The present economic capitalist system needs to be replaced.

[kentuck]

The present economic system is a threat to our present political system. We need an economic system

that is more egalitarian, thru taxes or however. We need an economic system with regulations to prevent

the wealthy from sticking it to the rest of us. We need an economic system that will encourage a wider

middle class and a smaller upper and lower class society. We need stronger anti-monopoly laws. We need

to break up companies that are "too big to fail". We need an economic system that respects labor and

unions more. The present economic capitalism does none of the above. We need big change. Call it

socialism or whatever you like.

[Mojambo]

1. See Gar Alperovitz

America Beyond Capitalism.

Great book.

http://www.garalperovitz.com/

[whistle]

2. As in restore the FDR New Deal regulatory capitalism which worked

...pretty much through JFK and LBJ era.

<snip>
Excavating The Buried Civilization of Roosevelt’s New Deal
by Gray Brechin 08/13/2008
A bridge crashes into the Mississippi at rush hour. Cheesy levees go down in New Orleans and few come to help or rebuild. States must rely on gambling for revenue to run essential public services yet fall farther into the pit of structural deficits. Clearly we have gone a long way from the legacy of the New Deal.

The forces responsible for this dismantling are what Thomas Frank calls “The Wrecking Crew,” the ideological (and sometimes genealogical) descendants of those who have waged war against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal since its birth 75 years ago. Few today articulate any vision of what Americans can achieve together because “the public” is the chief and intended casualty in that long war.

Those whom the mass media routinely refer to as conservatives better know themselves as counterrevolutionaries against what FDR wrought. Ronald Reagan proclaimed that government is the problem as he made it so. Almost two generations after President Roosevelt’s death, President Reagan and his conservative surrogates depended upon the amnesia of those who know little about what the New Deal did and what it still does for them to undo parts of its legacy.

I was not much more enlightened when I began what became the California Living New Deal Project four years ago. I thought that — with a generous seed grant from the Columbia Foundation — photographer Robert Dawson and I could document the physical legacy of the New Deal in California. Since the New Deal agencies were all about centralization, I thought, I would find their records neatly filed back in Washington at the National Archives and Library of Congress. I was wrong on all counts.

I discovered, instead, a strange civilization buried beneath strata of forgetfulness, neglect, and even malice seventy-five years deep. Aborted by the Second World War FDR’s sudden death, then covered with the congealed lava of the McCarthy reaction, the half dozen or so agencies that had created the physical and cultural infrastructure from which grew America’s post-war prosperity left few accessible records of their collective accomplishments. So many-pronged and multitudinous was the Roosevelt administration’s onslaught upon the Depression that even FDR’s Secretary of the Interior and head of the Public Works Agency (PWA), “Honest Harry” Ickes, admitted that he could not keep track of it all.

<MORE>

http://www.newgeography.com/content/00170-excavating-the-buried-civilization-roosevelt%E2%80%99s-new-deal

[Selatius]

3. One model already exists on the drawing boards that could alleviate problems.

It's a form of market socialism as envisioned by David Schweickart. It features:

* Worker Self-Management: Each productive enterprise is controlled democratically by its workers.

* The Market: These enterprises interact with one another and with consumers in an environment largely free of governmental price controls. Raw materials, instruments of production and consumer goods are all bought and sold at prices largely determined by the forces of supply and demand.

* Social Control of Investment: Funds for new investment are generated by a capital assets tax and are returned to the economy through a network of public investment banks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy#An_alternative_model

Basically, through taxes on assets businesses use to operate, the revenue is generated to fund the start-up of labor co-ops, farming co-ops, etc. as well as to provide funds for existing co-ops as well as buy out traditional enterprises to be reorganized into co-ops.

The revenue is distributed through public banks that run pretty much like private banks with board of directors and so on except for the fact that public banks would be getting revenue from taxes, as opposed to charging interest.

In time, you will develop a large co-op sector in competition with the private sector. In such a situation, employees would have a real choice to work in either sector.

[kurt_cagle]

6. Open Source Economics

I think that if you're looking for alternatives to the present economy, taking a close, hard look at the open source movement should be the place to start. This economy is about creating software (and increasingly hardware) that is effectively licensed to the community - you can use it for free, you can even build on its foundations, but you have to make the source code for any software that you create from the existing software also free. Analogs are opening up in areas such as creative commons and similar copy-left doctrines that recognize that for at least certain types of assets, there are significant benefits both for the creator and the community at large in making the source for these available.

I'm not saying that the economy should be completely replaced by such a system, but I do feel that free and open source software can provide a compelling model for those things that are ultimately intellectual rather than resource based in nature. Its currency is reputation and street cred, which can readily translate into additional work in terms of creating modifications to existing systems or creating projects for specific needs.

There's an interesting corollary to this as well. It's worth noting that in the US (and indeed, in most of the G8 "economic sphere) population is either slowing its growth dramatically or is shrinking. Every economic model currently in use is predicated upon economic growth, because as the population grows, so should the economy, but the flipside of that is true - once the populations start to decline, then economic growth will be replaced with economic sustainability then with (hopefully well contained) economic shrinkage. The current growth models were first established before World War II, and in many cases are really no longer that relevant. For all of the (admittedly well deserved) talk about fiscal irresponsibility and culpability, demographics plays a huge part in the current gyrations in the market as well, and until we recognize the fact that economic growth is not only no longer necessary but has in fact metastasized into what amounts to an economic cancer, the sooner we can establish an economic model that does work.

Kurt Cagle
Online Editor, Sustainability
O'Reilly Media
http://www.oreilly.com

[Selatius]

8. It should be implemented in the technology sector where applicable, but market socialism is...

an idea that encompasses the entire economy from technology to industrial production to farming to small business ventures and so forth. I would not say that Schweickart's model of market socialism and your idea is mutually exclusive.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. Ernst Friedrich Schumacher theories are along the same lines

I don't adhere to all of his philosophies but I think this is the route
and direction that is needed for this planet.

In the first chapter of 'Small Is Beautiful', "The Problem of Production", Schumacher argues that the modern economy is unsustainable. The natural resources (especially fossil fuels), are treated as expendable income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable, and thus subject to eventual depletion. He further argues that nature's resistance to pollution is limited as well. He concludes that government effort must be concentrated on reaching sustainable development, because relatively minor improvements, like education for leisure or technology transfer to the Third World, countries will not solve the underlying problem of unsustainable economy.

Schumacher's philosophy is one of "enoughness," appreciating both human needs, limitations and appropriate use of technology. It grew out of his study of village-based economics, which he later termed “Buddhist Economics.” Buddhist Economics forms the basis for 'Small is Beautiful's fourth chapter.

He faults conventional economic thinking for failing to consider the most appropriate scale for an activity, blasts notions that “growth is good”, and that “bigger is better,” and questions the appropriateness of using mass production in developing countries, promoting instead “production by the masses.” Schumacher was one of the first economists to question the appropriateness of using GNP to measure human wellbeing, emphasizing that “the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption.”

[Andy823]

4. I agree but it may be to late.

We already have a monopoly in the energy sector, the pharmaceutical sector, and now it looks like it is happening with the banking sector. I also see big corporations buying up farm land. I keep wonder if this has been part of the Bush "new world order" plan. Once you have control of energy, pharmaceuticals, banking, and food, you pretty much have control of things.

Can we bust these monopolies up in the future, or are we seeing the beginning of the Bush families "new world order"?

[lonestarnot]

7. Scarey but fucking looking like it hugh. We are well done on both sides.

[KakistocracyHater]

5. The economic system modeled on explosion

what else do you call something that continually expands forever outward?