Communist Capitalism

A popular theory of economics is that, in any transaction, both parties gain. Everyone benefits! Some people take this to mean that everyone is forever becoming better off, and everyone always will be; and this is why economies need to forever grow. Unfortunately, this equation is missing a few little variables. Like time. Nothing may last forever, but everything else doesn't so everyone is constantly replacing their decayed things and repairing their broken things. Time is a very hungry beast.

This is also assuming that every purchase is actually made freely and voluntarily. Which isn't necessarily true. Sometimes, a person can be forced to buy something, against their will, at gun-point or litigation-point. If every choice was voluntary, then people wouldn't grumble for months after being ripped off by the used car salesman. They might not have needed the car, and they did make the transaction without being forced to, but the illusion of being forced is really the same thing when considering a third assumption:

Everyone knows all about whatever market they are dealing in and know what something is really worth. If "negative reciprocity" wasn't a real thing, then we wouldn't have some people worth a billion times more than others. A billion is a very, very big number. People are getting exploited all the time, to insist that they aren't because every transaction is voluntary is as idealistic and naive as saying we could stop mining tomorrow because we have all the resources we need. Both are possible in theory, I would like them both to be true, but since I'm not God, they aren't. Life continues to be hard.

The free-market can't regulate itself. That's the same thing as government regulating itself if it was free. Then you get a million little kingdoms constantly battling each other until one conquered all the others and there was one nation. After that, how do you escape what that nation tells you to do? They have the supreme power of a dictatorship.

In America, the founding fathers came up with a great idea: "checks and balances". No one part of the government can become too powerful and all of it is, supposed, to remain in the control of the people who elect representatives. It was a great idea.

But now the "nation-state" is not the most powerful group. The most powerful group is in the "private" sector. Businesses are battling each other until one reins supreme and can then control all the peons under them. Many can already do it: they can demand that you buy from them even if you do not want to because there is no competition or alternative. If you want to live in our society, you simply have to give them your money. See Microsoft, the Oil and Gas industry, the Housing Market, cellular phones. Insurance, which may, shortly, be legislated mandatory.

I believed, for a long time, that I could simply boycott them all. But it's not really possible in America. You can't function as a normal person; it's hard to get a job, you can't even vote if you try to be address-less. I still succeed in not supporting many of these, but I can realize how improbable it is to expect anyone else to even try. Especially since most people don't have the means I had to try. To think that anyone could just escape the system shows that this thinker never had it that hard themselves. Some people do, even in America.

Where would you go, anyway. Even the bushmen have been globalized. It's not a question of "is it worth it to buy this thing?" it is a question of "what will happen if I don't give this company $3000?"

Our founding fathers have a good solution again. There should be imposed checks and balances, under control of the proletariat (to use a good "communist" term) to limit the free market. Freedom is fine, but anarchy is not. Our "free market" is really more of the latter and just approaching "communism" from the other direction.