, serving its own purpose. I don’t understand people who buy carts full of useless, cheap goods, primarily produced in China, that quickly become trash and still add expenses because they must be transported to a waste facility. Regardless, citizens in the developed world treat consumption as a maximal value. Capitalism has deliberately imposed this alienation on people through extensive propaganda. In the developed world, consumption reaches its limit when it can no longer objectively improve consumers' lives, just as a well-fed person cannot enjoy eating more food. However, because of significant alienation, consumers aren’t aware of it.
Economic Crises
Economic crises are integral to the capitalist system. Crises arise from an imbalance between supply and demand. Capitalism has no solution that can prevent a crisis because production depends on free competition among manufacturers in an unpredictable market. The cycles of production expansion and recession accelerate, leading to more frequent economic instability and crises of capitalism. I think that the frequency of crises will soon force people to seek a better solution than capitalism. Finally, I would like to say that capitalism exploits the planet’s natural resources on a massive scale. Earth's limited resources are a final limit on economic growth and an insurmountable obstacle to capitalism's survival.
Capitalism cannot escape economic crises, but sound economic policy can reduce disasters. Such policy is unpopular in the capitalist world because it diminishes the freedom of capitalist entrepreneurs. The big financial crisis occurred in 2008 in the U.S. To ensure economic growth, survival, and profit maximization, U.S. banks began offering loans to virtually anyone who requested them. The banks decided that credit backed by insurance companies was a sufficient guarantee for their investments. People saw the potential for quick profits and demanded relatively cheap bank loans, which they used to buy, build, and sell houses. Initially, the entire U.S. economy benefited significantly.
The most prominent economic experts on American capitalism have enjoyed the benefits of the economy, and they didn’t want to acknowledge that a significant expansion of production naturally brings culmination, saturation, and stagnation, often ending in a recession. It happened relatively quickly. Overproduction of apartments and houses by high-profit businesses struggled to find buyers. A production recession is a catastrophe for a debt-based economy. When manufacturers cannot earn enough money to repay their bank loans, they often go bankrupt.
Individual cases are not a problem because banks can recover their claims by selling the debtors’ mortgages. During the massive manufacturing recession that began in the United States, many debtors emerged who could not repay their loans and were forced to declare bankruptcy. Banks could no longer recover money from loans because they couldn’t sell the mortgages, even at reduced prices. The massive recession pushed banks to the brink of bankruptcy. To make matters worse, a liberal economy expanded across almost the entire world, making the world mutually dependent. This is how the world economic crisis started.
The American economy
Banks lead the economy of capitalism. Bank failures can trigger an economic collapse. That is why states prevent bank bankruptcies through bailouts. Rescuing banks deviates from the basic principles of liberal capitalism because a company that doesn’t preserve liquidity in capitalism disappears. One can even say that the state rescues capitalism by using socialist measures.
The U.S. rescues private banks by borrowing money from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The U.S. Federal Reserve is the central bank, which is also privately owned. This means the U.S. rescues private banks by taking on debt with the world's largest private bank. The U.S. Federal Reserve owns the U.S. national debt. The total U.S. national debt equals the sum of all domestic annual costs minus the income taxes U.S. citizens pay each year. So, re-borrowing with the Federal Reserve Bank renews this debt. The U.S. Federal Reserve doesn’t have enough money to lend to the U.S., so it also emits money from “thin air” to meet the country’s needs. American citizens pay for the U.S. federal debt through income taxes. Does that mean the U.S. bails out private banks by using money that American citizens return to the central bank? It is quite possible.
The bailout cost somewhere around one trillion dollars. The banks were supposed to return the money, but did they? The banking system is very complex and, as such, creates grey zones where corruption rules. The wealthy in the US have so much influence that they can legalize what would usually be considered a crime. After the bailout, the national debt increased by about one trillion dollars and kept growing, showing that the debtor was unable to pay it off. The Federal Reserve Bank helped private banks, but not the people. I firmly believe that the American people will pay a significant portion of private banks’ debt through taxes. This is an injustice.
The owners of the U.S. Federal Reserve possess immense wealth. They regularly collect interest from the U.S. national debt, and, of course, they do not receive any interest on the American national debt. In fact, their interest is for the debt to keep growing because that way, they achieve greater exploitation of the American people. The only concern that they have stems from the fact that they do not want to kill the cow they milk. That is the reason they have almost eliminated interest, the symbol of capitalism. Does it not indicate the end of capitalism?
However, even so, the American Government cannot use tax money because it all goes to loan repayment. So the U.S. government funds its current costs with new loans to the same bank. The owners of the Federal Reserve are legal pirates. They have managed to impose on the American people, through organized media propaganda and corruption of politicians, that their piracy is the most normal thing in the world.
The U.S. Government must have the right to issue money through the Federal Reserve; otherwise, the American people cannot escape the problem. However, it might be challenging to do it. President John F. Kennedy did precisely this by Executive Order No. 11110. Soon after that, he was killed. President Lyndon Johnson revoked Executive Order No. 11110 immediately after Kennedy's death. The American debt is growing steadily, creating a massive problem for the future.
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Capitalism is based on a debt economy, which is the leading cause of today’s economic crisis. However, the media explains the situation as greater consumption than earnings. I don’t think this explanation is good enough. The market produces far more goods than consumers can afford to buy. The market balances it, but anyway, this is the source of the crisis. The crisis results from considerable disparities in people’s earnings. Some people earn too much, and others too little. To buy necessary goods, those with too little often take on interest-bearing debt from those with too much. When debts accumulate, debtors can no longer afford to buy new goods because they must repay their debts. This debt restrains the economy. One can say capitalism suffocates itself.
The American industry is also in big trouble. In a consumer-saturated society, one cannot produce goods for unknown consumers and expect them to be thrilled enough to buy them. Capitalism is based on the fear of survival. That fear works counterproductively for capitalism during a recession. When a recession hits, workers and companies become anxious about their future, so they hold onto their money because it feels like a guarantee of survival in an uncertain future. They then cut spending and stop buying goods. This significantly affects companies because they cannot sell their products, creating substantial difficulties that can lead to financial instability and potentially bankruptcy. Workers lose their jobs in massive numbers, lose income, and cannot buy goods as the crisis deepens.
A similar economic crisis occurred in 1929 due to deflation. Evidence suggests the crisis was driven primarily by major capital, which withdrew money from the market, causing many companies to go bankrupt. At that time, the state hadn’t even tried to save the economy. In this way, the largest capital took wealth from bankrupt people and increased its power.
The crisis today differs from the Great Depression of 1929 in that the U.S. intends to save the American economy. The decline of the American economy would remove the U.S. as the dominant global power and potentially elevate China or another country to the top. This is the worst nightmare for the carriers of U.S. capitalism, so they cannot allow it. The American economy will benefit from the U.S. financial assistance this time.
Creating money out of thin air typically leads to inflation, which decreases the value of money. Inflation encourages consumption, which renews the economy. Despite the massive issuance of U.S. dollars, inflation remains relatively low. This is partly because the U.S. gives the impression that it repays borrowed money, even though the debt is recalculated constantly and continues to grow. Inflation is also not high because payment transactions worldwide are primarily conducted in U.S. dollars. Virtually all countries maintain the U.S. dollar's value in their economies, which gives the dollar a higher value than it deserves in America. The emission of the U.S. dollar is, in fact, a form of exploitation of all countries worldwide.
However, the U.S. dollar's emissions needed to bail out the economy are so significant that they will undoubtedly lead to inflation. Inflation is undesirable to those with substantial wealth because it erodes the value of their money, but it is still a far better alternative than the collapse of the American economy. After that, the U.S. dollar may no longer be the only world currency. However, I believe the most significant challenge facing the U.S. economy is the exodus of U.S. manufacturers to countries with lower production costs. If the U.S. does not sufficiently re-establish its production capacity and reduce its costs, especially those related to imperialism, it may perish. I believe that the mistakes in American policy have been so significant that the U.S. will, in the foreseeable future, lose its political and economic primacy in the world. It is not even wrong because more equitable countries create more equitable people.
The American President
The new President of the U.S., Barack Obama, has received significant support from the American people, and perhaps most importantly, from the media. It indicated to me that considerable capital had accepted him as an appropriate person to follow its interests while making an impression to follow the interests of the people. Barack Obama will try to reduce tensions in American society through his character and abilities. I believe that U.S. President Barack Obama will reform the U.S. healthcare system, bringing the U.S. closer to the health standards of the developed world.
Americans, like citizens of all other nations, are taught to believe that a good, democratically elected leader can solve their problems. First, there is no option for such beliefs, and second, these beliefs are wrong. Second, power corrupts, and practically incorruptible people do not exist. Additionally, wealthy individuals wield more influence than American leaders. They pressure U.S. presidents from all sides, including the media and the advisors they control, convincing presidents that the option they represent is best. Under such pressure, Obama declared the war in Afghanistan righteous even though it can never be. Furthermore, U.S. politics in Afghanistan have not achieved success. One cannot win people who are willing to give their lives for the goals they believe in. The only good thing President Obama can do in Afghanistan is to stop the war, but it would confront him with wealthy people who profit well from that war and on which he very much depends.
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Technically, capitalism has room for improvement that could benefit society, but it is very close to its limits. Capitalism is not an ideal system. Capitalism is immoral. Capitalism is based on the privileges of authorities and the powerlessness of ordinary people. Privileges are unjust and create alienation. As long as society has injustice and alienation, it cannot be good. Capitalism is not a sufficiently rational system because it requires too much unnecessary work. Capitalism cannot establish stable production and therefore cannot establish a stable society. That is the reason capitalism cannot prosper.
Capitalism suffers in production-saturated societies but prospers well in scarce societies. That is why capitalism often seeks help in wars, in which it destroys everything and effectively restarts its development from scratch. Capitalism may emerge from a crisis; however, one should not focus on helping capitalism survive, but on creating a far better system than capitalism for all people. Such a system must take power from authorities and give it to the people, and this will resolve all social problems associated with capitalism. I have proposed such a system, but it is so different from existing models that people cannot readily accept it, even though it would make life far better for everyone. However, my proposal may open discussion, which, in time, may bring a better future for humankind closer.
The New Social System: Humanism
The new democratic tax policy is a necessity
States plan and order their spending. Countries are the largest consumers and can therefore stabilize production on a grand scale. Today, elected representatives do this. The future of democracy will no longer depend on privileged elected representatives in parliaments and leadership. Advances in computer technology enable people to participate directly in making key decisions of common interest. Individuals will directly shape a society’s policy, and in the first place, its economic policies.
People will be particularly interested in deciding on the society's macroeconomic policies. The state budget will be created through a direct democracy process. People will directly determine how much money they want to set aside for taxation from their gross income. The sum of all such decisions will form the total tax in society. Please don't get me wrong. This does not mean that each person will pay as much tax as they wish. It means people will participate in forming the state budget, and then pay taxes according to the amount of their income.
Furthermore, every person can decide how the tax money will be spent. Each person will determine how much of their tax money should be allocated for: the defence of the state, public security, education, health, housing, recreation, building infrastructure, etc. Theoretically, people can decide on collective consumption within the groups as much as they want. They will have a far greater overall impact if they are democratically allocated. In this way, people will become active members of society and therefore accept their community more readily. Collective consumption will no longer be alienated from society. Through lived experience, people will learn how much money to collect in taxes and the best way to spend it. Thus, this spending will follow people's needs as efficiently as possible. Once people have the power to decide directly, they will be so satisfied that they will not allow anyone to take that power away from them.
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The measures I have mentioned so far can be applied in a capitalist system. The new system that I have proposed accepts the model of the market economy. Private companies will continue to operate as they do today. Significant changes are expected to occur in public companies. They will organize new production that is far more productive than private companies can achieve.
In capitalism, the prevailing opinion is that states are poor businessmen. So far, that is relatively true. This is because state-sector workers enjoy more privileged working conditions than those in private companies. Because the state sector philosophy inadequately interprets workers' rights, state-sector jobs are generally protected. Workers can hardly lose their jobs even if their work performance is weak, unlike those in privately owned companies. Workers in public or state companies often lack sufficient income-based incentives to work more. Good work is usually not paid better than poor work. Workers in the state sector, especially managers, can often benefit more from corruption at the company's expense than from their work. As a result, state companies lose the productivity battle against private enterprises. Privileged jobs, poor wage policies, and corruption contribute to state companies' low productivity. However, by the structure of production, the state-owned companies are hardly different from the capitalist system of production, and therefore, the result of work in state-owned companies should not be worse than that in privately owned companies. However, it may be much better.
Although workers in private companies generally have fewer privileges than those in public companies, they still have some. Most jobs are already filled and unavailable to other workers, even if those workers might be more productive. Additionally, American corporate management is often compensated with severance packages in the millions of dollars, even if they have damaged their companies through incompetence. Why is that? Capitalists invest in attracting loyal and trustworthy subordinates, which is, in fact, a form of corruption. Also, they need buffer zones between themselves and the low-paid, exploited workers, which helps balance extreme inequality.
All privileges must end. A good economy requires abolishing privileged work positions. One should prioritize workers' economic well-being over job security. Every worker should have access to every work post. This would be accomplished by assigning every public job to the best available worker. Additionally, it is essential to establish a transparent and objective system of remuneration for each employee, rewarding good work and punishing poor work. These measures will build a sound economic future.
The new division of work is a necessity
State-owned companies will adopt an entirely new economic system that will be far more economically productive than private companies. Firstly, the changes will affect the division of labour. No distribution of labour is fairer or better than open-market competition for every position. The worker who envisages and offers the highest productivity for any public work post at any time will get the job. Productivity can be measured by the amount of money earned, the quality and quantity of goods produced, or by clients' evaluations of workers' productivity. A worker who offers more profit, better manufactured goods, or cleaner, cheaper production will get the job. That is an idea. Determining how to make such changes to bring the most advantages and the least possible disadvantages to society is a technical question. I have outlined a fairly comprehensive solution in my book Humanism, but it will likely need further development before implementation.
This kind of labour division naturally requires equality between the number of work posts and the number of workers. Otherwise, it could lead to unnecessary fights for jobs. The new system will make full employment a reality. If creating new work positions is not necessary, full employment can be achieved by reducing work hours proportionally to the unemployment rate. Under the new system, each job will also be equally desirable. This will be accomplished by giving the job with defined productivity to the worker who demands the lowest price for current labour and, consequently, a lower income. The price of the work will be one factor determining salary levels. Therefore, better jobs will realize relatively lower incomes, and worse jobs will be compensated through relatively higher incomes. This way, the labour market will establish an objective measure of direct work value and balance the interests of all job postings. Since workers themselves will set the price of their current labour, they will, by the same token, be most satisfied with their earnings.
The system would have no meaning if workers achieve greater competitive power by offering productivity they could not realize. Today’s politicians do precisely that, for example. The new economy will form a very effective system of accountability for realizing the productivity workers offer, so they would not dare offer productivity they cannot accomplish.
No economy can be more productive than one where the best available worker is assigned to each job. Such an economy will easily become significantly more productive than the capitalist one, forcing the latter to recede. Additionally, workers will no longer be interested in working for private enterprises where they lack sufficient freedom to choose their jobs or determine their income, nor do they have the opportunity to share in the profits. In the new system, workers will participate in the distribution of profits, which, as a rule, is not the case in private companies. Soon after this system is implemented, private enterprises will be required to withdraw from the existing system and join the new one. Their companies will adequately compensate them.
Defining the value of man’s productive power is a necessity
To create a good society, one must define and accept all values essential to the community. Then, one must determine which of these values each person possesses. The sum of all values a person creates throughout his life, expressed as a numerical value, may be called human productive power. Human productive power will be one of the most critical factors that determine the amount of workers’ income. This value will be significant.
The value of human productive power will incorporate, firstly, capitalist values, such as real estate, money, shares, and all assets that capitalism recognizes as valuable. This measure will resemble a free association of private enterprises, although the merger will be achieved under intense pressure from the higher productivity of public companies. Owners of private companies will receive stock in the integrated company for their ownership. They will also find an interest in the fact that a merged company would be more stable amid change.
This would, in principle, mean that former owners would realize smaller profits in good businesses of the merged corporation, but also smaller losses in bad businesses, because the large corporation would absorb disturbances in market earnings. Additionally, the corporation's production will be more stable because it will increasingly be based on customer orders. If owners of private companies had the option to join such a company today, they would most likely do so because it would save more of their capital value during frequent crises of capitalism.
The value of human productive power can establish an effective system of worker responsibilities for realizing the offered productivity in the production process. Workers can increase their competitiveness in the desired workplace by being offered greater responsibility for their jobs. Responsibility will be expressed in numerical terms. The higher the number, the greater the responsibility and the greater the right to work. This is an idea I hint at here. You can't understand it well enough without reading and analyzing the book Humanism. The same goes for most of the new ideas I am presenting here. The higher responsibility will naturally result in a larger share of profit, provided the company’s profit increases. Such profit will now be expressed in a value that reflects the workers’ human productive power. And vice versa, in the case of production losses, workers who assume higher responsibility for their work will experience more significant declines in value, representing their reduced productive power.
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The good future of humankind cannot be based solely on the value of capital. Person needs to become the most significant value, and this orientation can be stimulated by the value that represents human productive power. Besides the capital-based value that represents an element of human productive power, we need to recognize and include all other values that society accepts or should accept. These include people themselves, their education, work experience, contributions they have made, and awards they have received for creating value in society, among others. Pooling different forms of value will require a comprehensive study and, indeed, complex negotiations. However, over time, society could establish new, democratically regulated standards for all values it can create. Such regulation would automatically apply whenever necessary.
If society wants to stimulate education, it might consider raising the value of awards for higher education that represent human productive power. For example, if a region has a too low birth rate, people may decide to reward parents with more children by assigning this kind of value. And vice versa, if a region has too high a birth rate, people may decide to punish parents who have more children by a particular value representing human productive power.
Disobedience to the law will especially affect the value of personal productive power. If a person acts against the law, they will lose a legally defined value from their productive power. Existing laws can judge each crime and recalculate it into a value representing human productive power. If a person commits a severe crime, they may lose all the value associated with their productive power and even reach a negative value. The proposed system can make assigning such a negative productive value much more painful than prison, so prisons would no longer be needed. Each person will carefully avoid committing any crime. If a person still possesses such a negative productive power, they will try hard to rectify it, and that will only be possible through diligent productive work and outstanding behaviour over a long period.
Since most people likely wouldn't want their productive power to be compared to others, they may keep such a value secret, known only to the owner. However, that will not work for people who fall into the negative value of productive power. They will be very visible to everyone.
Society may regulate whatever it needs by evaluating human productive power. However, not all values can be regulated, because people have varying individual needs. Therefore, the value representing personal productive power should also depend on unregulated values, based on people’s opinions about others' free actions. This is an entirely new measure, and in my opinion, the most critical step for the future. I call it democratic anarchy.
Democratic anarchy is a necessity
Democratic anarchy is a new form of social relations, wherein every person exercises equal legislative, judicial and executive power in society. It is possible to accomplish it in a manner that gives each person the right to evaluate the activity of any other person. Each positive assessment should automatically increase the total value of productive power for the individual being assessed. On the other hand, any negative evaluation will result in a punishment of the same form. Let us say that the awards and penalties of such assessment would have an equivalent value of one dollar. If society feared individual power, the power of evaluation could be reduced. Even an assessment with power equivalent to just one cent would be enough to improve society.
Democratic anarchy would direct each member of society to create the greatest possible advantages for society and to diminish or abolish all forms of disadvantage. Given that all individuals will have an equal right to evaluation, and that they will provide their assessments independently of any written rules, such a democracy will assume the form of anarchy. In this straightforward way, the populus will, for the first time in the history of humankind, realize a great direct power in society, resulting in highly harmonious and constructive social relations.
Individuals will not have much power in society, but their collective evaluations will be very powerful. A person who receives many negative assessments would likely work hard to avoid doing anything that inconveniences others. Besides, someone who receives inadequate evaluations would never know who evaluated him negatively, so he would try to improve his behaviour toward everyone. This will take power away from privileged people; it will eliminate social evil and build a good society.
The system of democratic anarchy will especially affect authorities. The higher an authority's position in society, the greater its responsibility to society. For example, the president of the US might get 100,000,000 inadequate evaluations from the American people for bad policies, lies, and criminal aggression against countries. That would cost him $ 100,000,000 in just one month. Non-privileged presidents would no longer dare implement bad policies. However, if it happened, they would quickly abandon their positions. Only the most skilful and brave individuals would dare lead countries. They will no longer be authorities, but our servants.
Democratic anarchy is the most potent tool of justice ever. How come? The answer lies in time. There is a saying: “Silent water moves hills.” The lasting power of evaluation, even with as little as one dollar, will make people respect each other deeply. Human beings will become valuable. Everyone will try hard to please society in the best possible way. That will create a miracle no other tool of justice has ever made. That will create a sound and sane society. In the future, the system of evaluation will probably abolish state laws, police, military force, and even states. Nobody will need them anymore. A perfect society will be formed, and everyone will recognize that. Human civilization will become more prosperous than anyone can imagine today. I wrote more about democratic anarchy in the article The Future of Democracy.
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It is understandably desirable that the value of human productive power becomes very important to society, and therefore its acceptance should be additionally stimulated. This can be accomplished, first, by giving each person voting power in society proportionate to the value of his productive power. I mean a significant shift in the democratic system. Today, people have only the right to choose their parliamentary representatives. They have neither the opportunity nor the right to participate in other decisions that affect their interests in society. We need a compromise equally acceptable to all. Let each person have a right to participate in making any democratic decision in society, but let him earn this right by his productive contribution to the development of value in society. This system proposes unequal voting power, accepted by a consensus of political parties. In reality, it will contribute to the development of democracy because the people will, for the first time, have a direct opportunity to participate in decision-making regarding all matters that affect their interests.
Secondly, each person should get an income for work in publicly owned companies, proportionate to the total value of their productive power. The value of human productive power will thus become a humanistic form of shares. This measure will also encourage residents of specific regions to voluntarily merge their private companies into a single, larger “humanistic” company.
Thirdly, the value of personal productive power must be inherited through generations to be accepted. Through such measures, every member of society will recognize the value of human productive power as highly important; this will contribute significantly to society's development.
The economic security of people is a necessity
Capitalists are not interested at all in how consumers will make money to purchase the goods they produce, even though capitalist enterprises cannot survive without it. Liberal capitalism does not want to take care of the losers on the market, and this is another reason why capitalism must go down in history. The new system will ensure individuals' economic independence as a precondition for achieving freedom and the survival of society as a whole. Only one individual who is not adequately cared for economically may endanger the entire community. Additionally, the system of work competition requires a higher degree of economic security and stability than currently exists, so that each resident can receive some form of income. Individual income will depend primarily on a person's productive power, then on the price of current work, and finally on the level of productivity achieved.
People will also set the minimum earnings level directly. If workers’ interest in performing their work is insufficient, society may directly reduce the minimum income, which would stimulate workers to work more. If productivity is higher than necessary, the community will then raise the minimum salary and reduce income-based incentives to work.
Society as a whole will guarantee individuals' economic security and stability. This would remove the fear that rules much of the world today. If people were not afraid of their financial future, they would be spending money, and that would quickly pull the economy out of the crisis. However, capitalism finds the primary motivation for work in the fear of economic survival for workers, and that is the reason it cannot guarantee financial security to people. The new system will foster motivation for work through free choice and the satisfaction it brings.
Besides that, restoring demand would help capitalism's economic crisis, but this is not sufficient. Consumption already exceeds the real needs of people in the developed world. A long-term exit from humankind's crisis should come from changing the system of values that rules today.
To each according to their needs is the future of humankind
By that time, people will learn that collective consumption is far more rational and stable than individual consumption, so they will decide to allocate more of their gross income to taxes. The more people allocate to taxes, the more free goods and services will be available to meet society's collective needs. This is the expenditure that most developed democracies in today’s world largely allocate to national defence. Given that the new system offers stable and good relations among nations, people will no longer allocate money for the needs of armies, and armies will cease to exist. In the new system, war will no longer be possible. People will direct funds to meet the collective social needs. I mean vast amounts of money that can significantly improve society's standard of living. The new system will enable free individual consumption. Some states today offer free education and free health care; some states also distribute certain goods and services freely. Why would a new system not provide more?
People will undergo significant changes in the new system. I think that one faraway day, to establish a more stable and rational economy, all people will freely allocate all the money from their gross incomes for tax purposes. Then all goods and services will be freely available to all people. The goods will lose their alienated market value, but their use-value will remain. It will be worth the same as air is worth today. I am not talking about utopia or the oppression of people, but about an advanced technology system that will cater to the needs of the people. If even one person, however, preferred to keep their income, the completely free goods and services would not apply.
The conclusion
The new economy will naturally emerge, removing capitalism's shortcomings and ensuring further development of civilization. It will base production primarily on customer orders, ensuring stability. It will level market competition from the level of companies to the level of job postings. No economy is more productive than one in which each position gets the best possible worker, and that is why capitalism will fade from history. The new economy will eliminate capitalism's disadvantages and bring far more advantages to society. After capitalism, humanism will emerge as a system that better meets people's needs.
The political and economic model described here will improve the efficiency and stability of production, bring greater justice to the production and distribution process, and provide significantly higher benefits to all members of society. The open market of work posts will eliminate workers’ privileges. This will further eliminate corruption, the primary source of today’s immorality. The labour market will give people the freedom to choose jobs they prefer. Work will become an immediate value in itself, and people will enjoy working. People will be free. Freedom is a state in which people do not have to ask permission for anything from anyone except their conscience. Of course, freedom depends on having a conscience. Conscience will be built on a significant degree of defined responsibilities. Accountability will be so high that people will base their mutual relations on cooperation at all levels of human relationships, and in that manner, they will develop a productive society.
In general, this system will relieve people of authoritative pressure and give them the freedom to pursue their interests, while also fostering mutual respect. Such experience will demystify the alienated values authorities have imposed throughout history and teach people to live according to their proper nature, which will, in turn, free them from all types of alienation characteristic of present-day society. People will then realize where real values are. Furthermore, the system will teach people to align their needs with the possibilities of satisfying them. This is the primary prerequisite for overcoming destructiveness in society, as people who permanently satisfy their needs are less likely to be destructive. The proposed system promises a natural, harmonious and highly prosperous development of society.
Once this system is adopted in a smaller community, the people will make this community a beautiful place to live. When the rest of the world sees that, it will have no choice but to follow suit. The new system will establish a sound and sane society worldwide. It will build a bright future for humanity. In conclusion, the system I have proposed represents not only the best solution for the future of humankind but also the only reasonable one. It will bring prosperity to society regardless of the level of economic development. The biggest problem is the time needed for people to understand the system, accept and implement it.
Aleksandar Šarović
January 6, 2009
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