Sometimes I wonder why The Nation magazine is so wimpy. Now I know: they like things the way they are. The latest proof is a breathtakingly pro-status quo request to a bunch of people I’ve never heard of to imagine a kinder, gentler capitalism.
Kind of a ridiculous idea from the start. After all, capitalism is, by definition, neither kind nor gentle. Not even the most ardent capitalist would deny that.
But The Nation takes an absurd pretext and ruins it from there. The result is perhaps the best evidence that reform is a joke I’ve ever seen.
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Capitalism with a human face, as it were.
It’s possible I suppose. See L. Neil Smith’s “Tom Paine Maru”. A city sized star ship where everyone on board is a shareholder by birth of all the wealth, and gets a basic dividend which keeps him or her at a comfortable level of living. Anything they want to do above and beyond that is just cream. No taxes either, how is that for speculative fiction? 🙂
Think about it though, the USA must generate hundreds of billions if not trillions each year and the money just goes to corporations instead of American citizens who are supposed to be the owners of all the resources. Instead of that each person gets 1/300,000,000th of the income.
In theory it could work, if there weren’t so many greedy buggers out there….