Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Why socialism is more nessecary with time

As anyone can tell you, capitalism depends on a lower class. To own something implies that someone else doesn't, and when a system gives value to people depending on what they have then they will always try to have more. Ideas are bought and sold, creating secrets in order to retain their capital value. Information is given a dollar value, even if it is freely available, making both sides lose (with less content and no profit.) Everything in the modern world is requiring less manpower; people are becoming more educated and working longer hours. All of these contribute to inequality in capital on a exponential curve, so how could any significant amount of us be happy in 60 years under a capitalist system if there is no money coming to most of us?

Our system of patenting is flawed; when I first heard of creative commons licensing I was elated. For years I tried to think of a proper patent system since I was sure ours was more interested in profit than creating new ideas, then I fond out about creative commons and realized one already exists. The main problem that I have with the modern patent system is the capitalization of ideas. Anything from light bulbs to Bob Marley are monopolized by greed for ages after the creators death. Eddison should have profited in a great way for popularizing the light bulb, sure; I can see that, but why does his company (GE) get to renew the patent so long after his death? Bob Marley's relatives own different rites to different songs of his, making boat loads of money off them to this day, yet we never had a good compilation of all his best songs since none of them can get along and put one together.
Light bulbs, Bob Marley and many other things never seem to become public domain like so many great works of literature and art have, which seems to claim that an individual deserves something for part of the accumulated achievements of man-kind. Everything I have ever thought is thanks to the billions of dead people that came up with ideas for me, the same is true for us all and patent laws should reflect that.

Entertainment used to be a rare thing in this world; not too long ago, a story by a fire was our only source of entertainment. At the start of broadcast television and radio there were only a few channels on at one time and no real competition besides that. Now we live in an age where digital video recorders, Netflix and torrents make watching whatever you want easy; the same is true for all types of entertainment. All information is becoming easily available, and that is a good thing. The more we know about each other, the better we know one another. Education is no longer something that only the elite can truly gain access to, information is abundantly available to anyone who wants to find it. Capitalizing on an idea seems so 19th century when new ideas are freely available to anyone with access to the internet.

We left the industrial era ages ago yet we still have this industry mind set, where everyone can get a job if they look for one. That is not the case anymore; efficiency is king in this digital age, less people are needed to sustain our culture and civilization. Robots have invaded warehouses and assembly lines, it's only a matter of time before they start making most jobs more efficient.
Workers at Amazon warehouses don't need to go to shelves to find products, the shelves come to them on robots and line up next to the packager. All you have to do is watch an episode (or 100) of How It's Made to see how unnecessary people are when it comes to making products for the entire world to enjoy. If that isn't enough, then think about how many more people are working past the age of 65 these days, and how an education alone is no longer enough to demand a job (like it was when they were getting out of school.)

All of these problems grow. As more ideas are hoarded for profit, copying information for educational or entertainment purposes becomes a crime; the working population grows in numbers while being educated isn't enough to get a job. Everything about Western life is based on an old system that only worked for a industrialization. Now that we are in the information age, we don't have the amount of well paying jobs to employ enough people to fool the lower class in to thinking they can all climb up to the middle class. The middle class is shrinking constantly (as all this happens) which is devastating to the dream that this country has been reliant on. With out a real middle class, the riots that we see today will only get worse.

The only real answer is to socialize, to a point where everyone in the world gets help and we all get enough to eat for the month and to sustain us for a normal life. Heath care is a huge issue in The West, yet few think that a home and food should be free to all. Any other expenses can be considered luxuries (in some way) and you can buy those with money from your job if you are so lucky to have one, but the old idea of working to keep a roof over your head and food in your stomach is not going to work forever as long as people keep working more hours (for less money) to stay alive.
We should be able to move away from the concept of greed; start thinking of a way to feed and house everyone alive to a certain level of comfort. We could easily spend the entire Western budget on a world wide initiative to give every man, woman and child the basics of life (and heath) if we weren't spending most of it a war machine. Possibly if we were charitable to all, friend and enemy alike, then we wouldn't need such an impressive war machine to hide behind in fear of a world unifying (without our interests in mind.)

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, give a man a house and he'll have a house to live in, you don't have to teach him anything either.

No comments:

Post a Comment