Hi,
One portion of these riff offs ended up turning into an extended rant about the future of capitalism. I thought it was better to handle the lengthy tirade in its own post – here it is, reader.
Socialism becomes feasible as monopolies develop in many industries because socialism tends to bring economic democracy wherever systems have lost the ability to regulate and encourage competition within markets.
Capitalism has two advantages over its direct competitors. First, its success in lifting billions of people out of poverty speaks for itself – no other method of social or economic organization has a remotely comparable track record. Second, the system has created permanent value for humanity by motivating inventors to create new technologies, medicines, and ideas that have propelled many societies upward from the drudgery, disease, and cruelty that defines almost all of human history. However, I don’t expect capitalism to stick around forever. To me, the system’s flaws are too obvious to ignore and I don’t think future societies will put up with them. The most significant of these flaws is the way capitalism’s winners are not compelled to alleviate the suffering of the system’s losers.
I think capitalism ends in one of two ways. The positive ending would involve the full eradication of poverty, disease, and conflict. This outcome would leave capitalism with nothing to accomplish and the system would gracefully cede the stage for the next act. I believe the trends are as positive as they have ever been. Poverty will be eradicated even if we do nothing more than wait for market forces to work while it is cheaper today for nations to buy enemies rather than wage wars of conquest against them. At this moment, I believe disease is the only open question, and given the nature of new diseases to step into the vacuums created by cures, the battle for new medicine may ultimately prove the strongest justification for maintaining a capitalist system. However, if we collective agreed that everyone had Enough and could conceive of a way to maintain the same level of current investment in disease research, I believe we could turn our focus to stabilize rather than demolish the hypothetical paradise I've just described in the above.
The negative ending is alluded to in my initial note – monopoly. This ending feels more likely to me because it is the fastest approaching natural equilibrium of the system. The system’s design flaw is the accumulation of wealth for the winners without a built-in redistribution mechanism to take care of the losers. This flaw is further emphasized when collective bouts of insanity lead communities, societies, and nations to reduce or eliminate the carefully constructed compensations, parachutes, and safety nets we've put in place for capitalism's losers. This form of madness is what allows billions to flow into research for rare disease cures while cheaper medical ‘innovations’ that would massively improve global health – like mosquito nets – remain lacking in areas of need.
To put it another way, if capitalism works out to something resembling a voting system where each dollar is worth one electoral vote, then we currently fall far short of the democratic ideal where each person gets the same say as another. The folks who need mosquito nets might win the popular vote but we cancer-fearing rich folks in the West prefer the electoral college. How long such a system can hold up is a compelling question. My bet is that in the same way democracies tend toward preserving the principle of one person having one vote, free societies built on a foundation of equality for all will tend toward limiting systems that give one person the power equivalent of multiple votes. The frustrating aspect here is that such a process will be slow. I suppose the bright side is that no matter how inevitable capitalism's vice-grip seems to be on the global economy, any individual committed to valuing others fairly and ensuring everyone gets their voice heard is making a small crack in the system's seemingly unshakable foundation.
