Capitalism, communism are the two opposite faces of the same coin to handle limited ressources. We will reach a fair distribution of wealth when money itself will be meaningless. When it will be displace in the background of our activities, our life.
Like the air you breath each second to stay alive. Oxygen is distributed fairly amongst every users of the planet Earth. Nobody try to hoard it, to trade it, to steal it from someone. One cannot be jealous, greedy, or feel injustice about oxygen distribution. Oxygen Distribution is neither good, nor bad. It simply is. Nobody feels the need to debate about it. There is no rich, poor or middle class, there is no GDP. Money should be consider the same way. True economic disruption will occur when we will go beyond the capitalism/communism paradigm.
When future generations will switch to an economy of abundance (zero marginal cost) I believe they will look back in history and find our passionate debates around capitalism vs communism quite funny to listen too.
What you describe can only happen if we are in a technological nirvana, whereby all tasks, menial and otherwise are looked after. Until then, you will always have "jobs" that nobody wants to do without incentive.
A fair distribution of wealth doesn't necessarily mean, everyone has an equal amount, like oxygen, it means everyone is fairly compensated for the effort and value they put into a system.
Cg
That is right, we are not yet to this point, but still, we are on the path toward it. Innovation follows a simple path: produce more and reduce the costs. Zero marginal cost society is when we will be able to produce an infinite amount of goods with no additional cost. It is already the case with media, and it starts to be the same in every industry. Cost of production of goods and services keep dropping significantly with automation. Freemium model that was considered 5/7 years ago as a communist heresy is the norm in the silicon valley.
You are right, fair != equal. Here is a precision about my idea of fair distribution: if we take the metaphor of oxygen, in an economy based on abundance, nobody has to prove anything to anybody to get oxygen (or even water and sun light). There is no need to justify, there is no effort to make to deserve anything. Just take what you need when you need it. No more reason to fight or to compete.
Fair does not = equal, in my opinion; well not equal like most people think and definitely not equal in the spread of oxygen.
Fair is properly compensated for input and value; so for instance a heart surgeon who saves dozens of lives a year earning /$500,000 and a person who cuts grass earning $15,000 per year is fair.
A system which tries to get them both on $50,000 per year, is not fair; and more to the point, it is dangerous and stupid.
You can only say this, because we happen to be living at this point in human history, if you lived a couple of hundred thousand years ago, there was plenty of competition for the things you mention.
There is nothing wrong with competition, nurtured in the right way, it can help the group as well as the individuals involved.
Cg
Well, that is exactly what I said above. The sign != means 'not equal'. Sorry if I use a geeky/computerscienced way to mean it.
For some people, Fair is about equal (not me obviously, if you read me well) For other, Fair is about what you deserve (capitalists).... But even communists! The similarity of these 2 systems? It still implies a lot of subjectivity. A communist will still agree with a capitalist that a surgeon 'deserves' to earn more and get more recognition (look at Cuba) than someone who cut grass.
People tends to misunderstand communism and think it is about equality, while it has more to do with planification and control of the market supply and demand, while capitalism (in fact I should say liberalism) is about free market. But in the end a monopolistic capitalist organisation can have the same impact over its customers than a communist state with its citizen. Zuck played by the rules of capitalism and now he has earned the right to tweak Facebook overnight whether its billion daily users like it or not. It seems a bit communist to me. But hey, he works hard for it and deserves this right, right?
For me, fair should be about what one's need (not about meritocracy or about equality). Take what you need to live (you may breath more than me, or need more oxygen because you do sport, well help yourself, I won't feel annoyed, or jealous by that). This concept favour individuals even more than capitalism without creating friction between economic agents. Hence there is no more relationships based on coercion, power, clientelism, corruption.
But once again this concept cannot exist when as a society we create scarcity on purpose to maintain the rat race, and the government in place. When Fair == individual needs, I don't care how much you consume, just take what you want, it won't reduce my stake in an abundante economy.
Yes, happily we evolve, nothing lasts forever, civilisations appear and fall. No matter how hard they are ingrained in our tradition and culture, ideologies and economic dogma (whether it is capitalism or communism) will follow the same path. But still I don't remember an age where mankind competed to breath :-p
Last thing, I definitly agree with your last point. But the global situation (economic warfare, looting of african and middle east ressources, corporatocracy) shows that the game is rigged and favour those who already have power. Ideal capitalism is like ideal communism, it never existed.
My ultimate point is that we have to think beyond this paradigm of capitalism/communism. Trying to maintain an artificial opposition between those two is a mistake. China is the living example that both do pretty well together.
(By the way, thanks for your post, your replies and the discussion ;-) )
Anyone who thinks that automation will lead to nothing to do, has obviously never had enough of a good thing in their life. For what reason, I cannot imagine. But people will not want to do nothing, they just always would prefer to do less of the things that are unpleasant and more that are pleasant. Automation has a built-in capitalist incentive: one can, with some advance expenditure, dramatically amplify the amount of current product at a lower cost. In other words, bigger profit. Then, over time, everyone automates, to compete, and the profit margin gets a lot thinner. But so does the automation equipment.
In other words, whether you like it or not, once the genie of automation is out of the bottle, and sometimes in response to impossible prices for human labor like minimum wages, or just because it is cheaper, sooner or later the job can be done by less people.
The irony for me is that then the very same socialist RBE types jump up and down about technological unemployment. Yet they want full automation. Why are you so confused?
I didn't say that, I said that until automation gets rid of jobs people would rather not do, like cleaning toilets, or picking cherries (very difficult apparently), then we will always have some sort of money.
Cg
"Technological Nirvana", haven't heard that one before.
Where'd you come up with that?
:-)
I think about it all the time, I'm obsessed with it; my favourite author (sci-fi) is the late great Iain M. Banks, and I want the world to be as he describes.
Cg
Try Robert Heinlein, think you will like it.
Exactly. Natural Law/Resource-Based Economy is the next step in social evolution