🚀 go-pugleaf

          YES, CAPITALISM IS UNFAIR:  
               WANT TO CHANGE IT??  


On Sat, 13 Apr 96 18:04:23 GMT, ccc54321@iafrica.com (Craig) wrote in
sci.econ:

>    I know very little about economics and was wondering if someone in the newsgroup
>who is clued up on the subject, could help by answering some questions......
>    Does this free enterprise system serve any role in making the world a better 
>place? I know many wars have been fought over a lack of resources. One 
>would presume that by the wealth of the more advanced nations rubbing off onto
>the poorer nations, it would increase the quality of life for the people in the
>poorer nations and with the improved quality of life would come more security
>and with more security there would be less reason to go to war with another 
>country.    >Craig ccc54321@iafrica.com


Hello Craig, 

        Greetings from beautiful Holland,
        How is life in your country??

        Responding to your ironic question, I must say that it is
justifiable and elementary, but poorly worded.  
        I believe that you want to ask:   "Is socialistic capitalism
Fair?"
        The answer to that question is "Certainly Not!"  The rewards
are unequal, the highest rewards being taken by those who dominate and
operate the system, and the least to are quite content to accept
whatever is given to them by their benefactors.  

        But if you really want to ask:  "Is Socialistic Capitalism
'productive' and 'good for everyone', that depends on the people
subjected to the system.  
        Servitude or slavery can certainly be much more highly
productive and rewarding than a simple primitive existence.  But
whether or not this is "good" for anyone - either masters or slaves -
depends on the people involved.
        If the subjected people are civilized humans, the answer is an
unqualified "No!"  Civilized humans are much more productive in a
civilized environment than they are under the Reverse Animal Farm
conditions of primitive socialistic capitalism.  For both them and
their masters, slavery is degrading.
        But if the harnessed individuals are lowly uncivilized
primitives who have no more human ambition than livestock, the answer
could be definite "Yes Yes Please Please!"  
        For accurate answers in any particular case, you would need to
ask this question of the individuals involved.  
        Or better still, ask them if they would like to join a local
consumer-based economy like the one described in the ConsumerCard
article submitted to the United States Congress a few years back.
This would create a truly scientific economy with an ABSOLUTELY FAIR
PRICING SYSTEM - the kind which you suggest you would prefer to unfair
capitalist pricing practices.  Their answer will tell you what type of
people they are and whether or not they are content with whatever
socialistic capitalism gives them.
        After reading the ConsumerCard article below, you might ask
yourself which type of persons you and your neighbors consider
yourselves to be: civilized or uncivilized. 
        On the chance that you or your neighbors might classify
yourselves as ambitious civilized humans, I attach a business plan
which explains in more detail the advantages of a consumer-based
economy and how one might be organized.  
        I have been posted this plan in various newsgroups in an
attempt to locate all civilized humans in Europe, America, Asia,
Australia, the Orient, and elsewhere in the world.  
        Perhaps civilized people can someday organize a civilized
world economy.  
        If not, we will soon all be reduced to barbarism when the
world's oil wells run dry and overpopulation submerges us all.

        Please circulate this email widely in your area.



        May you build the city of your dreams.

        God be willing.

        Kind regards from    /\  Keesy@pi.net  /\ 


                        ------------------------------------




                             United States Of America 
                        CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
Proceedings and Debates of the 98th Congress, Second Session
Vol. 130       Washington, Thursday, May 10, 1984         No. 60

                      HON. CARLOS J. MOORHEAD 
                                      of California 
                      In The House Of Representatives 

Mr. MOORHEAD.  Mr. Speaker, an aerospace engineer named Jerrold Martin
has a unique idea for solving unemployment problems, inflation, and
the high cost of living and for ending recessions and depressions.  It
is called the ConsumerCard.  I offer the explanation of Mr. Martin for
the edification of my colleagues in the House.

                                CONSUMERCARD  

    Ending Recessions, Depressions,  Unemployment, Inflation, and High
Living Costs - ConsumerCard

     In both principle and practice, the permanent solution to our
chronic unemployment problems is relatively simple.  In principle, all
we need do is base most of our industrial production on the long-term
industrial orders of Consumers rather than on the short-term
industrial orders of Investors.  In practice, this simply means
contracting with one of our major credit-card companies to issue and
administer a special new credit card which would enable consumers to
place long-term orders with industry and to pay for these with their
tabor rather than with money.  Consumers and businessmen would then do
whatever else was necessary to make the new credit card work.
     Unemployment is simply the result of insufficient numbers of
consumer orders reaching Industry.  Consumer Orders are the fuel upon
which industry runs.  When the flow of consumer orders slows,
industrial production slows and unemployment results.  If industry is
to maintain a high level of productivity, its managers must draw from
a full fuel tank of long-term consumer industrial orders.
    In the past, we have always acted as though only Investors
(private and governmental) could order things for consumers and
maintain industry's backlog of orders.  Therefore our economic
policies have concentrated on encouraging more investors to initiate
more and more job-producing industrial orders and then providing
investors with convenient and reliable means of doing so.
     Regrettably, this short-sighted policy neglects entirely the
second major source of economic orders: the ultimate consumers
themselves.  This neglect is unfortunate since working consumers
outnumber investors ten to one, and they have forty times more
financial capacity than investors.  Consumers also know more about
what consumers want, and in one month they can place more firm
long-term consumer orders with industry than industry can handle in
fifty years.
     Thus to create lifetime full employment for all Americans -
regardless of age, race, gender, education, or disability - we must
expand our economic policies to encourage consumers as well as
investors to place many long-term consumer orders with industry and to
provide both consumers and investors with reliable means of doing so.
Unfortunately, unlike investors, consumers are provided no such means.
Therefore we establish in our local and national banks a special
consumer-based credit system to parallel our present investor-based
credit system. 
     This new credit system could take the form of a special
credit-card whose use would be identical to that of an ordinary credit
card except for two major differences.  First, instead of being used
to BUY existing Investor-ordered products off retailer shelves, the
new "ConsumerCard" would be used exclusively to ORDER the production
of future consumer goods and services.  Second, instead of being
repaid in investor-created currency, consumer credits could be paid
only in the labor of the ordering consumers.
     Once distributed en rnasse to scores of millions of current and
future credit-card holders, the many potential benefits of this unique
ConsumerCard would induce consumers to use it, and the potential
profits would pressure businessmen to facilitate its use and accept
its credits.  To the extent that it was used, unemployment would end
nationwide.  So would all other economic problems, from monetary
Inflation, cyclical business recessions, and general economic
instability, to labor strikes, unscientific pricing policies,
rnisproduction. haphazard development, and gross misappropriation of
human and natural resources.
     The use of the new consumer-based credit system would produce an
energetic surge of efficient, sensible. and stable industrial activity
which would double our Gross National Product and everyone's wages
within one year and every seven years thereafter.  Consumers would
receive what they wanted, not what investors thought they wanted or
should have, or what investors could afford to order.
     Full employment would promptly shrink the public dole while the
new affluence would greatly enlarge our tax base. Huge new tax
revenues would quickly convert government budget deficits into
surpluses and enable governments to repay their ponderous public debts
within three years while providing ample new funds for education,
defense, public health and public works, and the maintenance of our
crumbling infrastructure.
     The new employment security would stabilize jobs and thus
families, individuals, communities, and cultures.  These stabilized
communities would in turn reverse urban decay and elevate public
morale and morality.  Stabilized social pressures would also
discourage crime, fraud, and debt evasion while tighter financial
controls and the disuse of negotiable cash would prevent them.
     Consumer orders would enable businessmen to set prices and wages
scientifically since consumer evaluations of ordered products could be
properly compared with worker evaluations of the jobs created by those
orders.  This practice would permit the economy to establish proper
production priorities and to determine the optimum allocations of
human and natural resources.  This would end the aggressive tug-of-war
method of setting prices and wages and the subsequent frustrating
misplacement of invaluable workers and wasteful misallocation of
irreplaceable resources.
     Long-term consumer contracts would reserve limited land and
mineral rights for the exclusive use of specific individuals and
families. These individual allocations would inspire a broad
conservation of natural resources and restrain excessive fertility.
The limits of these personal allocations would thus discourage current
excessive population growth, the rape of natural resources, and the
further extinction of species without official intervention.
     Pollutants in our air, land, food, and water would gradually
disappear once its high costs persuaded consumers to pay higher prices
to manufacturers to fund the suppression of pollution at its source.
Scientific research would be stimulated since its estimated value
would elicit ample investments from consumers and from the many
businessmen looking for better and more efficient ways to fulfill
their fifty-year backlogs of orders.  Similarly, useful inventions
would find immediate applications and markets through the consumer
agencies which would be organized to utilize fully the many
opportunities of this new consumer-ordering device.
     After we have controlled unemployment at home, as world leaders
we can inspire similar economic reforms abroad.  In doing so we would
not only help other nations improve their economy and our
international relations, we would also divert the flood of illegal
immigrants fleeing the economic chaos in those nations.  Full
employment abroad would also persuade economic refugees already here
to return voluntarily to their own countries, while our newly closed
local economies could compel them to do so.
     As this brief review Indicates, the potential benefits of this
consumer-based credit system are enormous.  In monetary terms alone,
the system is worth at least ONE TRILLION DOLLARS ANNUALLY to the
people of the United States, and proportionally more to other peoples
of the world.


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