legionnaire

It's been over a week since I've updated, and not for any particular reason . I seem to start each week planning on updating more often and then things don't work out that way. Oh well.

I'm still in the lab, pulling another all-nighter trying to get some more data. I'm not particularly optimistic though - the first time I tried the experiment there was an extremely minor technical problem that I didn't notice until it was finished, and I didn't see anything interesting. It's making my life just a little bit more miserable. Oh well, I'm ready for round two, I suppose.

I've been thinkng a lot recently about the relationship between governments and economic systems. I wish I had more of a background in that field, because I think the evolution of geopolitics as a whose is fascinating, and has taken some unexpected turns. Specifically, I've been questioning one of the fundamental tenets of modern America; that a democracy functions best in a purely capitalist society. We take this for granted so much that it is usually assumed that a "socialist" or "communist" government is totalitaria and some of us on the left have an irritating tendency to call people who we dislike "fascists." But these are all economic terms, and don't necessarily have a particular form of government that must go alongside them.

The flip side is that (at least for those of us in the US) we're constantly immersed in the idol worship of the "free market" and the (in my opinion) often baseless assumption that it will provide the optimum solution for whatever problem presents itself. Of course, this requires a truly laissez-faire capitalist society to really work - which is as much of a fiction as the idealized communist society that the newly iniiated Marx reader wishes could be found in the real world. Marxism failed because of flaws in human nature - it takes a pollyannic approach to everyday life and assumes that people will choose the path that maximizes everyone's welfare when in fact, people are very often willing to compromise the welfare of the group in exchange for even a minor personal advantage. Laissez-faire capitalism has failed for similar reasons - as soon as it became feasible to do so people were willing to manipulate markets to their and their friends' advantages. If you don't believe take a look at who's benefiting from changes in the tax codes and getting government subsidies - I can guarantee you it isn't the companies who decided not to donate to whichever politician happens to be in charge.

But I digress. The original question is whether an economic system like socialism or communism can exist within a democratic governmental framework. At first glance they don't seem to be mutually exclusive. Communism is defined economically as a system where the government owns all of the means of production. Presumably those means are utilized in a manner that is decided upon by the government currently in power. In a democratic governmental system the way that power would be exercised could be through republican form of representative government. On a large enough scale (the size of a country, for example) a direct democracy would be incredibly inefficient in their regard, as every single economic decision would have to be decided by a vote. In that regard a totalitarian system of government makes sense, where quick, decisive action can be taken (as economic decisions would have to be made fairly quickly in order to stay current with changing conditions) but a limited, democratically elected republican model seems as if it could work almost as effectively in the short term, and much more effectively in the long term (the advantage over a totalitarian state being that a government that manages the economy poorly could be voted out at the next election cycle, whereas in the absence of a coup the citizens are basically stuck with the status quo in a totalitarian system.)

Conversely, there doesn't seem to be any particulat reason why an unelected, powerful government couldn't manage a laissez-faire, capitalist economy, and do it fairly effectively. The problem with unelected governments is that you can't get rid of them - but in the truest laissez-faire model the government would have minimal impact on the economy anyway, since by definition it would only serve to set up the marketplace but not to actually intervene in it. Of course this is really only plausible in the context of a kind of "benevolent dictatorship," where the ruling elite know that while they could exercise total control over the economy they choose not to. History tells us this is an unlikely scenario.

The point of this entry is this: if we proceed with our political and economic development under the working assumption that if we are to maintain democracy that we must stay as true as possible to a capitalist economic model then I believe we are unnecessarily restricting our possibilities. Capitalism has its advantages but it also has some distinct disadvantages. A market driven economy requires a consumer base that is constantly spending more money, as (real or perceived) economic growth is the most fundamentally important aspect to the maintenance of a healthy economic system. In a highly developed country like the US this means that people continually need to be convinced to buy new things - things which they most likely do not need. The best way to convince people that they need something is to market it to them under the guise that once they've purchase whatever item is for sale that they will be happy. However, the problem is that this happiness is transient if it exists at all - because a happy individual no longer needs to buy anything beyond what's necessary for subsistence, so the trick is to make sure that people are constantly unhappy while believing that further acquisition of goods will somehow alleviate this state. It's a futile cycle and a depressing one to boot. One need only leaf through a magazine or turn on the television if they don't believe this is the driving motivation behind advertising. If we continue to assume that capitalism is the only viable solution then we may be barring ourselves from ever becoming truly fulfilled.

Or I might just be rambling at 4 in the morining, another distinct possibility.

I'll comment in everyone's journals tomorrow. I have to get back to work.

Edit: Now that I've gotten some sleep and had a chance to read over what I wrote last night, it seems to me to be fairly uninformed, self-indulgent crap. But so be it. It's not really my style to go back and edit things that I wrote before and pretend like that was my original statement. So i'll let this one stand, but I may be updating a little sooner than I usually do.