3DN Systems to Complement the Market
By David Braden (CCAL30) (1822), Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:58:52 PDT Edited: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:46:37 PDT Comment feedback score: 0
Ravi, you say:
- The problems of wasted materials, of wasted human potential, and, wasted biological potential and even other resources are being attributed here to the interaction of the above three kinds of organizations.
- I am merely observing the flow of energy through the System. I do not blame this waste on these three kinds of organization any more than I would blame the lion for eating the gazelle, that is just the way it is.
- While I acknowledge that the behavior and interaction of a great many of these kinds of organizations generate such waste, this is not true of all of each kind of organization. Hence, this problem should not be attributed to these kinds of organizations, but to the kind of knowledge, knowhow, cultures and traditions suffered by many of them.
- Here we disagree. Changing the knowledge, knowhow, cultures and traditions will not change the nature of the organizations nor the purpose for which they are formed. The purpose of a business organization is to convert natural resources (including human talent) into money. We cannot expect such an organization to accept responsibility for anything other than fulfilling its purpose. Internalizing costs that are now external to its operation would make an organization uncompetitive.
- The government solution to underemployment is to tax business to provide welfare. That makes the taxed businesses uncompetitive with untaxed businesses in other jurisdictions and creates a class of people dependent on welfare. NGOs cannot provide a solution for the same reason. Giving people what they need to get by – instead of finding ways that they can provide for themselves – creates a dependency that is not healthy for the person receiving the gift nor for System function.
- Government might also regulate businesses to prevent pollution. That has the same problem of relative competitiveness across jurisdictions. However, if each community was using its local environment, those communities would not allow that environment to be polluted.
- Above all, it is far more difficult to build whole new kinds of organizations, especially when the kinds of values, knowledge and ideas among the people who comprise them, remain as contaminated as those among the people in the existing kinds of organizations.
- Again, I disagree. Just because something is difficult, does not mean that it should not be done. If the previous section of my response is correct, then we have no choice as the existing forms of organization are not capable of meeting the needs of those left out of the free market (nor healing the environment).
- Government's purpose is to set and enforce the rules by which organizations subject to its jurisdiction operate. The purpose of business is to make a profit. The purpose of charity is to prevent those left out of the economy from starving and/or rioting and to relieve the conscience of those who have prospered. There is a need for an organization with the purpose of providing for the needs of its members when those members cannot meet those needs by themselves.
- Actually, there is a prototype for what I am talking about in the family. Whereas the purpose of the business is to convert natural resources into money, it is the purpose of the family to acquire the resources to provide for the needs of the family members. Some families are better at that than others, but there is an interesting dynamic in that family members can reduce the cost of living for the family by producing goods and services for internal consumption. That dynamic can be (and often is) extended by the family engaging in a family business. What is to prevent us from applying that dynamic on a scale larger than the family. See Economics of Integrated Production
- There is another manifestation of this phenomenon that demonstrates the feasibility of what I am talking about. Repeatedly, when groups of young men find themselves without adequate economic opportunities, they will form gangs. Gangs are organizations with the purpose of providing for the needs of their members. Unfortunately for society, the economics of such gangs are based of the expropriation of the productivity of others and their social structure is a throw back to the “Big Man” structure of our post nomadic experience. Would it not make more sense to provide a productive means for these young men to participate in society? Do you see a way that changing corporate culture is going to solve that problem?
- I submit that we should not want to condemn lower skilled workers to remain manacled to these relatively repetitive and mindless activity that can easily be carried out without the knowledge and wisdom that defines the Networked Intelligence.
- There are some interesting issues about whether advances in productivity – resulting in growth in the economy – creates more jobs than it eliminates. My sense is that it may be technically true but it also results in an increasing disparity between a decreasing number of highly skilled highly paid workers and an increasing number of lower skilled service workers. I am also concerned that it is an unsustainable process. There may come a point where the number of highly paid workers can no longer support an increasing number of service workers which, when taken to its logical conclusion, results in the world having the capacity to produce an unlimited number of commodities but no one can afford to buy them.
- Surely, every low-paid manufacturing job that becomes extinct in a geography is an opportunity for us to have fewer of them in that geography, and enable us to become able to seek work, either there or elsewhere, that uses more of our intelligence, and thus allows us to grow toward our potential.
- I agree with this statement but not in the way that I think you mean it. I do not think that the highest use of human potential is working 40 years (60-80 hours a week) in business and retiring to Florida. If each of us had the opportunity to work at a slower pace, producing an abundance of basic goods and services for ourselves and our neighbors, while we are going to school, or retraining after a downsizing, or while our children are too young for school, or after a disability, and for those who cannot or choose not to seek a career in business or government, there might be a flowering of human creativity and certainly less stress in our lives.
- What are the specific weaknesses of the free enterprise system that you seek to correct, and how do you expect to correct them?
- As I said before, I do not seek to correct any weakness in the free enterprise system. It is a great system for the purposes it serves. But as you have said, the free enterprise system is only a subset of the System that includes everything, and the free enterprise system is not now well serving some 3 billion people. I do not see it as a challenge to the free enterprise system to try to find a way for those 3 billion people to use their otherwise wasted talents to provide for themselves. On the contrary, the free enterprise system would be enhanced by a complementary system that acted as a social safety net without being a tax burden, and produced happy, well educated employees. The only down side I see for the free enterprise system is that all jobs would have to pay a wage at least equal to the value a person could receive working for themselves and their neighbors.
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