8. Market and Vision Must Change

Market and Vision Must Change
Bob Komives
::

I suffer
when I see North American cities sprawl
inefficiently, sloppily across the landscape.
My heart hurts for the poor campesino
struggling to produce
a poor crop
on poor land
cut and burned
from Earth's diminishing forest.
Harsh reality,
or bad vision?

||

When such problems occur in a market economy, the harsh marketplace seems to fail the biosphere and its human population. In socialist economies, it seems to be the planners and administrators who fail in pursuit of their vision of economic development. I say both market and vision must change.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 8. Market and Vision Must Change ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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19. We are Cursed And Blessed.

We are Cursed and Blessed.
Bob Komives
::

Life reproduces itself, but imperfectly. This imperfection creates an intricate, diverse biosphere.

Humankind has two traits that distinguish us from other species. I believe these traits contribute to our unique role in the biosphere.

We have a brain that has somewhat independent hemispheres in which we process information in at least two different ways at the same time. We have social systems that tend toward stability, but in which we often and inevitably undergo instability.

We seem cursed by the anguish of war between the conscious and subconscious and between the logical and intuitive factions in our brain. We seem cursed by bloody and bloodless wars between factions in our society.

Other species evolved with greater social order. Compared to our own, their brain parts seem to work in harmony. Our unstable society may well be a curse brought on by our unstable brain. Yet, our creative ability to explore the workings of the universe through art, science, engineering and fantasy is a blessing that we also owe to that curse. If there is to be a utopia, we must find it in how we manage our continuing instability.

All species can perceive scarcity in resources, and they see an apparent need to manage scarcity by preventing any change that instability will bring. We, alone, have the blind management power, at this tick in the evolutionary clock, to destroy life and its biosphere of change.

It is also only we who can hope to notice, midst war and destruction, the wealth that instability and change have wrought within our biosphere. Only we can hope to see that beneath the apparent rules of scarcity and competition lie more general rules for us to follow-
rules for abundance, and rules for cooperation.

Blessed Curses

Humankind seems cursed by its heritage of imperfection in ways that other species are not. Yet, we are blessed with a preeminent role in the biosphere. Richard Restak described well how our semi-independent brain hemispheres process two ways of thinking that are generally coordinated but often conflicting. This duality is mirrored in our culture. We experiment with: democracy, dictatorship, republic; polygamy, polyandry, monogamy; matriarchy, patriarchy; monarchy, anarchy. Only the human species has a restless urge to understand and perfect.

Competition seeks instability.
One individual,
one group
tries to gain advantage over another.
When too successful,
competition fails.
It can produce a stable dictatorship,
monopoly,
slavery.
Cooperation seeks stability.
It too can fail
if it is perfectly successful.
Stable wealth stops evolving.
Rebels appear.
Feeling stifled,
they promote instability.
We play hopscotch
through patterns of opposites:
cooperation or competition,
with
stability or instability.
War -unstable competition.
The marketplace -stable competition.
Tradition and rules -stable cooperation.
Invention and information,
though often spawned by cooperation,
bring change -instability.
Each pattern brings the other.
The market creates incentive for invention:
a better mouse trap,
a five-cent cigar.
Invention produces new traditions:
stay home
to watch a ball game at the park,
go to the park
to get away from my computer-cottage office.
A stifling tradition brings revolution and war.
We are special
because we can notice these patterns,
seek to understand them,
and decide to participate.

What Makes Us Special

If an objective visitor from outer space had arrived on Earth a few hundred thousand years ago she would have had to stay around to notice that we naked apes were in any way special. Today, she would quickly pick us out of the crowd. We have made ourselves quite noticeable. Electric hair dryers, tennis shoes, oil spills, and political conventions make us stand out clearly in the crowd of earthly creatures.

We see correctly that we are special, but we have tended to think incorrectly that we are special because we are better. "Better" is a subjective evaluation, but if we equate it with "more perfect" we are wrong. We are special because we are less perfect. We are cursed with imperfections that bless us with flourishing culture. Individually and in groups we play dynamic roles that never allow our species to settle into a comfortable niche.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 19. We are Cursed and Blessed ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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20. Family is Our Minimum.

Family is Our Minimum.

Bob Komives
::

There are no true rugged individuals.
Either they died
for lack of nurturers after birth,
or they were never born
for lack of lovers before conception.

Ruggedless

The science of ecology tells us how we share biospheric wealth with other species, often to our mutual benefit. We must share. No element of life is self-sufficient. We must tax other individuals and species; they must tax us. Humankind has no self-sufficient individuals. From Lewis Thomas in Lives Of A Cell, I learned that the mitochondria in our cells are but one of several kinds of creatures with their own genetic structures that live symbiotically with us, within us. We tax them for their knowledge in order that we might survive; human genes alone do not know enough to keep us alive.

Even if I were to refuse to recognize mitochondria as anything other than "me," I could not ignore the two people who had to undergo bisexual reproduction for me to arrive in this world. Then I cannot ignore that once I got here, during infancy and well beyond, I continued to depend upon adult nurturers for my survival and well-being.

To support bisexual reproduction and to solve the challenge of infant dependency we organize ourselves into families. Family is the minimum biological unit of organization for species survival. Many of us do more than survive. We depend upon our families and their particular patterns of role playing to do more than reproduce and nurture hunks of genes and protoplasm. Adults carry brain knowledge and have artifacts that they wish to distribute to their children and others. Family is the convenient minimum to carry out this complex wealth distribution. Through family we receive and pass along culture and experience. Thus, our adopted children--who carry none of our genes but carry knowledge that we acquired during life--may inherit and pass along more of what we are than do our biological children.

Family is the minimum--the macroeconomic minimum-- the smallest organ that our species knows can capture, distribute, and recirculate knowledge we need to survive and prosper. Since reproduction requires two people and produces a dependent, over time there must be at least three individuals in a family. The minimum number of roles to play, however, is four: father, mother, dependent, and nurturer. There are no maxima.

Beyond the biological minimum necessary for survival, our species has unique flexibility in choosing the family form through which one generation can pass biological, brain and artifactual knowledge on to the next. Adjectives such as matrilineal, patrilineal, extended, monogamous, and polygamous each describe a family pattern that has proved useful. Nouns such as nucleus, band, clan, tribe, chiefdom, city, federation, and even nation, describe scales at which family-type roles can operate.

Microeconomics is important because it helps us understand the dynamics of individuals (or even families acting as individual entities) who buy and sell goods and services in a marketplace. Some of these individuals may be close to rugged, but, here at least, we do not give a damn. What does it profit a man to control a market but suffer a dearth of things to trade? We cannot look to microeconomics to understand the dynamics that produced the market goods and services in the first place -nor the greater wealth that never goes to market. To gain that understanding we should be able to turn to macroeconomics and its minimum economic unit, the family, in all its forms. There we can hope to find out how our species reproduces, expands and nurtures its wealth.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV ::20. Family is Our Minimum ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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22. Communal Commitment, Private Flourish

Communal Commitment, Private Flourish
Bob Komives
::

Government organizes group knowledge in ways that individuals cannot or wish not.

Government can create a system of defense that is more effective and occupies fewer people than if everyone were to try to defend himself. Without this system the group might be vulnerable to attack. Productivity could suffer because too much time is spent on defense and fear.

Government can guarantee food and shelter to someone who wishes to experiment with a new system for food production--a system that could benefit the whole group. Government induces a temporary flow of wealth away from the rest of the group to the experimenter. If the experiment succeeds, that wealth that had flowed away from most of the individuals in the group will return to them with dividends.

If in our family
we lack communal decision and commitment,
private life does not flourish.
If in our government,
we lack communal decision and commitment
private enterprise does not flourish.

||

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 22. Communal Commitment, Private Flourish ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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23. We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles.

We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles
Bob Komives
::

We cooperate; we compete. In both modes we exhibit freedom. At least, that is a view we can choose. In another view, we just play our inherited roles. "Role playing," "role differentiation," these are terms frequently heard among social scientists. They are also better and more general terms for what we and our economists call "taxation."

Role playing (1) distributes wealth among individuals, and (2) creates wealth when the roles are mutually beneficial. Number one is well understood by both charitable and exploitive people, by our tax collectors, and by other species--the more I get from you, the better off I am. Attribute number two is at the frontier of our understanding of macroeconomics.

During the dawn of life separate organisms that were accidentally different accidentally contributed to each other's chances for survival. Some produced offspring that had a tendency to organize themselves to reënact the ritual. As they did, role playing became part of the biosphere; taxation became part of the biosphere.

Each particle of DNA, each species, each individual, each group depends upon and is depended upon by other elements of the biosphere. Each taxes others and is taxed in turn within an intricately organized web of roles. On occasion, the quantity of life traumatically decreased. Despite such setbacks, life incorporated an increasing portion of universal energy into itself and into its complex support systems. As life grew, so did the complexity of the roles played by the organs and organisms that sustained it. Had we been there, at some point the complexity would have become too much for our great brains to comprehend. We would have to develop concepts of freedom, intention, randomness, in our attempt to understand cause-and-effect in what we saw. We would find words for cooperation and competition. In some order (perhaps simultaneously) science, pseudoscience, religion, and philosophy would follow.

As life flourished, new roles emerged, old roles changed. Through its organized role playing the biosphere learned not only how to prevent a net loss of biological energy (absent great trauma), but also how to capture more energy. In terms of biosphere economics, wealth steadily increased. While some species lost all wealth and became extinct, humankind prospered. Human economic history, when read from a distance, records changing patterns of roles that were adequate to keep us around and increase our wealth.

Role playing works because it distributes resources among individuals to the benefit of the group. An infant needs nurture, so it taxes its family to supply energy and skills to survive. Given survival, the infant can go on to contribute to the welfare of the family and to help produce another generation. Our tendency to nurture others lets us help individuals become scholars, artists, scientists and administrators. It causes us to make an effort to preserve life and opportunities for less fortunate people even when we seem to loose wealth in the process. We harvest and create food, education and security. Then we tax ourselves. We cooperate and compete so that we distribute these products and services among us. History is too full of examples of exploitation and persecution. We live with the guilt that comes with our unfortunately large margin for error. Nevertheless, so far, we tend to tax ourselves well enough to survive and occasionally flourish.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 23. We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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24. Property is Acknowledgement.

Property is Acknowledgement.
Bob Komives
::

I have a complaint and a confession. Complaint: when we talk about "private property rights," we show that we do not know what we talk about. Confession: I am guilty of having used this puffed up phrase. I hope I have cured myself. Let me try to cure you.

Why does the phrase, "private property rights" show ignorance? That term is twice redundant --long-winded. Property is not land, it is not a book. Property is a right to be private, to priváte, to deprive others of access and use. So, to speak of "private property," of "property rights," or of "private property rights" is to speak only of property. If we can argue without this redundancy perhaps we will be short-winded. Perhaps we will better understand property.

Ah, you may say, but what about "public property," the opposite of private property? It is no opposite, but rather an oxymoron. If you insist on using the term, its only meaning can be "non-property"--nobody has the right to restrict our access and use. A sunset is beautiful public property; better, it is a "public good" in the "public domain." Your county land fill is not public property; it is county property. The county has rights over access and use of the land fill as would an individual owner.

Are these rights absolute? Whether held by you or the county, property is within a higher domain, a pre-eminent domain, an eminent domain. "Eminent domain," as we use the term in U.S. America, includes the obligation by government to pay justly for property, but it is also a self-evident declaration that property is a guest within the higher domain of society. Complaint over!

We can discuss individual wealth because individuals can control and trade goods and services. However, this power to control and trade is always delegated by a larger group. Property is group acknowledgment that an individual can restrict access to something--a by-group-acknowledged right to be private, to priváte, to deprive others of access and use.

Acknowledgment may be given grudgingly to someone who has taken by force; property is not necessarily untainted. If the group refuses to acknowledge ownership, and the possessor must continually defend her possessions against others, she has booty--not property. She cannot freely share, trade, sell, give, or lend her booty. If the group were to choose to acknowledge her possessions as property she could take them to the marketplace or leave them at home and expect community assistance if someone tries to steal them.

The marketplace is a group sanctioned center of activity. We can say that people go there to trade property. In a marketplace, operating under rules established by the group, people trade group-acknowledged rights of restricted access. An individual restricts access to her possessions until someone else gives her the right to restrict access to items that she believes to be at least of equal value. When those rights are exchanged, property is exchanged. The exchange is complete when society acknowledges that property has changed hands.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 24. Property is Acknowledgement. ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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26. Capital and Social Isms

Capital and Social Isms
Bob Komives
::

Civilizations have disappeared almost overnight when a governmental structure collapsed into the hands of people who could not or would not hold and propagate the communal knowledge nurtured by the government. The overthrow may have been justified by the abuses inflicted by those in power. Unfortunately, knowledge stored (possibly hoarded) by the abusers often got lost to future generations.

When a species or ecosystem disappears, an organ of the biosphere dies; wealth disappears. The biosphere no longer knows how to do some things that it had known. Wealth also disappears when a flourishing society dies.

Societies that we choose to call "primitive" survived with little change in technology or in their systems of government. Across the breadth of the species, however, somewhat unstable groups, "advanced" societies, experiment with ways to organize family, to invest group wealth, and to govern. Using our blessed curses, imperfect mind and imperfect reproduction, they extend evolution out of our bodies into society, to our family and government, to our social-isms and our capital-isms.

Ism-Capitál
Ism-Commún
Ism-Sociál

Planned Economy
Marketplace
Private Enterprise
Free Enterprise
Government Enterprise

How can I speak or write
these terms that have
economic meanings
political overtones
historic undercurrents
redundant redundancies
stark contrasts
subtle distinctions, and
apparent similarities?

I want two of them to stand for all,
to enter the ring, and then
to do battle.

At the edge of the ring paces Marketplace with
free enterprise in her soul
capitalism in her limbs, and
private enterprise in her brain.

In the center of the ring
revolves Socialism with
communism for his soul,
government enterprise
for his body, and
planned economy in his mind.

They spar but seem stuck in their zones.

They jab,
but their gloves barely clash
in the large space between.
(or do they exchange something
that I cannot see?)

She lunges to the center.
He feints and dances to the edge,
barely brushing
as they pass each other by.

Now, she occupies the center
while he patrols the edge.
But, somehow,
in making their moves
they have quick-changed costumes.

She now revolves
in the cloak of socialism
He, an equal transvestite,
paces in the dress of marketplace.
I don't need X-ray vision to see
that they have also interchanged their
bodies
minds
limbs, and
souls.

Apparently, some such parts
work well only at the edge
while others work well only at the center.

I had hoped to see a fight in the ring.

I moved ever higher and farther away in the arena
only to see it filled with rings of many sizes and shapes -the edge of each one sharing the ropes of several others.

Each had its chief of the center
and one or more others
holding forth along the ropes,
where activity ebbed and flowed,
sometimes frantically.

What folly,
to think I could put both transvestites
into the same clothing.
Tragic were the fates of many rings
that did remove marketplace
from their edges,
as peaceful sport erupted into
thievery or war,
or disrupted into
wall or crevasse.

Extinct are the rings
that poisoned their communal centers-
their centerless edges
(having lost all definition)
rewoven with indifference into
the
ropes
of
other
rings.

Equal Transvestites

I find it difficult to write about our "isms": capitalism and socialism. Political and religious groups of divergent persuasions have usurped and shaded the key vocabulary. A simple sentence gets translated by the reader into his own language, which may or may not coincide with my own. True to some degree of all communication, I think the reader-as-writer difficulty is a serious problem when exploring marketplace and socialism, or capitalism and communism. I believe that part of the reason why these words have become burdened with emotion-filled connotation is that the economic definitions are themselves inaccurate.

I choose to discuss marketplace and socialism. "Marketplace," as I use it, includes the general concepts of capitalism, free enterprise, private enterprise, and other near synonyms. Of the choices, "marketplace" says the most and carries the least emotional baggage. For the other half of the discussion I choose "socialism." I use socialism to include communism, planned economy, government enterprise, and several other terms that express communal activity. However, the choice is not easy, so I use a mixture. "Community" and "society" are equally good words. I prefer the "common" and "communal" from "communism" to the "social of socialism," but I prefer the economic meaning of "socialize" over "communize."

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 26. Capital and Social Isms ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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27. Confusion Over Capital and Ownership

Confusion Over Capital and Ownership
Bob Komives
::

During the Cold War which pitted U. S. America and its capitalist allies against the Soviet Union and its communist allies, capitalists confused economic communism with totalitarianism, egalitarianism, and atheism. Communists confused economic capitalism with colonialism, elitism, and self-righteous exploitation. Each group confused itself with values such as freedom, hope, and progress. Both relied, in part, on the classic definition that makes socialism the opposite of capitalism.

According to this classic definition, under socialism society should own the means of production (that is capital); under capitalism, private individuals and companies should own the means of production. Means of production usually include resources such as fuel, minerals, and lumber, as well as key industries that process and transport these resources. The definitions seem simple and intuitive, but only if we ignore some obvious questions.

How about eyesight and the opposable thumb? Where would most human production be without them?

How about the mind, the body, libraries, air, organization, and rights-of-way across space we do not own? We cannot produce without them.

We cannot produce without many forms of knowledge found in biology, brain, and artifact. Necessary resources get ignored in lists of means of production. Society cannot own mind or eyesight. Yet, to practice socialism under the classic definition, it must. For society to be truly capitalistic, private enterprise must own my body and our air.

Knowledge is our means of production.
Woven into nature, ourselves, and our creations,
knowledge converts energy of the universe
into nature's wealth,
our wealth.
Much knowledge cannot be grasped
or held by monopoly,
be it public,
be it private.
Yes, socialism and capitalism differ.
No, we cannot have one without the other.
Our "means of production" is nothing less
than the knowledge which helps us maintain our species —to survive.
Art and government belong in the lists of means.
What do we say in saying:
own them?
socialize them?
capitalize them?
We say only confusion.

||

We should not mistake capital in an ephemeral industry for fundamental means of wealth production in our biosphere, species, and society. The petroleum industry combines petroleum (the energy knowledge it contains) with some capital (knowledge of how to find and process the petroleum). In a socialist country, government should operate this industry; under capitalism, a private company should. However, neither government nor private company can hope to take total ownership of our knowledge of how to use petroleum, including cruising downtown on Saturday night, beauty treatments, ... , pyrotechnics. Without society's use-knowledge, the petroleum industry produces no wealth. Humankind had wealth before the petroleum industry came into existence, and it should have more wealth after the industry fades in importance. A change in human knowledge made petroleum part of wealth. Further changes in knowledge can reduce its importance long before we exhaust the supply.

In this dynamic world we often raise questions as to who has and who should have the knowledge and the tools for change. The answers vary and may often confuse. Yet, fixed commitments to the traditional dichotomy between socialism and capitalism are worse. They compound confusion by pretending it does not exist.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 27. Confusion Over Capital and Ownership ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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28. Center and Edge

Center and Edge
Bob Komives
::

Socialism is the part of our economy in which our group distributes wealth according to values set communally. The process need not resemble consensus. The group may be active, passive, enthusiastic or bitter about delegating the distribution authority. Marketplace is the part of our economy in which we trade wealth according to values set by many people responding to supply and demand. Marketplace and socialism are distinct, but they help each other. Neither can replace the other. Neither can manage all of our capital. Socialism flourishes at our centers. Marketplace flourishes at our edges.

I hold these truths to be self-evident:
Lake without shore is no lake;
Lake-shore without lake is no shore.

||

In the zealots for socialism and the zealots for marketplace we have among us those whose views of economics are akin to saying: "My sacred lake shall have no shore;" and " my sacred shore shall have no lake."

Socialism and marketplace differ because of the societal space each occupies. We organize ourselves into overlapping groups. Each group has edges. At the edge it must interact with other groups and with its natural environment. Among other options at the edge, it may trade wealth according to rules of marketplace. Each group has a center. There it distributes wealth through a communal system that may include tradition and rules.

A typical family administers its resources communally. Children do not buy food from parents. Tradition says that children have a right to food, clothing and shelter. They have a right to be wealth consumers. Wealth producers in the family pool their resources to support the family. Authority figures establish and enforce codes of conduct. The family typically divides tasks among members according to tradition, authority and volunteerism. There may be great competition among family members, but ultimately the traditional communal authority structure decides who wins and who loses.

At its edges, a family competes and cooperates in a larger society with other families, individuals, and institutions. As a producer in modern marketplace economies, the family may compete against the rest of the community for jobs and sales. As consumer, the family probably enters the marketplace to bargain for the goods and services that it does not produce internally. The marketplace, not a communal system of decision and authority, decides the prices the family will pay and receive.

Family members find themselves at the center of other institutions -a club, a church, a government, a corporation, a school, a clan, a tribe. At these higher-level centers interactions are communal, because larger institutions also practice socialism. Many participate in marketplace at their edges as well.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 28. Center and Edge ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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29. From Amoeba to Market

From Amoeba to Market
Bob Komives
::

We can, I suppose,

think of a chemical reaction
at the nucleus of a tiny amoeba
as but one reaction
in
.... a
........chain
..................that
..........................extends
from this amoebic nucleus
to the farthest reach of the biosphere.

We should rather, I propose,

notice this amoeba has a surface,
its working edge,
where universe divides in two;
where biosphere divides into
what-is-this-amoeba
---and-----------
what-this-amoeba-is-not.

Where Universe Divides In Two

Early creatures had centers and edges. Evolution gave them ways to move energy around the center, from edge to center and from center to edge. Communal biological wealth in the amoeba keeps its primitive power and control systems functioning. At its edges, the amoeba uses genetically coded knowledge to capture food. However, one amoeba has no control over the likelihood that food will be there to capture.

There is friction. One amoeba may find itself in competition for food with other amoeba, other creatures. Lacking the sophistication to sign treaties or to create a marketplace the amoeba relies on programmed gathering techniques to bring fuel into itself. At its edge the amoeba competes and cooperates with its surroundings to overcome friction, to transfer wealth from the larger biosphere into its one-cell body.

As life forms become more complex, so do the options for wealth transfer at edges, and for wealth distribution and recirculation at centers. Humankind has experimented with a variety of methods to organize its centers. At some scale we call these experiments family. At other scales we call them government. We have a propensity to form governments and never seem satisfied with our results.

As family met family, group met group, and nation met nation, we experimented with government-type solutions at our edges also. As alternative to war, raids, walls, and moats, the marketplace was such an experiment. Participants agreed upon marketplace rules in order to minimize risk to themselves and their goods. These rules and their enforcement were the government of the moment, the communal base for marketplace.

Fringe trading deals with new goods and services more readily than does communal tradition. We need only a willing buyer, a willing seller, a place to bargain, and security for the individuals, their goods and services. Traditional distribution may create successful investment, but that same tradition may be inadequate to guide the distribution of new types and quantities of wealth produced by the investment. With or without the sanction of traditional leaders, individuals might resort to edge-type trading to distribute these new goods and services.

Some governments came to approve of this internal trading, but also took control -setting and enforcing the rules. Thus, government became communal sponsor of free enterprise. Internal edge-economies became important. Marketplace society was born.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 29. From Amoeba to Market ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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30. Corporation: Delegated Socialism

Corporation: Delegated Socialism
Bob Komives
::

I ask you to think back to when the Soviet Union had the archetypal large communist government and good-old Ford Motor Company was the archetypal large corporation. Though they symbolized competing ideologies, these large organizations were in many ways similar.

When it dealt with countries in a peaceful interchange of wealth, the Soviet Union competed and cooperated in many of the same ways that Ford Motor Company competed and cooperated with other businesses. At their edges they both competed with corporations, individuals, partnerships, and governments that sold similar goods and services, that wanted the same resources, and that recruited similar personnel. The marketplace determined the price they would pay or receive. At their edges, then, looking outward, capitalist corporation and communist country practice marketplace.

When Ford Motor Company looked inward to its own resources, it acted--and still acts--very much like the old Soviet Union. Executives allocated resources under policy set by a central committee or board of directors. Executives and board lead in the directions that they believe will most benefit their constituents--whether shareholder or proletariat. At their centers, looking inward, both capitalist corporation and communist country practice socialism.

The United States of America operates the same way. When we look inward, we set communal rules for wealth distribution, be they liberal or conservative. Our country allows more internal marketplaces than either the good-old Soviet Union or good-old Ford Motor Company. However, "allows" is the important word. Communally we create, enforce, and administer rules that foster and allow private marketplaces. Without communal enterprise private enterprise could not work.
Ford Motor Company would not allow the level of internal property and private enterprise allowed in U.S. America, or even the old Soviet Union. The very purpose for incorporation is to socialize risk among investors. Corporations require public charters. They seek such charters because a charter will protect their investors. Individual liability is allowed by charter to be socialized into corporate liability. Individuals can profit and recover their investment severalfold, but their liability for loss cannot exceed onefold -their investment.

Corporate employees experience socialism. Until hired, a job candidate at Ford Motor Company is an independent competitor-cooperator for the corporation to bargain with at its edge. Corporate resources and individual talents get weighed and bargained. Ford Motor Company can reject the applicant or make an offer. The applicant can accept, reject, or haggle over the offer. Once hired, however, she becomes an employee. Ford Motor Company tells her what to do and limits her discretion in making decisions. She is expected to work for the common good, which she hopes coincides with her own. Ford Motor Company pays her the same for Tuesday as for Wednesday, no matter her production on each day. Even if the company offers pay incentives or lavish bonuses based on her performance, higher officers of the corporation set the incentives. Ford Motor Company also supplies her work space and the tools of her trade. This would not be the case if somehow her employment were marketplace based rather than communally based. Her promotions would come from her own success at marketing her talents or products to several buyers. Her status today would not ensure tomorrow's employment.

In the corporation the employee is likely to strive to maintain her secure employment and climb the corporate ladder. Among those who wish to climb that ladder, competition is fierce, but promotions and salary increases come from corporate decision makers above. There are rules that govern job security and procedures which define the role of each worker. The corporate authority structure distributes corporate wealth among workers and share holders. Authority figures also decide whose ideas will carry the greatest weight. Corporations tend to prefer employees who accept this system rather than collective bargaining or individualism. This top-down decision and wealth distribution structure mimics family tradition, socialist tradition.

None of this is bad. We should expect a private corporation, like any organization, to be socialist at its core. What is bad and misleading is to champion corporations as the epitome of free enterprise. They are not. They epitomize delegated socialism -a societal attempt to organize centers of socialism where free enterprise or national enterprise might do poorly. If we have reason to look for the epitome of free enterprise, we do better to look among industrious individuals, sole proprietors and partnerships that owe less of their existence to delegated socialism.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 30. Corporation: Delegated Socialism ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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31. Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice

Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice
Bob Komives
::

If a good or service is to be traded in a marketplace, its supply must be limited. The good or service must be identifiable. It must be unique or divisible so that buyer and seller believe they know exactly what they are transferring. We cannot trade most wealth in a marketplace because we cannot easily identify or divide it, or because it is too abundant. Neither the oxygen produced by the world's flora nor the bile working in our livers is apt wealth for trading under most circumstances.

Some wealth that we can identify and divide does not make it into our marketplaces simply because our communal tradition says it does not belong there. We do find wood-burning heating stoves and firewood in the marketplace. A well-designed stove is a storehouse of functional and aesthetic knowledge. We can buy it and its fuel. Yet, we tend to give away the heat they produce.

My stove knows how to burn its firewood,
how to respond
to me who knows so little of what it knows,
to me who does not know how to make a stove.
My stove knows how to send smoke up its chimney
and warmth into my room.
Its warmth can please,
or it can save a half-frozen life.
Such is its success and popularity
that I could sell tickets to my stove's proximity.
But, I do not.
I share its warm knowledge freely
according to communal tradition
among family, neighbors, and kindred strangers.
Those whom my stove knows to please,
those whom my stove knows to save
give back nothing in trade
-except,
to carry forward in common tradition
what we and a stove
must in-common know.

My Common Stove

No scientific standard tells us which identifiable goods and services should be owned and traded in the marketplace. During the Civil War in the United States of America many young men bought up their obligation to serve in the army. Government had made this military obligation a commodity, making such purchases perfectly legal. During later wars many people found legal ways to avoid military service and combat, but it became illegal and immoral to try to buy one's way out. Military service had become a duty; it was no longer a commodity.

Voting is a right in some countries, a duty in others. Individuals possess this right or duty. They could sell it, but law and tradition say we can neither sell nor buy a vote. Law and tradition try to keep votes out of the marketplace.

Law and tradition make businessmen criminals and criminals businessmen. Traders in alcohol went through these metamorphoses when U.S. America entered and later left Prohibition -when alcohol sales were made illegal and then again legal.

Necessity and changing styles can move goods and services into and out of the marketplace. A corporation chooses a new combination of socialism and marketplace when it discontinues the internal manufacturing of certain components in favor of buying them in the marketplace from independent suppliers. At one time, perhaps, there was a real advantage to socializing the production within the corporation. Back in the late-twentieth century, when automobile makers Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford recognized some of the hints that they had become uncompetitive because of their aging technology and stodgy managers, they transferred some design and production from their center economies to their edge economies. There they hope to take advantage of the technological and price competitiveness of independent suppliers in a dynamic marketplace.

A family faces similar dynamic choices. After rearing children under loving socialism many parents request economic support from adult children who work for outside income but stay at home. While this is not a pure marketplace transaction, food and shelter, once distributed to the child under central traditions, now get distributed under a family-socialized form of edge economics. The change recognizes new conditions which call for a new economic mix. The added income helps the parents care for the younger children or enjoy a little luxury. The working child learns the pride and responsibility of adulthood, gaining some independence from his parents. It is as if the edges of a new household (like a new cell) begin to form before it separates from the old. If the adult child becomes sick and unable to work, however, his family will reverse itself without hesitation. "Don't pay room and board now. We are your family; we want to help you recover." They return to pure socialism.

The marketplace always has and always will be adjusted by communal decisions, especially when the public finds a market to be distorted from what is just or sensible. If modified law and tradition do not correct such distortions, correction may come from war, or revolution, or massive government spending. During the depression of the 1930s the marketplace behaved as if there were little wealth to invest. Nevertheless, under the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the Congress of the United States of America made massive communal investments to fight poverty, and then even greater expenditures to fight World War II.

While choices are dynamic, our leaders often choose to be dogmatic. From a great war and a great depression much of the world (winners and losers) emerged wealthier than before. Perhaps, if our politicians were less dogmatic and our economists more instructive about government's communal intervention in the marketplace, we could avoid great depression and great war.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 31. Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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32. The Difference: How Outcome Is Determined

The Difference: How Outcome Is Determined
Bob Komives
::

Ideas, people, and products compete intensively-both within a corporation and within the markets where the corporation buys and sells. Competition is often mistakenly equated with marketplace and free enterprise. Socialism fosters and tolerates every bit as much competition as does marketplace. Where they differ is in how results of competition get determined. In a marketplace, price (or value-per-price) is the arbiter. In a socialist system, the group or its authority figures decide based on merit, not price. Merit is judged according to criteria socialized into the system.

We uncovered certain socialist acts
perpetrated to settle competitive dispute.

Our Central Committee named a general secretary in
..... the old Soviet Union.
Our board of directors promoted a manager
..... at good-old General Motors.
Our boss sent one among us
..... to the workshop in Hawaii.
Our parents chose one among us
..... to finish the three-layer cake.

We Uncovered Certain Socialist Acts

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 32. The Difference: How Outcome is Determined ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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33. Ignorance and Confession

 
Ignorance and Confession
Bob Komives
::

A society that emphasizes marketplace will tend not to see the socialism that makes marketplace possible. A socialist society will tend not to see the adaptive potential of marketplace. I believe what I see: we can have neither a socialist nor a capitalist world.

We cannot survive without socialism; it evolved with our species. It is at the center of everything living. Theoretically, we could have a world without marketplace; it is a relatively new product of evolution.

There are alternatives to marketplace in edge economics. To organize the exchange of wealth at their edges, groups can compete through war, thievery, conquest, or isolation; they can cooperate through peace, contracts, treaties, compatible but independent traditions, or through intergroup (international) law. Contracts, treaties, traditions, and intergroup law can control interchange. Thievery can also bring in wealth (such as when an immigrant smuggled the secrets of England's looms to the American continent, or when a Native American stole from another group the first horses for his own group). Conquest can bring in all the wealth of another group. Isolation can put up real or de facto walls that prohibit interchange. However, humankind's accelerating introduction of new forms of wealth makes marketplaces almost inevitable, even if illegal in an avowed communal state. We can foster the marketplace, as we do in avowed capitalist nations, but let us remember that fostering is a communal activity.

We can neither totally delegate to individuals nor totally socialize to a group the means to produce and maintain humankind's wealth. If the Soviet Union had believed that the state should own the means of production, it should not have gone into the international marketplace to buy computers and wheat. It should have bought Nebraska and IBM -people included. If U.S. America believes that people should individually own the means of production, it should eliminate the state of Nebraska and the IBM corporation because these are strictly communal structures.

I make these absurd proposals only to point out the absurdity of labeling political and economic rivalries as a dichotomy of capitalism versus socialism. The wealth production potential of the USA suffers when it ignores the fundamental dependence of marketplace on communal control over the policies of wealth distribution. Because in the last twenty years of the twentieth century marketplace was in political ascendance, so was our ignorance of our communal center. Socialism was descendent. During these twenty years, socialist leaders tended to confess that their nations suffer when they ignore the vitality, flexibility, and healthy complexity that marketplace can bring to an economy. As times change so will the loci of ignorance and confession.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 33. Ignorance and Confession ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent 

 

 

 

 

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781733884150

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34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.

Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.
Bob Komives
::

Robert Reich argued that, in order to arrive at a consensus for progress, we must acknowledge that the social and economic components of our national well-being are linked powerfully together. We must search for the right mixture of socialism and marketplace. This search is basic to resolving problems of food production and distribution. Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy have done an excellent job of pointing this out. While small, individually owned and operated farms tend to be the most productive, nations increasingly look to large, corporate farms (or in the case of some communist countries, communal farms). In poor countries with little industry, governments promote agricultural exports in exchange for foreign goods and services. In the process, self-sufficient farmers become undernourished wards of the state. In U.S. America the family farm seems endangered as more farmers go bankrupt and corporate farming expands. These are complex issues from which I will draw only a couple of points.

The socialized ethic that says everyone should have enough to eat comes in a heritage older than our own species. In our enthusiasm for marketplace, we should never forget that only more recently in the biosphere's evolution did we socialize the market into our culture. It is no more inconsistent for a nation that values the dynamics of its marketplaces to make sure that every citizen has enough to eat, than it is for a family to feed all of its members -even if some produce nothing for the marketplace.

Similarly, a nation should never forget that if it fosters either corporation or commune it fosters delegated socialism. There is nothing especially natural or inevitable about either. They exist through communal law and policy.

Where individual families produce enough food
..... (for themselves and nation)
..... and have not wrought havoc with the landscape, why substitute larger,
..... less efficient,
..... private corporations and state communes?
Since corporations are socialized creations of government,
..... there would be nothing un-American
..... in keeping them out of farming in the USA.
Since families are communes,
..... there was nothing uncommunistic
..... in reverting to family farms
..... in countries leaving the Soviet.
Of course,
..... the complement too is true.
..... Corporate,
..... communal,
..... and cooperative farms may be useful
..... where family farms cannot achieve
..... marketplace, social, and environmental goals.
There is irony in U.S. America
..... (and nations that follow its example)
..... where, in the name of free enterprise,
..... the most free of enterprises
..... (the productive family)
..... gets displaced by less efficient groups
..... that socialize risk and profit.
Communist countries displayed similar irony
..... imposing communal structure
..... that more mimics impersonal corporation
..... than traditional communism of family.

||

We can see human culture as an arena of continuously overlapping organizations, ranging from small families up to associations among nations. Each organization is itself an organ of others. Each has a communal core where it determines how to distribute its wealth internally. Our arena can also be seen as an intricate web of edges through which organizations exchange wealth. At these edges, a marketplace can facilitate interchange. Core socialism and edge marketplace complement one another. The world and its nations need not choose between them. The world and its nations cannot choose between them. Rather, they can organize themselves so that both socialism and marketplace help to capture wealth nondestructively, distribute it fairly, and recirculate it repeatedly.

I sell fish.
You sell fish.
He sell fish.

We sell fish.
She sell fish.
They sell fish.

Upon a Cherry Table

Upon a Cherry Table

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table. ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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