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The transition I'm talking about here would be the one instigated if a new political party -- my
fantasy post on same depicted a Libertarian Socialist party being elected precisely as a movement
to organize a constitutional convention in order to make changes to our constitution, so as to make
an alternative to Capitalism possible -- actually came to power. In order to make all of the other
structural changes (see here for a look into what some of those changes might be), we would need
to nationalize everything, which I posted on here, and here
]
I would keep the Senate the way it is, but I would change the House of Representatives. I would replace it with a nationwide, popular vote; after all, who better to represent us than ourselves.
You could also think of it as simply folding in the idea of citizen initiatives, only in this instance with a chance for a citizen petition to finally come to a full, national vote (which begs obvious questions on how we do that on a new scale, given the chaos of our current voting infrastructure; which certainly deserves an answer, but I won't go into that now), given it passed some combination of preliminary signature drives. And then, of course, you would still have the Senate, with Senators voted in as now, to run a checking balance.
As far as our doing a employee buyout, via an equity consolidation, refinancing (America Inc.), I think I was amiss for not going into enough detail on how everything was going to be managed; especially as the intent was for the Federal Government to do nothing more than set wage, price and profit limits, management wise (only if the situation warranted it of course, as with rationing, or production directives).
The central point here is that this would not be intended as any kind of centrally planned economy; which history has already passed a thumbs down verdict on. No, the idea here would be to set up partnership councils (or "cooperation councils" as I referred to them before) at successive levels, starting at least at the City level, and made up of civic leaders, labor leaders, and company heads. These groups would have to have some kind of voting arrangement, and power for the vote to wield, but I'd hate to try and specify that now; leaving that particular, important detail, to the final negotiation process.
I also don't think I made an emphasis on an unavoidable consequence of such a move. To be completely up front here, a number of industries might likely become superfluous in the turnaround, which would mean a significant number of people out of work. In some cases it would be in the finance industry as debt trading would become problematic, and the stock exchanges as well. For those at the higher wealth levels they'd have the opportunity to start new businesses (which I failed to provide as a possibility, in some way, for the wage earners, initially, and it ought to be there). Other enterprises, in other industry groups might also become quite problematic. That's the bad news.
The good news is that the workplace of America Inc would be a lot more forgiving of taking your time to find new work; as in any temporary job will automatically have its base pay supplemented (to a living wage minimum) by the Federal government to service the refinancing debt.
Health Care would have the ultimate single payer, and supplier, to keep costs, profits, and wages, under the control of actual limits. And best of all, I've got several, very big, and very necessary, public works projects ( see here, here, and here), proposed that would set about creating, new living space, public power, and transportation, infrastructure, the likes of which no one has ever seen before. Which will mean a lot of work for a lot of people.
All you have to do here guys is start thinking it's possible. Then you can start considering all of the ins and outs of the approach, and come up with your own concerns, questions, and maybe the spur to look into some of the economics aspects here in greater depth. You could come back then and give me proper hell for that "obvious" thing that I didn't see; because it was right in front of me, no doubt.
In any case, though, talking about "Nationalization" doesn't make you an automatic Communist. Any more than it makes you some South American, Socialist state of the past, who put the best industries in the pockets of the Junta leaders, and left the industrialists, and entrepreneurs out in the cold; along with the rest of the proletariat, eventually, of course.
No, this would just be a smart business decision made by the majority of the employees of this working nation. A business decision to give the wealth holders fair value for their property, but make it clear, none the less, that management overall, for at least the last 30 or 40 years, has just made a horrible mess of things; a mess that's simply intolerable for the rest of us. Intolerable for the planet as well. We just do the buyout, and then get to the adult business of running a proper balance between practical matters of efficiency, and a compassionate understanding of what basic human needs are.
Make no mistake here, though. It will be argumentative. Frustrating. And not very nimble at all at first. And difficult though it may be, it will start us down the road of engaging each other more directly as a natural part of everyday community life. Get us to find ways to cooperate even if we don't agree on all hot button, cultural issues, because we don't do that at far greater cost.
What we've done for ourselves, predicament wise, is very easy to illustrate. We have, in effect, put ourselves into a variation of the "frog in the pot" experiment (which I'm sure, many of you already know about). That's where the pot, also containing water, is very slowly having the temperature of the water raised. The frog, in this case, doesn't know anything about making water hotter, so you can count on cooked hopper there. We, on the other hand, have been telling ourselves for years now that the pot is slowly having the temp raised, but we refuse to really (and I mean really) take it seriously. And we remain in the pot, doing the usual stupid things that put us here in the first place, and apparently not giving a damn if we get cooked too, or not.
I vote that we stop being stupid frogs, and get our asses up, motivated, and out of this circular rutt we're getting cooked in, so we can do something about it.
What do you say?
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