Your Ideal Post-Meltdown Government/Economic System

I hear alot of ATS'ers saying thing like "yeah people are waking up and are tired of slaving away 9-5 to make a pittance for a boss/overlord that doesn't care for them, soon people will wake up"

But I have to ask, what is the alternative?

It seems to me like the alternative is communism/socialism, and it seems to me that that is where the U.S. and the European Union are headed in the last 10 years, very subtle but also very quick.

Is this what ATS'rs want? Isn't a core tenant of the general ATS public that homogenization of the people is a bad thing, and that we are all becoming faceless slaves to the educational systems and corporate wage prisons?

Isn't that exactly what socialism is?


I guess my question is: if the world really does meltdown, and financial havoc occurs on a scale so large that even the world elite cannot control or reshape it to their needs, what is your ideal form of economic/political system to replace what we have right now? Obviously anarchy and free goods and services will never happen so I'd appreciate if we stick to realistic ideas here.

2 words

SELF SUFFICIENCY

Equality with a REAL economy.
Careful, thrifty management of resources to avoid unnecessary expenditure or waste.
Saving.

communism in cuba has worked very well but then i suppose we have north korea and some of the former states of the ussr, where it isn't or hasn't worked so well.

Originally posted by mrjones7885
2 words

SELF SUFFICIENCY

True dat. Hey! How about reintroducing the constitution and really keeping it the way it was intended? The very intent of the document as written was to encourage self sufficiency. And, as slavery is illegal the fractional stuff become moot. Understand the whole intent of using perverse legal theory to misconstrue the constitution was intentional and given the money and influence applied to the task of a nation created on its founding principle rather successful

Wow-- Terrible question because when trying to find a reasonable answer the only possible coming out is: there-is-no-alternative. Circular joke of Humanity

You're bringing up a very interesting point. If there is total economic and political collapse, at the very worst, the survivors will live in virtual anarchy like The Road or Thunderdome. I think at best we'd have groups of 100 or less living in small villages bartering with other small groups.

Here is what I would love to see happen:

There should never, never be a reason for anyone to be without the basics (food and shelter). In a scenario like this, I would love to see community gardens/farming, where all who are physically able pitch in to plant, grow, and harvest crops, etc. to ensure that there is enough food for all in the community. Providing for the needs of all in terms of food and basic housing should be top priority, but with everyone helping as they are able, this should still leave time for other pursuits and interest to provide clothing, jewlery, health care, entertainment, etc. There would be no unemployment, because there would be no shortage of tasks that need doing. So people would not have to worry about whether they could find a job and be able to provide for their family.

Why is it "either/or"? With global communications and travel, why are centralized systems necessary any longer? A simple look at all of history, including the present, reveals that power players exploit the masses. Nowadays it is simply easier to see that poor people overseas aren't our enemies as much as their governments and our own government are. What's the point in slaving for a few at the top if you know the system is rigged to give you just enough not to revolt and to enrich and empower a global elite? Obama and Gaddhafi are the same guy. Or, if you lefties prefer, Bush and Gaddhafi are the same guy. They cater to themselves and to their bosses, ie, the banks and corporations who they grant privilege to and who make sure they and their families are extremely comfortable -at the expense of you and your family....and the poor arab guy overseas and his family. I don't think most on here prefer socialism to corporate domination. At the end of the day, they are the same thing. Rule by an elite few over the many. And more people are waking up to the fact that voting won't change anything. You may have a few different special interests in control, but the system ensures bank/corporate/NGO domination over the interests of the many. Socialism/communism just adds more layers of bureacracy and maintains a phony premise that is unnatural and changes nothing at the end of the day.
My answer to the OP's question? Depower the corporations, the banks, AND the government. Like a fellow wrote earlier - SELF SUFFICIENCY. Obviously some government or co-op between smaller localized governments would have to exist for purposes of infrastructure maintenance and a true common defense (as opposed to protecting the interests of global corporations via tax money and citizen lives). But, at the end of the day, unless we screw it up, WE DON'T NEED THEM. What we are potentially seeing is the birth pangs of a global realization that the systems, hierachies, social models, ideologies, organizations, governments, etc (ie "The Establishment) exist in a manner similar to "The Matrix". Instead of literally being batteries, the ruling elite use our labor, creativity, and time to enrich and empower themselves. "The Matrix program" is, instead of a literal holographic computer program, a way to control and sedate the masses as they continue to "power" the system at their own expense. It consists of phony ideologies like "conservatism" and "liberalism", "Christianity" and "Islam", "socialism" and "capitalism". These things really mean nothing. They are just controls and they have worked for thousands of years.
DECENTRALIZE, DECENTRALIZE, DECENTRALIZE!
Ditch our current capitalist system which is corrupt and inefficient, despite what your economics professor says. Revert to an actual free market system, but one with some controls, as those who have some measure of power will inevitably try to consolidate as much as possible. Stress individualism but maintain a sense of community. Anarchy can be valued in both left and right terms. Cooperation and competition can and should co-exist.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, DISPERSE!

I understand this idea of self sufficiency, and I like it, and I've thought about it.

But I think it fails to take into account specialization (and disspecialization). For instance, the idea that this system could eliminate unemployment is bunk. The least talented, most stupid, most irresponsible citizen will still find a way to be unemployed, because nobody will want them doing even the menial of the community jobs. Let's say there's another guy though, who's stupid and talentless but relatively responsible, eventually it would simply make sense that he take over someone's responsibilities so that they could focus on that which they are good at. A simple understanding of game theory will tell you that over time, this entire process would unwind like this, and you once again, would have those least useful to the community working in the fields day in and day out, while others are indoors. Doesn't this make the community better off? At what point is any individual worse off? What can you reward people for their work with? If you reward the physical laborers highly then inevitably, incentives will cause a smart individual to find a way to farm more efficiently than all of your laborers combined with one machine that only he knows how to work. What happens then? What happens when an outsider of your community would like that machine and would be willing to pay your community for it?

Inevitably what will happen is once again, you will have begin to see classes emerge, just like in World of Warcraft or an MMO, there won't just be citizens or community anymore, you will have specialized crafters, soldiers, diplomats, farmers, etc etc etc. That gives birth to even more specialized classes such as "plow manufacturers, wheat farmers, infantry, navy, diplomat to other community X, diplomat to other community Y.

Sure it might be an interesting and somewhat better world, but leisure would remain unchanged in my opinion, and you'd eventually end up more or less back where you started.

So what's the solution? I seriously cannot think of a solution to this question of what is the ideal way to reconstruct after a political/economic collapse. Everything seems to revert back to specialization and class stratification, even if its in the best interest of the individual and the community. I'm an Economics major so perhaps I am blind in this regard, but it seems that what we have now ISN'T SO BAD. Sure there are a few people at the top that have gamed all of us for trillions, and there are corporations that have grown like a deadly virus to be so massive that they can put everyone else out of business, but for the most part, the whole idea that some of us our wage-slaves makes me laugh.

If you are a wage-slave, ask yourself why? Why aren't you a managing director of M&A at J.P. Morgan making millions a year. Investment Bankers can work 120 hours a week, weekends included. that is a 6am - 11pm job on the rare occasion, and sometimes they have to pull all-nighters. Their job requires a bit of creativity, raw intelligence, the drive, energy, and responsibility to be able to pull hours like that, and to top it all off they have to be relatively sociable. Ask yourself why you haven't applied to J.P. Morgan for a job...

Suddenly 9-5 doesn't sound so bad does it? Sure the JP Morgan guy can afford a Bentley, and probably owns a huge house, but is he better off than you working 9-5 at McDonalds? One could argue that sure he is because he could work 9-5 and make more than the guy at McDonalds, but that doesn't account for the fact that the investment banker doesn't choose his hours, has 2 weeks of vacation a year and works weekends.

What we all want is to be rich without working. The unfortunate thing for all of us is that it seems the only way to do this is to be the very clever, competitive, and cut-throat people we seem to despise on these boards: be the CEO's or the managers, or the international bankers, or the restaurant-owners, or whoever it is you think is "not subject to this wage slavery".

And so then we find that the answer to our problem is the problem. The only possible answer is the problem itself. So when 1 = 1 or 2 = 2 does it really make sense to rip down half the equation to try to find the answer to 1 = ? or 2 = ? In other words, if we know that the problem really is this simple, does it make any sense to try and "restart everything" other than to delay finding out what we knew all along.

We aren't wage slaves, we're jealous it seems.