Q: (L) Well, I dunno. I suppose we'll find out! Okay, next thing that's on my mind: This afternoon I was responding to a post on the forum and the post was in the Political Ponerology book thread. As I was writing, it suddenly occurred to me that a problem that has been occupying my mind for many years suddenly became clear. The answer became clear. And the problem was this issue of communism vs. socialism vs. capitalism; the issue of which is best? Because of course I grew up in a capitalist system, but I see all the terrible things about it that have come to pass. I live now in a country that is largely socialist, and I see a lot of problems that exist in socialism. I've read a great deal about communistic systems, and I see that what happened in the communist countries didn't turn out too well. And I've read a lot of sociology, and I understand that without some kind of communism, early man would not have survived and evolved, so there’s a problem with how it was done in those communist countries. Even the early “Jesus people” practiced a form of communism, though fundies nowadays seem to have forgotten that. So, I've had this ongoing thing in my mind: Which part of which system to take and put together to make a so to say as close to perfect, benevolent system of economics and law that would serve humanity in the best way.
And it suddenly was clear to me that it depends on scale. I thought that what you need is at the family tribal level - and I say more tribal because it's like extended family, close friends, etc. and people who are bound to each other by bonds of friendship and affection - should function in the communistic pattern.
The next level would be the local community, or the town or whatever, which should function at the capitalistic level. Let's face it, there are things about capitalism that are very useful. People can go out from their homes and they make money for their families by work, there can be shops or factories or whatever that produce products that are then traded or bought/sold with other shops; then communities buy or sell or exchange with other communities, import, export, etc. The members of a family/tribe that work make money, bring it home and share equally all around, and several members of a family can work and take care of the whole family, including children, elderly, disabled.
So we've got communism at the family level or the tribal level, capitalism at the community level where communities interact with other communities, and then at the higher government level it should be socialism because then socialism can be a policy-making body. It should be a body that collects a certain amount of funds in the form of a wealth tax and a small poll tax to ensure that everybody has free water, electricity, healthcare, that there are roads, that there is garbage collection, clean air, clean water... In other words, if the wealth tax and poll tax goes to an overarching government, then that government would provide these services to all the communities. And also, there would be local militias supported by these collected funds. So it seems to me that if you have these three different systems operating at different levels – the three scales - I mean, does anybody see any flaw in this?
