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--- capitalism-now [2017/11/15 12:15]
Richard Greeman created
+++ capitalism-now [2018/11/04 13:33] (current)
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+==== The New Economy ====
+=== Now ===
-Graduation Speech by Teacher Marie-Claire Dupont to her class:
+== Speech by Head Teacher Marie-Claire Fresney to students at 2117 graduation ceremony ==
+(Postcapitalism-RG)
 As any three-year-old anywhere on the surface of this beautiful, wounded planet can tell you, the economic principles of our societies can be summed up in two simple words: Caring and Sharing. The values you learned at home and in Kindergarten will be the motors of adult activity as well. As you may have discovered in your studies, the words “economy” and “ecology” are derived from the ancient Greek word for “home”  ecos. As adults, our “home” is our natural environment and the human societies that nurture us. And as you already know by your own experience, our job is to take good care of our home while sharing cooperating with each other.
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 Now go out and have a good time (applause and hoots).
+[NOTE: I realize there is something missing in this vision. There needs to be a 'Community Chest'or Credit Union to which all contribute in order to provide for health, education, support and for providing for cooperative enterprises to get started and provide raw materials etc.]
+== Brainstorming the "NOW" ==
+(from our 11/5/17 session)
+== Round 1 ==
+Fred: I see live musicians on every street corner as I walk around the city!
+Dan: The world is stable and safe, although a lil damp :)
+Dickey: We have rescued public education from corporate overlords and put it back into hands of people.
+Anna: I am a member of a child caring collective based in a neighborhood, we take care of all kids on the block on a rotating basis.
+Richard: Children are learning on their own nowadays, they work part time, apprentice and participate in all kinds of projects - choices of what they would like to engage in are left to them.
+Alexey: We, the historians, are preparing for a celebration of the jubilee of the first revolution of 1917 and the second revolution of the 21st century, discussing how it became possible.
+Lola: In my society, we don’t need to have money as an incentive to do socially useful work, people just like to contribute to their society, they have changed their attitudes.
+Barry: People have learned how to respect each other, particularly those with whom they disagree.
+== Round 2 ==
+Anna: I am a part of a small indigenous community who owns collectively its land and each family or individual has her own parcel to cultivate.
+Dicky : Cooperative are the only alternative in my society.
+Dan: There are smaller communities,  like those in the Caribbean - remarkably homogenous, where there is a much better chance to pull off a communist community and bring people to a consensus. Like Montpelier in Vermont, for example!
+Lola: As I envisioned in my book, today’s society is without money. People participate just because they want to genuinely contribute and we rely on the fact that we all need each other. I know that i contribute to everyone else’s well being while everyone else contributes to mine. In terms of money as payment for work, as in Richard’s society, I disagree with that model. Effort can be a too subjective criteria for evaluating the appropriate activity. The same task would be of a different degree of difficulty for different people. Our society has prefered to eliminate money entirely. Young people go to school to learn different topics, but they alternate between studying and working and contributing to their society. As for the jobs that no one wants to do - we do them on a rotating basis.
+Anna: And my community decided to get rid of “shitty jobs” by producing robots who do them.
+Richard: My society has decided to follow William Morris in resolving the issue of shitty jobs. As he envisioned in News from Nowhere, our dustmen wear fancy Renaissance and Middle Ages costumes and they are honored by everybody. A community nearby has adopted a different approach by following the utopian socialist Fourrier. When he said once in a debate that everybody should be able to do whatever they want, he was challenged that that way there would be no one to pick up garbage. His answer was: “Little boys will do that - they love garbage.’ And it turned out a highly effective method of dealing with garbage and annoying kids indeed.
+So as we can see NOW,  there is room for all kinds of society. All elements that fought capitalism and succeeded in building their own visions of a better world are engaged into the picture.
+=== Markets ===
+The old commercial shopping centers, now accessible by the network of public transport, were transformed into bazaars and surrounded by public parks in the place of the old parking lots. A great variety of local and regional businesses were installed in the centers in the place of all those faceless and lifeless stores from multinational chains like MacDonalds, Etam, Jennifer, Zara, Calvin Klein, and Benneton. Artisans could be seen there chatting with their friends and potential customers while working at the same time. Cuisine was both regional and multi-ethnic, and not expensive. Two or three times a week, the old parking lots were transformed into peasant markets where producers sold produce directly from their farms and gardens.
+Sundays, there were the flea markets, where people resold their clothes, their books, their furniture when they wanted to change it. Theaters, circuses and traveling shows set up their tents there. And as in urban centers, you could see on the screens films from all over the world. I saw these stations and centers bubbling over with life and conviviality. Vendors, like customers, were generally in good spirits and rarely in a hurry.
+On national and global levels, the Internet facilitated wholesale trade in minerals, metals, production tools. At any moment, by going online, you could locate offers and searches, in cotton, sugar, steel, cocoa, of a certain quality and quantity. Each type of production had its site, and you could see exchanges being made in real time. Fascinated, I watched the scene while a chocolate cooperative in Berne in search of 1000 kilos of a certain type of cocoa got in touch with several producer co-ops in Africa, and ended up reaching an accord with peasants in Djambala in the Congo.
+While I was looking, a thousand other deals of the kind were in the course of being negotiated, apparently to the mutual satisfaction of all. To save on freight, you generally chose producers closest geographically, but sometimes trade took place across oceans (by sailing ships) and mountains (via solar-powered dirigibles). Astonished, I asked my hosts: "Comrades, I have always fought against Globalization, and I’ve always believed that the market was a deadly instrument of capitalism that transformed all into merchandise and commodities!"
+They answered that as there was no more capitalism, there was no more problem. But seeing me at the same time perplexed and sceptical, my friends took me to the Institute of Prehistory, where I found working precisely the scholar who could answer me in the most rigorous terms.
+If these explanations don’t interest you, skip up to [[monopolies|Monopolies]].
-PS
+[[mystery-commodities|The Mystery of Commodities Explained]]
-NOTE: I realize there is something missing in this vision. There needs to be a 'Community Chest'or Credit Union to which all contribute in order to provide for health, education, support and for providing for cooperative enterprises to get started and provide raw materials etc.

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