New economy

[Spongebob]

No idea where this thread belongs.  

Much has been said about the best kind of society to have and capitalism is clearly the most popular.  But capitalism has immense flaws as well.  We may be somewhat safe for now but future generations will face the treat of limited resources.  And limited resources leads to poverty and oppression.  Only a stable population can hope to resolve this, but population growth has generally been the engine from which capitalist nations build wealth.  Oh, there will likely be innovation, but innovation only seems to move us from one resource to another.  From trees to whale oil to fossil fuels to lithium, the carousel continues to spin.  Humans certainly live more comfortable lives now but we still face massive problems in pollution, resource depletion, wealth disparity, unhappy work lives and so on.  Is it even possible to reinvent society and economics in such a way that it does not rely on growth for prosperity?

It's called communism, Comrade.

Well, he.  Yeah, I didn't think of that.  Good point, but I still wonder if communism/socialism is the answer.  Maybe it is.  We do know that Norway has a very high standard of living and has a pretty high socialist element to their society, which is still capitalist in nature.  But they have some things that skew those results.  Their greatest source of wealth is the offshore oil and that is essentially owned by the people and the profits are used to fund all kinds of basic needs like health and education.  Absent that I suspect Norway would b a much different place, though it might still be economically stable.

But more to your point, yes having the means of production and its wealth fall back into the hands of those who work means wealth is distributed much wider instead of concentrated.  But would that wealth still be dependent on the growth of production/sales?  IOW, consider an isolated society where the population is diminishing.  Fewer people means lower sales of products and no growth of production, but rather retracting production.  That means retraction of production means less wealth and usually results in a recession or depression.  We have those sporadically even with a growing population because of imbalances and disruptions in our economic system.  I'm not sure social ownership of production can overcome that.

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The chief problem with capitalism seems to me to be resource control and allocation. The resources are there - there exists enough food and material that no one in the world needs to be hungry or homeless or uneducated. But when resources are owned and doled out in a manner that ensures shareholders will he happy and corporate profits protected and enhanced, then misery is bound to follow.

It works kinda like this: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, buy the pond, tell him he can't have the fish but he can fish for you and you'll sell the fish and give him a very small percentage and he'll say things like, 'I'm hungry' and 'My teeth hurt'.

Boru

I think in some cases this is true.  Oil prices don't shoot up because oil wells are running dry; its because OPEC refuses to pump enough oil to meet the demand, creating a fake limited supply.  That results in higher prices and more profit for the sand people.

This makes me wonder if nuclear fusion is ever perfected, will there truly be unlimited energy or will the electric companies throttle the power like OPEC does now?

But some resources truly are limited and the owners of production still use this to keep prices and profits high.  I'm not sure anyone really wants unlimited supply of anything.  We essentially have an unlimited supply of sea water and its value is absolute zero.