So, thinking about Walz and his relative lack of ideology got me thinking about human centered capitalism, and my own ideology which is based around it, and humanism. So, I did want to reformulate the idea and discuss the philosophical implications of it.
I know I keep going back and forth on how to formulate this, but there are three primary prongs of my own iteration.
1) The economy exists for humans, humans don't exist for the economy
2) Work is a means to an end, not an end in itself
3) GDP and productivity should be balanced with other priorities, most notably leisure
This vaguely follows Yang's formula, but it does have some significant deviations in its implications, and is very personal to my own philosophy. Remember, when I came across Yang, my first thought was basically "holy crap is he me? he actually gets it!" And it turns out he actually did get a lot of his ideas from Scott Santens, and given I've talked to scott before on reddit, eh, it's possible there may or may not have been some inspiration there along the way.
Anyway, let's REALLY dig into this philosophically.
1) The economy exists for humans, humans don't exist for the economy
This idea comes directly from my own concept of humanism. Keep in mind, when I left Christianity, conservatism, and the cave in 2012, I shifted my entire worldview to secular humanism. Now, fundamentalist Christianity really approaches the world from the perspective of humans being made in God's image. God made us, god made everything, god is a cosmic dictator who tells us what to do, we exist to serve and obey him, failing to do so means eternal hellfire, blah blah blah.
Humanism kind of rises in contrast from this. It comes from the perspective of agnostic atheism, ie, what should be the "default position" on god. We don't know if God exists, we need evidence to prove his existence, and until then, let's build a worldview around him NOT existing. Even if I am spiritual now, I still recognize that publicly speaking, in terms of morality that binds all of us, that this IS the way.
As such, morality is a social construct. We make rules in order to serve our own interests. We can view it as darwinian survival strategy, a social contract, what have you. But yes, rules exist to serve human interests. Unlike christianity, we don't exist to serve the rules, the rules exist to serve us. We are the masters, all human institutions, from the government, to the economy, exist to serve OUR interests.
And it follows from this, that the economy exists to serve us as well. So that's why I start with this philosophical concept. Because the way the economy exists....it seems as if the economy doesn't exist to serve us. We seem to exist to serve it. Like we're born to be slaves, born to be productive. We have to get a job, we can't really challenge the concept of getting a job or we're lazy and should probably F off and starve to death. We structured society around forcing people to work. When people work, they often work for employers who exploit them and treat them as slaves, and while they can say no in theory, in practice, they won't, because they have nowhere else to go. And that's basically the economy. Grow up, work, be productive, get old, die. We're expected to sacrifice large amounts of our life and free time to work. Almost like we're not supposed to live for ourselves, but our job. We're expected to subvert ourselves and take whatever job we want, even being told we're lucky to have such an "opportunity" and should be "grateful" for it. Heh. Grateful for slavery. Because the alternative is starvation. Good one.
No. This isn't how the economy should work. The economy is an institution that exists to serve human needs. We shouldn't exist for it and for the need of the corporations, the corporations should exist to serve us. Their purpose is to provide goods and services that we need and enjoy. The profit motive is merely their motivation to do so. Just as money is seen as our motivation to work.
And I have no problems with this. While a lot of what I posted above sounds kind of Marxist, as I do go into the whole exploitation by the capitalist things, unlike marxists, I dont see the core problem of capitalism the fact that corporations exist. My problem comes from the fact that we're forced to work to serve them. We're supposed to subvert our lives to work. We're supposed to be dominated by work. It's not that capitalism is inherently bad. Capitalism is actually the least bad system ever devised, similar to democracy. We can complain about it, there are flaws, but can we design a better system? Didn't think so. Even socialists, they can only claim success within the backdrop of capitalism. Like democratic socialists and market socialists want worker cooperatives within capitalism. Cool, those work it seems. Not the solution they make them out to be, but they work. Government run services can work in some respects. I wouldn't want government run everything, but social democracy works and certain services being government run seems better than everything being left to the market. But we have to be pragmatic and particular. I think the 20th century ideologies of either being free market everything or have socialist everything is dumb. We want something in the middle. And either way, on that core aspect of capitalism, the profit motive is still necessary to motivate people to work. Providing people monetary rewards for doing socially useful things is a good thing.
If anything, what I dispute is whether ALL sources of income should come from work. Free market ideologues would argue yes. They believe in this inalienable right to property. I dont view property as a natural right. It's a social convention that exists to serve humans, and like money being tied to work in the first place, it serves only as a motivator. All of these things exist to serve humans, but that doesn't mean humans should be ENSLAVED to them. I have no real issues with many structures of capitalism WITHIN REASON. I have an issue with ideologues taking such things to philosophical extremes. I do think it would be perfectly justified, for example, to impose taxes to redistribute income, including to people who don't work. If anything, I think for these social structures to actually serve humans, they they HAVE TO do that. Again, capitalism isn't bad, its EXCESSES are bad. Taking things to extremes are bad, including taking things to the other extreme.
If we had a society where everyone just got paid the same by the government no matter what they did with no financial rewards tied to work, then no one would work. This is the hypothetical "communist" boogeyman right wingers bring up. That if we organized society by entirely different principles, that nothing would work. Sure. But I'm not arguing for one extreme for another, and arguing in favor of extremes is a strawman. I'm arguing for balance. Our existing social structures should be balanced with more "socialist" (we can't even call this socialist according to socialists but i digress) ways of thinking.
To ensure freedom under capitalism, we need to give everyone money and some basic standard of living regardless of work. otherwise, they're a slave. Beyond that, things like property rights, work incentives and stuff, they just exist to motivate humans to productivity. And that productivity exists to serve humans, we don't exist to serve it.
As such, what other philosophical conclusions can we draw here from this element of human centered capitalism?
1) Our current economy seems to enslave people by withholding their basic needs in order to force them to be productive
2) This leads to a society in which the economy doesn't serve us, we exist to serve it
3) Property is a social convention, not a natural right, it is perfectly fine to redistribute property if it achieves positive outcomes
4) To break the above loop, a universal basic income and essential services should be provided to everyone for free/nothing, provided society can sustain such a thing
5) Capitalism itself isn't the problem, coercion is, if anything, capitalism is necessary for society to function as the profit motive is quite essential to motivation
6) As such, I don't advocate for shifting to the extreme the other direction, but a balance between our needs for productivity, and freeing people from coercion so they can live for themselves better
2) Work is a means to an end, not an end in itself
This actually arises quite naturally out of the first premise, and if anything, almost like a restating of the first premise, with an emphasis on work. But it's necessary, because once again, we act as if people exist to serve the economy, and we talk about "creating jobs" and "opportunity" rather than just meeting peoples' needs. Heck, this is the central discussion of our economy, what creates more jobs? Tax cuts, laissez faire and trickle down, or some form of interventionism. But no one challenges the idea of work itself, and it seems like what we try to create more than anything is work, with the end product or distribution of work being secondary.
This is, in large part, because of how we structured the economy. The economy exist to serve peoples' needs directly. Rather, people are born free, but also poor. poverty is the natural state of humanity, and work is what makes people less poor. Because property is a natural right in this system. Making people share is immoral, instead we must create opportunity to work to legitimize voluntary transfers between one party to another. This doesn't work very well, as there's no guarantee of there being enough work, or of the work paying.
And to go off of the above, it seems like work is increasingly unnecessary to provide the basics of life. I mean, we're more productive than ever. We don't have a resource problem, we have a work and distribution problem in society. In a sane society, as we produced more, we would work less. Instead, we insist on creating more and more stuff, with more and more work, while people are still poor, because we insist that people must work to meet their needs.
And of course, we still have remnants of Christianity and the protestant work ethic afoot. Work is seen as our purpose, as if God put us here to work, and that's just nonsense. We should once again reacquint ourselves with point 1 here. The economy exists to serve US, we don't exist to serve IT. And work is really just a means to an end. We need sausage made, capitalism is how we make the sausage. Working through voluntary exchange is how we make the sausage. Let's not romanticize this process as if it's more important than life itself. I said before that property isnt a natural right. But, and I havent written about this here, but I've been kind of reframing a lot of "natural rights" as urges of morality.
I mean morality exists to serve humanity. But what does that mean? Well, first and foremost, it enhances our well being. Ie, gives us a "right" to life. Self preservation is the highest goal of morality, and physical well being in terms of health, and in terms of experiencing pleasure rather than pain, are also some of the highest goals of such a venture. But at the same time, there is a second right that must be balanced, liberty. Society should seek to minimize the obligations it puts on people and seek only to restrict peoples' liberty when essential for the first premise to be filled. It is, for example, justified to make people work if we are in such a state of scarcity that we would die otherwise. It's far less acceptable, however, when it just means your quarterly GDP report isn't as strong. Huge difference. And of course, the right to pursue happiness comes from the right to freedom. People should have a right to pursue what makes them happy. If that involves work, fine. If it involves not working, fine. If anything, forcing people to work just forces people to spend hours of their life wasting away producing things just so they can survive. What kind of life is that? Not much of one.
Property, on the other hand, is just a convention. It just exists to serve as a measure of who gets what, with the division of labor deciding who does what. All societies need answers to this question, but again, coercion should only exist when it comes to preserving life. it should not necessarily come once we get beyond the point of getting the basics out of the way. Then freedom should take precedence.
The fact that we rely on property as a natural right is what seems to underlie the work obsession. We can't fathom redistributing income, so settle for forcing people to work for their own needs, which...doesn't work.
Btw, is taxation bad? Well, I can get the argument against it. Who likes taxes? Who likes redistribution? But if doing so guarantees both peoples' lives and their liberty, is it superior to forcing everyone to work their lives away just to survive? I would say so, yes. If anything it seems like the less painful way of ensuring everyone has enough.
Let work exist to make the sausage so to speak. But let's not romanticize it. let's not call it our purpose. let's not fixate on this obsession with creating jobs and forcing people to work simply because we hate the idea of taxation and redistribution so much. Taxes are the lesser evil here.
As such, what can we really draw from reflecting upon this principle of human centered capitalism?
1) We live in an increasingly irrational society where we have poverty amid plenty because of the work obsession, we value creating work for its own sake more than ensuring peoples' needs are met in a sane way
2) There is no purpose that which we create being ourselves, work having purpose is a holdover from Christianity
3) The property rights system being a natural right is what drives really drives this dichotomy
4) Property as a natural right subverts other rights by forcing people to work to survive, as such it shouldn't be a natural right
5) Taxation isn't amazing but it's better for our rights than forced labor is
6) As such, let's return work to its proper place. It exists to serve human wants and needs, but let's not romanticize it into something that it isn't.
3) GDP and productivity should be balanced with other priorities, most notably leisure
And this finally brings us to our last point. It seems like this entire system that subverts our freedom and well beign to work, and that fetishizes work for its own sake, is done so to drive never ending GDP growth and profits.
We must never forget, the purpose of the economy is to serve people. And the profit motive exists to encourage production. And production (work) exists as a means to an end, to serve humans, not an end in itself.
And while I would, once again, say that if it were essential for human well being that humans work, like, if we didn't we'd all starve to death, perhaps it would be justified, it seems like we allow work to subvert our lives in the name of never ending growth.
As far as profits go, yes, corporations seek to maximize profits, but since the profit motive only exists encourage production, we should never lose sight of what that production is supposed to do, serve humans. It is immoral to put profit seeking above human needs or their freedoms. It is more important for a worker to have the right to say no, than it is for a business to make a profit.
As a matter of fact, at some point, we kind of gotta recognize that profits and growth shouldn't be the end all of society. Economic growth exists to serve humans. Raising living standards is fine. But if it requires keeping people in poverty and forcing them to work just to survive, it kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
Let's go back to purpose to some extent. Yes, profits exist to motivate people, and growth is generally an intrinsic good economically, but is that the end all be all of everything to the point it justifies keeping us working in a never ending fashion just to produce more profits. We've created sisyphusian hell for ourselves on earth, and while I'm not anti growth, or anti profit, I am, however, gonna say that maybe at some point other things are more important. Like our liberty, the right to pursue happiness, including the liberty not to have work just preoccupy all of our time all day every day. If we need to do that just to survive, and we had a material problem underlying society, that would be justified, but when the problem is no longer the problem of material scarcity, but of distribution, then yeah, that's problematic.
I just think that GDP shouldn't be the end all be all of life. Rather, it should exist in order to enhance our lives.
As such, what can we draw from this tenet of human centered capitalism?
1) At this point, we've gone beyond the level of material scarcity needed just to survive. We live in a world of plenty, but with poor distribution due to the factors mentioned above.
2) Growth is good, but perhaps it isn't the end all be all of everything, it exists to serve human wants and needs. We shouldn't exist to serve it.
3) We've created sisyphusian hell for ourselves, forcing ourselves to work for the sake of never ending growth we can never enjoy, because the system keeps us in precarity to force us to work. Only the wealthy truly enjoy the benefits of growth.
4) Growth should be deemphasized and balanced with other priorities, such as human well being, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Conclusion
All in all, it should seem pretty obvious that I am not anti capitalism. I am, however, somewhat anti work. Somewhat because I recognize work is necessary for our survival to some degree, but I also don't romanticize it, and merely represent it as an unpleasant fact of life that as we become more productive, we should do away with over time.
Our society exists simply to force us to be productive, holding and weaponizing our basic needs against us to force us to work, while the wealth goes to the top, and we remain slaves to creating more profits and more growth. The economy should exist to serve us, but we seem to exist to serve it.
The biggest unsaid problem in my current formulation of human centered capitalism is property as a natural right. We think property is this natural right, given to us by god or something, and it's just nonsensical. We justify it in labor, and as such, we essentially force people to work and focus more on creating work and jobs rather than actually distributing resources in such a way to allow us to live more efficiently, with less work.
If we didn't treat property rights, justified by work, as a natural right, then we would be able to better justify wealth redistribution that makes work less central to our lives. But this also does mean abandoning a christian-inspired worldview in which rights come from god, and god wants us to work, and we derive our life purpose from work.
In general though, this one aspect of our society's philosophy seems to drive these changes that make our society nonsensical and counterproductive. Because of it. We insist people work to "earn a living", we talk endlessly of "creating jobs" and we focus more on crap like the stock market and GDP growth and profits than actual human needs. It's INSANE. Our entire economic philosophy is insane.
Unlike what "leftists" think, the problem isn't capitalism itself. if anything, socialism and marxism are just as work ethic driven as capitalism is, and that's why they failed too. Because once all is said and done, now you got the state forcing you to work to survive and that doesn't provide for maximizing well being or freedom either. Capitalism actually provides more well being and freedom, it just has to exist within a framework in which the economic rights of all are respected.
And from this, we should have an economic bill of rights. We should give everyone a basic income. We should give people medicare for all. The right to an education, the right to housing. Not necessarily the right to a job, which is just some backwards and nonsensical way of ensuring we meet peoples' needs by forcing them to jump through hoops and work for it, but right to the necessities of life in the first place. These should be guaranteed, with no expectation to work, to the highest degree sustainable by society. I say the highest degree sustainable, because, let's face it, at some point, we gotta get off the couch and work to produce things. This entire society makes sense if it is needed just to survive. But we don't need to work just to survive any more. We work for never ending growth, which is different, and also kind of gross. And at that point, we are just slaves to GDP and profit. And that should change.
Recently, I was asked what dystopia I would prefer and I went with the easy and purposeless one. I stand by that. The cyberpunk one is literally what we're doing now. Where we have all of this technology and wealth, but we keep people enslaves to work, and people are poor, and there are all of these social problems, and corporations run everything. That's us right now. Cyberpunk is just mask off with the extremes of it all. But we exist in that society NOW. And it will continue to remain that way until we adopt the principles of human centered capitalism.
As such, I'm going to take the lessons learned here, and perhaps I will expand human centered capitalism beyond these three things. I have considered making a fourth point about an economic bill of rights. I am considering making property not being a natural right as an important headlining point. But whether such things need to be explicitly stated or just derived from my perspective remains to be seen. Anyway, I just wanted to do this as a thought exercise. But I figured I'd make this public as it makes a good blog article too.
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