TONY ON SOCIO-CAPITALISM (TT #31) & MORE

Including Thursday Thirteen, Totally Optional Prompts and Heads or Tails.
Have you had a go yet?

This is slightly longer than my normal TTs, but I hope you find it worthwhile. Promise to be shorter in future.
13. Human society is based on economics. Outside religion, this has always been the case. Slavery, empire, feudalism, fascism, communism, capitalism – all are economic systems. And the trouble they can cause becomes obvious. What I want to do here is attempt a new economic theory to remove dangers in the system.

12. Our present level of technology provides the key.

Eco-friendly new tech is on the drawing board that can be cheap and only requires small systems to build and operate. The present world runs on big systems, which are expensive, become dictatorial and lead to boom and bust.
11. The key to a new system should be bottom up, as opposed to the usual top down. Hence, free thinkers should seek out enterprising new engineers at a local level and form ‘committees for change’, passing the message at local levels, and electing a spokesman to go forward to a ‘national forum for change.’

10. This forum should be enterprising.

It should seek internet donations and form a media arm to popularize a new way. As funds come in, each committee should start an Inventors and Ideas Academy to tackle new tech and new systems in every area of commerce and public services.
9. Managers should then be recruited to build and run small factories, extraction facilities, etc, with maximum robotisation, producing such tech and goods. A recycling scrap mercantile system would also be created, buying already used building materials, metals, textiles, plastics, etc, to recycle into raw material for the factories. Smaller farming practices should also be encouraged. All these assets would be controlled by the national forum run under a social/ecological constitution, but the national forum would not be allowed to sell anything.

8. Rather, entrepreneurs would be king.

They would be encouraged to join a new ‘petty economy’, forming firms and financial services that will run a closed economy with credits to buy services and ordered goods from the factories in order to trade. Profits will go half to the national forum and half to the entrepreneurs. Within this closed economy, entrepreneurs can merge, do take-overs of other trading companies within the system and make or lose fortunes as normal, WITHOUT damaging the industrial base!
7. These entrepreneurs would not be allowed to sell goods direct to the public, but would have to form franchises, thus boosting small business. Further, local committees would set up ‘trade centres’ to encourage and assist people in turning their hobbies into small businesses. Everyone would be encouraged to find their niche.

6. Here’s the social bit.

The profits from the national forum and factories would go to directly fund a new infra-structure. Again using new tech and ideas from the thriving Academies, this structure would be in two forms. It would work on new power, communications, water and transport systems; and it would plan and fund new hospitals, schools and social services.
5. We can see here that buying products from this new economic system would directly fund essential services, which would be free at the point of use. Local involvement would also be encouraged, thus using hospitals, schools, etc, to kick-start a renewed sense of community.

4. Now comes the bit for everyone.

The national forum would then begin a social/ecological house building project, providing basic houses. Tenants would pay a small rent for life, but would be able to immediately improve the property as they wish. The house would enter the ‘petty economy’, so without actually buying it, the house could be sold, inherited, etc, as if it was owned. Capital could be raised from it, and the owner could opt into a shares system within the entrepreneurial firms, thus raising more money. A small percentage of any transaction, along with the small rent, would go into the social pot, thus funding a retirement pension scheme, and insurance against ill health and unemployment. The fund managers of this pot would be able to invest in entrepreneurial firms, thus also boosting the ‘petty economy’.

3. As the new ‘petty economy’ increased it would cover every area of life.

And it would slowly begin to replace the present capitalist system. A turning point would come when government would have to favour the system. At this point, income would be enough for new tech and ideas to infiltrate legislature, judiciary, executive, civil service, diplomatic corps, police, prisons and the armed forces.
2. The upshot would be that all means of production, housing and public services would be national forum controlled, but all means of commerce would remain independent and fully capitalist. Income for services would come from every transaction made, creating such a huge social pot that taxation would be abolished!
1. Some 80% of any country’s trading is with itself, leaving some 20% within a global economy. National forums should then send representatives to form a global trade centre. This centre would then open a market for global entrepreneurial firms. These would then co-ordinate the remaining 20% of global trade for profit, safe in the knowledge that 80% of trade is locked in closed national systems, and not affected by global economics. Nations would have their own economy and identity back.
ZERO!

The global trade centre should also have two essential tasks – raising funds from a small percentage of every transaction in the global market to fund similar systems tailor made to Third World countries; and to fund the exploration and colonization of space. This would provide a global collective project above national identity. And seeing that most conflict is over trade, there wouldn’t be much left to argue about. The world would have become more peaceful, and in order to keep a check on the global trading system, governments would have to come together to create a World Congress for Cooperation.
This is the first time I’ve written about such a system. Your thoughts are more than welcome.

© Anthony North, November 2008

THE ORAL TRADITION

Poetry thrives, it always will,
man can never have had his fill,
of words that say so much to all,
making us great and never small;
Sometimes it seems this isn’t the case,
poets, after all, have been displaced,
by radio, TV, CD and more,
getting your words heard becomes a chore;
Oral tradition seems a thing from the past,
no one wanting to hear, alas!
But it’s so alive, a magnificent success,
everywhere you hear it, and not under duress,
from its beginnings by the campfire, creating heroes and myths,
through Medieval ballad it continually exists,
perfected by Romantics, the hippies of old,
going on to be song lines, oral poetry unfolds,
changing its medium, but not its zap,
you hear it always, from ballads to RAP;
So often the poet feels maligned,
searching, searching, an audience to find,
speaking the verse to echoing halls,
few people there to be enthralled;
But competing with its success needs ventures anew,
to popularise its pure form, break through,
and the answer is never, ever, be glum,
reinvent, adapt, make poetry fun!

(c) Anthony North, November 2008

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AUTUMN MEMORIES – Fiction

Watching.
The days darken – the sun, when it shines, a colder orb, no longer nourishing – no longer washing the land with life giving heat.
Watching.
The sky growing angry – blue turning to grey, clouds changing from fluffy majesty to black, swirling masses – and the rain, and the wind, and the anger batters the land.
Watching.
The flowers wilting, decimated – the grass ceasing to grow, the trees showing signs of decay, the leaves losing moisture, becoming brittle, blown off, scattered, by the angry wind.
Watching.
People covering up – chilled – a sunken mood about them, going this way and that more slowly, shoulders drooped, as if in the presence of death.
Watching.
Over this eternal story, not of death, but of respite before renewal, in never ending cycles of continued existence, an end the precursor of a new beginning.
Hoping.
That one day man may remember that in loss there is new life – that existence is more than the individual, but continuance of everything in the cycles of on going creation.
Knowing.
That this is true. For I am your planet.

© Anthony North, November 2008