An alternative system to Capitalism, Communism and Socialism
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A system based on SHARED WORK and without monetary economy
The opposite of Capitalism is not Communism. It is Non-Capitalism.
I am not the only and the first one who has though that the capitalistic system is based on deeply wrong principles and can’t work on the long terms.
Already in the 1960′ and 1970’s year, some people had understood it, right in the middle of the years of the “miracle” of the big Economic Growth.
Of course nobody listened to them, and they were accused to be ‘communist‘ or utopians. Now, since the early 2000 years, we are just beginning to pay the high price of the utopian capitalistic system.
Actually, if you think well about it, THERE ARE NOT many ways about how a system which provides a good standard of life to everybody, indistinctly, could work. There are not many ways.
A such fair and sustainable system could work only if it is based on the following 3 bearing elements:
1) Shared work, on voluntary basis.
2) Absence of a monetary economy and use of a more effective measurement unit, instead of money.
3) No deny to all the fundamental freedoms of people.
In a non capitalistic system, the people work to produce all the goods and services they need and everything they would like to produce. They don’t work to ‘sell’ something.
In a such system, people don’t work to move money, because money, as we know, doesn’t exist and there are no artificial numbers which need to be moved.
People don’t work in order to produce something to sell, because nothing needs actually to be sold. To ‘sell’ something is not prohibited, it is just not needed to let the system work.
Basically, every kind of goods is available for free in the stores. But it would have no sense to wish to pick up and accumulate a large quantity of anything. You would never pick up 100 TV devices, because you could not sell them to anyone, since everyone could go to the store and pick up his TV device for free.
The stores work also as ‘Exchange points‘. People return back the devices which they no more use or about they are not satisfied. Other people would pick up and use the returned ware. The production of new devices would be not high as now, because there would be much more reuse of products. There is much less waste and unnecessary production. Returned devices will not end in the trash, because they are no more ‘sellable’.
In a such system, the amount of work necessary to produce everything would be much less than now in the capitalistic system, because many redundant jobs would not exist (see more in the section about Capitalism).
Many jobs would not exist: sellers, sales agents, advertising, brokers, insurances, financial consultants, etc…
Many useless products would be not produced at all, simply because nobody requests them!
For example in a such system there would be much less TV models for each screen size, but all models would do their job with top quality. They would differ only in aesthetic design and minor details, and… they would be available for free!
A non-capitalistic system is not focused on the ‘consumption’ of goods, but on the production of what is needed.
The main characteristics of the system
Quick jump to:
– Planned economy? No thanks
– Freedom of job
– The system of ‘shared work’
– To work is not a must
– Private property
– The common sense of people
– A measuring unit instead of money
– The ‘Credit’ units
– Regulations
– Import / Export
– Penalties and jail system
– Self limitation of the system
– Conclusions
– Planned economy? No thanks.
Who would decide what has to be produced, what not, and how much of something has to be produced? Perhaps the Government, like in the ‘planned economy’ of the Communist systems? No.
The demand of people establish what is needed and what is not. People decide what they have to work for. They set the priorities of the production, directly and indirectly.
Now you would ask “What if everyone wants to own a Ferrari car?”. A Ferrari car is just some hundred Kg of processed metals, as any other car. It requires only a finest work on some parts.
If you set up sufficient production lines in the factories and if enough people are available to spend their turns of work making it, technically it is possible to provide a Ferrari to everyone. As well as a city car or any other product.
“Who owns the big factories?”. The big factories have not a single owner, they have a direction, which administrates the production accordingly to the demand of people, and to the available raw materials of course. The people elect periodically the members of the administration. The people with their demand set up the factories they need.
– Freedom of work, and Job organization
Freedom of work is the equivalent of the ‘Freedom of Business‘ in the capitalistic world.
Everybody is free to set up its activity and produce what he/she likes, or to provide the service they like.
The only difference to Capitalism, is that the target of your activity is not to sell something. It is to produce something useful, or just something you like produce, and make it available to the other people.
What happens if you receive so many requests, that you need to expand your ‘business’ opening a small factory? How could you get the expensive and complex production machines?
As first, you could propose to an already existing big factory, to add your product to their production, using their existing production lines.
If the factories are already 100% busy or can’t set up new production lines for that product, a new small factory could be set up, organizing the job within the system of the shared work. A project board will be opened, gathering the necessary working power and resources to realize the new factory.
Everything is driven basically by the demand of the people and availability of workforce (which is a lot).
If you invent a good product, people will want to get it and they will be available to spend their working time for it, if it is required additional workforce to produce it.
See also the paragraph about freedom of copy, in the page about the other advantages.
– The system of ‘shared work’ or ‘distributed work’
People decide what they study and which job they want learn.
The amount of work, necessary to produce all the requested goods and services, is shared among all the interested people, on voluntary basis.
The work is distributed (or splitted) in periods of time among the qualified people who apply to cover an available working period.
Workers, doctors, employers would serve their turn of work in a factory, hospital or organization which they find available in their zone, or where they prefer.
The most revolutionary part is that, since the amount of work necessary to produce everything would be much less than in the capitalistic world (due to the missing redundant jobs and useless products), the working turns would be pretty short… probably 2, 3 or 4 weeks of work per year for each applicant in the waiting list, would be enough to cover the production need. All the rest of the year would be free time, for your family, your hobbies, or to develop your ideas. Everybody who wants work will work, but nobody will need to work 11,5 month per year, for his/her entire working life!
Does it sound incredible? A utopia? Then try to divide the amount of man-hours that would be required to produce all what we really need, by the number of people in the working age. You will find out that it is not a utopia at all. It would be the normality.
For some small tasks even 4 hours per day would be sufficient.
With a rotation schedule, everybody would find a turn of work to get assigned. And you will have not do the same job for your entire life. You could do many different jobs, of course by attending the proper training for that job.
– To work is not a must. It is always voluntary
If you don’t want work, you don’t work, even for your entire life. Nevertheless, you will continue to own your home, your cars, etc. You can always pick up all what you want in the stores. It is the dream of all ‘paid slaves’ living in the capitalistic system. Isn’t it?
But in a non capitalistic world, it would be not so pleasant, to don’t work for the entire life. It would get really boring. Always to take everything without to give… soon or later, you would begin to feel yourself really as a parasite.
In a such system, people would be happy to work a few weeks in a year, to make sure that nothing will miss in the stores and all the services will work without interruption.
People would be happy to give some of their time to get all this, in a system where as ‘pay’ you can get basically all what you want in the stores for free.
– Private property
Of course also in a non-capitalistic system, the private property would exist. Once you pick up something in a store, it belongs to you, exactly as if you have bought it.
The house or flat where you live, is yours. It belongs to you forever, or until you decide to move to another home. Nobody can expropriate it to you.
And what if you want own two or more houses? See the paragraph about regulations.
– The common sense of people
It is not a utopia. Even Capitalism can’t work without a certain ‘common sense’ of its people. But capitalism has accustomed us to the false need to accumulate everything we can, basically under the idea to can make money later with it. Therefore it is difficult for us now, to imagine a world without this compulsive obsession. Try to free your mind from this.
Look also to the other animals. They don’t accumulate a mountain of food, just because it is available in their environment. They know, that also tomorrow there will be enough of it.
– A measuring unit instead of money, the ‘IVU’
As mentioned, money is a useless number, because it reflects the real value of nothing and it looses worth with time. Instead, a more proper measuring unit would be employed.
A sort of measure unit is necessary to quantify the efforts necessary to produce an object and to can compare easily the real production “costs” between different objects or services.
A number which reflects the intrinsically value, contained in an object or service.
It is a number which expresses in a more objective way, the real amount of efforts contained in a product, in terms of worked hours and resources which are required to produce that object or service, starting from the extraction of the raw materials.
This number could be called ‘IVU‘, Intrinsically Value Unit. 1 IVU could correspond for example to 1 hour of work, multiplied for a ‘K’ factor, in the same way as it is for Credits.
The IVU value of an object remains constant, forever! If to produce that specific object costed 10 IVU, this number will not change, even in 1000 years. As well if an object measures 1 meter, it will measure 1 meter forever. The IVU value expresses how much resources, work and kind of efforts an object has costed for its production or how much resources and efforts a service requires to be issued.
It can be set then, that if you want get a bulky extra which has an intrinsically worth of 1000 IVU, you have to ‘pay’ 1000 Credits to get it. This exchange rate may be set differently, depending on many factors, but the intrinsically worth of an object, expressed in IVU doesn’t change.
For example a very old house which worths 1000 IVU, but which is no more in good conditions, could be sold for less than 1000 credits.
Differently than money, IVU is a measuring unit, and Credits are bounded to real worked hours.
Actually, the production costs of almost all products slightly decrease with time, because the efficiency of production machines and of the production processes continuously improves. But this doesn’t change that, one specific object which had been produced on date xxxxx, has costed yy IVU units. The IVU is not a scientifically exact measure unit, but once its ground criteria have been set, the unit allows to compare in much more objective and useful way, the real value of any object, and it remains constant. It is not affected by any inflation.
A sort of measure unit is necessary to easily recognize what costs more in terms of resources and working power, and what costs less.
The IVU value is not the ‘market value’ of an object. The market value is how much someone is ready to give, in order to get a specific object.
An object which has a low IVU intrinsically value may gain a high market value in Credits, if it becomes a rare piece, for example.
So if you own a such object, you can demand to people to give you more Credits, than its intrinsically IVU value. Anyway in a non-capitalistic system, the trade has a very marginal role, since basically all the current goods are available for free to everyone. Nobody needs to trade something, in order to live well.
– ‘Credit’ units for large extras, instead of money
Note that this concern is not strictly necessary. Many anticapitalist people would argue that there is no reason why some people would need or desire to get “large extras”. Here I am only proposing how this concern could be managed.
For the cases where someone wants get something bulky as extra, something which is resource-intensive, like a second house, it could be established a system based on ‘Credit’ units. As explained, nobody is obliged to work, but a value in ‘Credit’ units could be assigned to the served worked hours. For example 1 Credit unit for each served hour of work.
Similar as money, you can give your credits to get something as exchange. You can donate your credit to someone. Two or more people can add their credits together, to buy together a large extra, but credits are not money.
Differently than money, Credits can’t be loaned by a bank, because they are bounded to real worked hours. They are not an artificial number. Banks don’t exists. All the worked hours are stored in a database.
Then if you want get a larger home than what is established, or buy a second unnecessary home, you could use your credits to pay this extra amount of resources which will be expended only for you.
You can accumulate credits serving more working periods, according to the availability in the system, or you could produce something by yourself and sell it in exchange with credit units. But you have to find buyers available to give you some of their Credits, to get your product. This won’t be so easy, in a system where almost everything is already available for free, and where there is no prohibition to copy anything (copyleft).
It could be defined also a multiplier factor ‘K’ which defines for example that 1 hour of work spent cleaning the streets gets 1 Credit, and 1 hour of work of a doctor gets 2 Credits. But without to exaggerate with this difference, as it happens with the salaries in the Capitalistic system.
It is true that the work of a doctor or a jet pilot is much more critical, complex and requires a much higher level of preparation. But it is true that to clean streets is also a necessary job, otherwise our streets would look as in the Middle East Countries…
And not every job fits to everybody. Also in the capitalistic world, a doctor would not like to clean the streets for his/her entire life, even for the same pay, just because it is not his/her job. The same is vice versa. Not all the street sweepers would be able to become doctors.
But 1 hour of the life of a doctor has the same length of 1 hour for a sweeper.
1 hour of time spent at work is always one hour subtracted to our personal life, to our family, interests, health, etc…
Time is the only real Capital which we have in our lives. Thus, the working time of everybody has a basically the same worth.
– Regulations
A sort of regulation which establish some upper limits, would be necessary in the real world, I think.
Using the common sense and considering that the surface and resources on Earth are not infinite, all people together would establish the upper limits about concerning the ‘big things‘. For example the max. size of a home or flat to be given to a single person, to 2 persons etc, without to require to add Credits to get it. Also how many cars, boats and of which size, etc… a single person shall own, without to add Credits.
It is clear that it is not possible that everybody on earth can owns 100 cars or a 1000 square meters home. There are not enough resources and place on Earth. But in the real world, there will be always some people who will want more things than the average people. For some people a 60mq flat is enough, while for some others 300mq is the minimum for an enjoyable home.
Nevertheless, in a system based of freedom, it should be theoretically possible, that a single person could build a skyscraper and keep it only for himself. The solution is simply that the system works in a way, that a such concentration of work and wasted resources in a single person, would be not viable to achieve, or not convenient. As well as in the capitalistic world it happens that the 99,99% of the people can’t really work enough to buy a skyscraper. Nevertheless, they live good also without a skyscraper or a 100 meter yacht.
But what would happen if you want to own two homes, because you would like to live in summer in a place and in winter in another place, keeping both houses only for yourself? Would it be prohibited?
No, but it would be harder to get. You should have served many working periods, accumulating enough ‘credits‘ to ‘pay’ the extra work, necessary to built you second home. (See also the paragraph below about the auto-limitation)
Or also, if you think that your skyscraper will be useful also for other purposes, you can open a project board in the system of the shared work, and see if you get enough interest to realize your project.
– Import / Export
Anyway, a non capitalistic Country would need to buy raw materials or various products from the abroad, from the capitalistic Counties which use US$, Euro or any other monetary currency.
The system would ‘earn’ the necessary foreign currency exporting its products. It would not be a closed world. People would also be free to sell their products abroad, earning foreigner currencies.
It could be established a common fund with Dollars or Euros, to give the possibility to buy products directly from abroad, also to whom doesn’t sell directly anything abroad. Of course only a limited amount could be made available.
– Penalties
What kind of penalties could be applied to ‘pay’ for small law infractions, if money doesn’t exist? If work is not obligatory and nobody is obliged to have a reserve of Credits?
For example if you pass a road crossing by red light, how could you pay for your infraction?
Here, creativity is welcome. For example, if you have no credits to use as payment, some your right could be restricted for a short time. Or for dangerous infractions, like it is to pass with red light, even only 2-3 days of jail could be very effective. In a system where everything is free and all freedoms are guaranteed, the loss of freedom, even if for only a few days, would be the most undesired and effective penalty.
– Jail system
At the present time, many supporters of non capitalistic systems are unfortunately do-gooders people. I am not.
The do-gooders people think that jails should not exist at all, because the cause of all crimes lays in the capitalistic system, not on people. Well guys, it is true that the larger part of the crimes are directly or indirectly bounded to money, but if I kill somebody to steal him 50$ or to take his car park at the store, the problem is in me, not in the system! Everybody is responsible for his own doing, not for that of the others.
That the current jail system doesn’t do its job good, it is a different issue. But the first purpose of jail is to keep dangerous people away from the society, in order to don’t allow that they do further damages. In jail hey have the time to reflect about what they have done, whether it worth the ride, to commit that rule break again. And they have a chance to be recovered.
About heavy crimes, non all people can be recovered, anything you do for them. Some people simply are bad born, with a bad DNA and the only way is to keep them away from the society.
– Self limitation of the system
Since the total amount of available working turns is limited, because the production of all what is needed or desired requires a finite amount of employment, in the facts, for a single person it would be impossible to collect a so large amount of worked hours to get so huge big extras only for himself, like an entire skyscraper. Even by working 24/24h for decades, a single person could not accumulate enough Credits to afford so much resources only for himself.
This is how the system regulates itself, making an abnormal and unnecessary concentration of resources on a single person not possible. In this system everyone will live well off, but nobody will be super rich.
Conclusion
This is just an overview about how a free and non-capitalistic system could work and how it self limits. But the concept is clear, it is not a utopia. Everything is up to people.
Would it be not a better system for the 99,9% of the people? Think well about it. I would give it a try.Until people don’t get aware that they are living as slaves for nothing, thinking to be free and thinking that there are no alternatives, nothing will change.
If you find that the system explained here would be a better system, please share this pages with your friends. Knowledge is nothing without sharing.
Thanks for reading.
Tyco