On The Reconciliation of Capitalism and Socialism

I’m for markets, one of my favorites is the marketplace of ideas; where trade and ridicule among them is valued and prized, and one promising structure or another can find purchase. I think the public conversation regarding the options on offer is myopic and needlessly so.

If we’re to reconcile capitalism with socialism, I ask you; Good compromise between UBI and welfare state would be income supplementation by the federal government 1:2, 1:3 on a gradient scale; this means, if you make sustenance wages for every dollar you make; no taxes and the government gives you a dollar in addition, or beneath them, you make less than sustenance, you make one dollar, the government gives you 3. This means that the seniors and youth, everyone else similarly unskilled that they are making $10hr, now is taking home $30-$40hr take home with out the government hands in their pockets, except to put a little hard earned cash up in there. The degradation of the dollar means it has lost a solid and unenviable amount of its worth over the last generation; this means those wages that have not been commensurate with the increase in productivity and profit yields have not gone to the workers who have delivered these gains faithfully on a silver platter; it’s well past time to cater to hard working families. If you are not on board with that outcome, it’s hard to establish a conversation.

The aim is for you, your friends and family, your community and every other community around to prosper. They need a rejuvenation, and people need to be able to choose how they invest their time, they also need the resources in order to do so, regardless of their contributions to the market; the families that have no open market contribution to the community aside from raising their families are investing in the very fabric of which society and civilization are composed. Unconditional support is the answer. Surrender to forgiveness, release your fear and hate; they cloud your judgement.

Yes, finding a balance as consumers and reducing our consumption is important, finding a balance and harmony as individuals and communities is important, and we should each of us reevaluate our lives and try to find that balance in each way. For example, I never knew before this year that my birthday was candlemas, I thought to cut out animal protein, reduce carbs, sugars, portions, and other excesses until my birthday; then where I would have a feast and appreciate the occasional gratitude for abundance. We all deserve moments of appreciation for stability and we deserve to offer it to each other as we each of us require. Who decides who is of value, a productive member of society? We all of us each one of us wants to be. To offer the stability and unconditional support where required is transitionally required in order to ensure a stable, growing prosperous society at this point.
Whenever these changes are implemented, you will hear less labor and minimum wage complaints if the subsidy of labor were direct to the breadwinner. You’d be having more moneyed investment class, privileged startup types, bohemian artisans, thinkers, creators, explorers, lovers, writers, musicians, and the people with the time to appreciate the fruits and the flowers of these fine pursuits. You’d have more homeowners and personal responsibility, you’d have more community minded youth, more self respect and dignity within each community; How could that be wrong?

Rhetoric can transcend the current orthodoxy of dualism between capitalism and socialism; both terms have the capability to iterate, to intertwine, to grow together fruitfully and reform each other, capitalism thirty years hence may not be structurally exactly as it is currently. As each community, city, state, nation progresses at variation of rates, we can expect variation on output, productivity, ease and happiness of life, proper standards of living, and, early and family education. If you want to talk turkey, between massive advancements in AI, robotics, APM, and other windfalls we are on the edge of transformative wave societally; 70% windfall tax on these unprecedented productivity gains is a measured, principled compromise; if Bezos, Buffett, & Gates are all behind this along with many other of the principal stakeholders are on board with this reformative compromise; I would ask why you are so opposed to it? That should handily fund the next generation of stable, nuanced, sophisticated, and appreciative consumption; the fine type that we all of us deserve to get for our efforts. So let it be opt in and to be known who contributes and who does not, but surely even Adam Smith said, “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

Abject poverty, wretched deprivation, and suffering are not required going forward. The most honorable way to come to a conclusion would be an honest conversation with the truly persuasive and engaging alternative. The structure of conservative politics is a bit more resistant to new notions than the progressives; to reconcile capitalism with socialism, to convey that these are two hands on the same state that should work well with and for each other as the mutual servants of the public; & that one without the other, or one scheming of destabilizing or disregarding the other leads to suboptimal outcomes for all parties; & that cooperation, compromise, and when we can say “we are on our side” no limits required on what that means. Fostering mutual prosperity going forward; unconditionally.

What I propose has been until now, a contradiction in terms, that the state should unconditionally support its citizens and yet not have a say in how they choose to benefit society, and that their living a stable life should not depend upon the market value of their labor, this transition should have been made during the dotcom boom of the 1990’s the data says. The key detail that will need to be established in mindshare is that the world in which this generation and those going forward will and do face is not the ease of employment at livable wages, and low living costs that the boomers have enjoyed through the decades leading us to this point. Without this perspective pervading throughout the discourse it will be difficult to proceed with compassionate policies, but I don’t have control over whether or not people in comfortable and stable environments will wake up to this looming issue, but hopefully when automation hits the professional class the way forward will become clear.

Some people want retributive taxation to a punitive degree; not me. Letting the most productive keep the profits and to pass down and to keep, personal property, these notions though with royalist origins in some cases, were the prosperity of the meek, and the foundations of most civil society. That you should work and earn your own, I think everyone can respect that, but the gains on the horizon and even since the nineties have been and will continue to be unprecedented. We may be close to a breakthroughs on wealth generation, productivity, so many advancements and improvements; though the challenges ahead may seem insurmountable, what harm does it cause to try to make things better than they might have been otherwise. To take portion however miniscule, hair splitters may have a notion of objection ethically as theft; sure, okay, sure. So if I am to hear out the orthodoxy on libertarianism, that taxation is theft, and we are supposed to consider our alternatives thank goodness; and we are to consider the equally in need of ideological structural reform on the side of socialism notion, that property is theft, then in consolation of the two, surely any concerns regarding taxation can be eased?

People are too hung up on what they have done before, some people have a strange blend of pride/shame subordinating them from thinking of doing better. They cannot confront whatever they do which might be done better as they can’t bear to consider what they have done so far to be somehow less than beneficial in any way. This shame/pride is one of the primary regressive forces we need to overcome.

Convincing people that improvements such as these doesn’t condemn their prior behavior; that’s critical to removing resistance to compassionate reform in any initiative.