Caramel's Ideal Society

"Essentially they mean the right to exclude other people from use of yourself or your property. So you can't rape me, and you can't break into my granary. These rights get fuzzy at the margins, but they can be clarified later." (1) You define "use of yourself," obviously, as a set that includes rape, and you are likely conveying the point that physical abuse is prevented by capitalism. My definition of "use of yourself" would include wage labor. Under capitalism, when you accumulate more wealth, you have the automatic ability to control others in a remarkably efficient way. In fact it isn't a stretch to say that this is the very heart of the system; the goal is profit, which boils down to being able to make people do exactly what you want. So why would you say that the "brightline" of capitalism is the right to exclude others from using you? (2) The implied point that physical abuse is prevented should be expanded by Con if that was his intentions. (3) Theft is only a factor of property itself. Property by definition is the right to exclude others from using resources. If you don't exclude people from using resources, then how can something be stolen?. If someone possesses an item of value, they want to retain the ability to use that resource. Under capitalism, if someone wants this said ability, they must exclude others from using the resource somehow (because of property rights). In a cooperative system, there is much room for sharing of items (e.g., a boat, a trailer, or a lawn-mower) without the need to hoarde them. Also, since most all the same goods are available for free, there is little incentive to steal. (4) Property must be backed by a governmental authority. Your brand of anarchism seems to be lacking in that I don't understand how you expect to enforce property rights. Would you use a blackwater-type institution? Hired guns? My system revolves around cooperation. We should set up what are called "sustainable communities." The essence of sustainable communities is living within our means. It doesn't have to be necessarily "2,000 people" but vast urban jungles are quite unsustainable in that they don't provide any of the opportunities smaller communities would. Important benefits of small communities: (5) the ability to use non-motorized transportation to commute, or else a mass-transit system. "Small" communities don't necessarily have to be completely isolated in space, they just need to have all the major amenities provided locally. On the neighborhood scale, this means we have things like parks, grocery stores, and other local shops close by so that we don't have to cross town in an SUV to get a stick of butter. Unfortunately, capitalism dictates that the most profit can be derived from setting up centers of commerce. Mini-malls and other stores are all located in a concentrated fashion near each other so that they can absorb your business while you make your inevitable stops at other businesses. Unfortunately, and this will be a recurring theme, what's best for profit is not best for the people in general. With centers of commerce, people are hard-pressed to do anything without a car... Why not set up neighborhoods so that most of the things you would need throughout the week are available locally? IOWs, let's break up the commercial zones that capitalism naturally creates and use a more mixed-zoning approach which cuts down on travel time for everyone. This reduces energy needs, pollution, and increases our own time. However, this is not conducive to turning a profit. You all might be a bit young to remember, but when I was younger it wasn't all about Wal-Mart. Before box stores became so popular (due to delivering low-quality disposable goods at a low [short-term] price), we used to have all sorts of little shops distributed throughout the neighborhoods. You can see these abandoned shops everywhere nowadays, because people are broke and need to save money and choose box stores over local shops. The shop-owners are now working the registers at box stores instead of running their businesses locally within neighborhoods, and this is sad. There is a lot of "sadness" in capitalism of just this sort; I cannot address it wholly in the space provided but I would hope the reader would have the ability to extrapolate out how just about every product and service suffers the same fate under the current capitalist system. (6) The scientific community, on the whole, has done its best to inundate us with as many studies and analyses as it can to show us that our practices are wholly unsustainable. For starters, our population is growing exponentially, while our food supply is growing geometrically. Since we are unable to cooperate to grow food under capitalism, we must rely on private businesses to provide it. This is why Americans enjoy 30,000,000 acres of lawns and pay for low-quality produce, picked green and force-ripened in transit to the marketplace (not to mention packed with hormones and pesticides like so much garnish?. Since it is cheapest to grow vast swaths of monoculture plants to achieve economies of scale, the invisible hand forces farmers to do so. These plots must be saturated with pesticides to function (monocultures are notorious for disease, unlike natural forest settings where diversity prevents it), which affects our health (when we eat) and deposits these substances in the earth. Runoff from farms is probably the single greatest non-point source of pollution due to fertilizer and pesticide use. In my system, cooperative gardens would be everywhere and replace big farms. (7) Externalities are choking our future chances of survival, and we are likely headed for a future more resembling of "Mad Max" than of prosperity. Pollution is accumulating in our air and water, land-uses continue to degrade as we deforest and convert wetlands, biodiversity is being lost, our fresh water supplies are degrading (this is possibly the worst of the lot), dangerous toxic chemicals and heavy metals are accumulating in the environment (e.g., mercury and lead [I'll leave out the ones I can't pronounce]), global climate change is looming in the distance threatening hundreds of billions of damage (if not more), and generally speaking our natural resources are simply degrading on a daily basis, leaving much left for future communities. Competitive systems cannot economically account for these externalities. For instance, some people put the true social cost (due to climate change) of a gallon of gas at anywhere from $20-$100. How is capitalism going to capture the externality and include it into the price to make sure we consume at the proper rate? Well, we could have the government step in and implement Pigovian taxes and subsidies, but who wants govt when you don't need it? Sustainable communities produce everything they need within a relatively small area - say ten miles or so - making them unusually resilient in times of distress. These communities don't need government aid to be flown in in times of disaster because they are self-perpetuating. Because profit takes a seat and makes way for innovation, we can start implementing all of our high-tech sustainable technologies (wind, solar, geothermal) without profit-seeking companies selling cheap stuff to poor people and displacing clean tech out of the market. (8) If you think capitalism=innovation, then read up on the electric car - we were 100% electric, complete with charging stations, 100 years ago in the US and somehow we still don't have the means to produce more than the Nissan Leaf in 2010? Auto companies have decided FOR US that we shall not have electric... Capitalism is a tourniquet on innovation, not a catalyst. (9) Finally, I will address motivation. Con says people will not be motivated under my system - why not? We shall strive to be great, strive to be useful, strive to be honored, strive to be noticed and awarded for our deeds.