The thing is, having one situation or the other is a choice. A choice we haven't been looking at much before because no one's had the opportunity to do so quite like we've had for the past few decades. But now that we can, and someone has, it's long past time to start considering it.
On the one hand knowledge is owned, like pretty much everything else is owned, one way or another, so it must be made to be either very scarce, or not scarce (relative to demand), depending on whether we want to buy, or sell. Labor is something, usually, that we want to buy, so we make that not scarce. Things we induce people to want we try to keep in the sweet spot of just enough scarcity to keep demand from getting too worked up, without big profits taking too much of a hit.
In my view it ought to be obvious to working people now that our status as "commodities to be kept in the not scarce" category is no longer a very good deal. Made especially more so precisely because much of what we need (even without inducements) can made to be so profitably scarce (just think of any kind of treatment you might need to keep you alive for starters).
On the other hand, though, if we decided to come up with a different way to do production, and distribution, and maintenance, so that we could preserve, not only the best parts of Democracy, and rule of law, but also make shouldering the burden as equitable as the distribution of the output of all of our efforts, things would only be as scarce as practical circumstances, and our consensus will, would have them be.
I have outlined a way to do that in my two blogs, as well as from what was on my original web site (Oldsoftyconcerns.com or Oldsofty.com which is still the email domain name that I use). The bigger point here, though, is that you can think of all that I am trying to do as just a way to start a much needed national debate. And the point of that debate, of course, is to talk about the right of the working majority of Americans to make the choice I started out with in this post. And further that a sober reflection on current circumstances in the world today would mandate that a choice to a better alternative must be taken. We just need to start negotiating on what the alternative would be, and how we would go about implementing it.
And where might we start? How about we talk about doing an employee buyout of the entire American economy (with a super paper instrument of some sort that would have us as both owners and holders of the debt, which however crazy it might sound is still no crazier than issuing a trillion dollar coin to just hold in vault so that you suddenly have spending power for your government). How bout we talk about using a big chunk of that buyout to compensate the top whatever percent that wants to be compensated outright (with a big cash payment upfront, and current gold price equivalent payments of commodities, of whatever sort our newly formed nation might produce as national production; for which, however, they would renounce their citizenship. The rest of us pay ourselves back for this debt -- servicing it in other words -- by paying for all health care; by paying the difference between minimum wage, and a living wage, and by providing the all the material needs of both our City States, and our nation, and ourselves. All of this at least until we can structurally accommodate not having money anymore). Then we can talk about how each community can have broad latitude in setting up their version of shared community operation, figuring out what we will keep in our current constitution (especially as relates to the bill of rights) to become a new Federation of City States.
This is not rocket science. Nor is this sneaky Socialist ideology. It is simply what adults do when recognizing that what we have been doing isn't working anymore; what you have to do to come up with something that is demonstrably better for the working majority of Americans; which is why you see both Libertarian, and Socialist, in the phrase by which I described my political ideology. And more to the point, why it has to be something that is demonstrably better because the majority of working Americans won't vote for it otherwise.
Think about it. Start talking about it wherever you can in your online social interactions. It is that important.
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