Economics

Evil

• Fetishize perpetual growth; disdain homeostasis
• More specifically: generate growth almost entirely with debt which then must be serviced, obligating further growth (or else collapse)
• Allow inconsistent contribution toward infrastructure and care of entire society: taxation exemptions via havens, loopholes, and perverse incentives
• Privatize critical infrastructure
• Directly extract value from anyone without their explicit consent
• Indirectly extract value by deliberately foisting risk or externalizing cost (often secured by regulatory capture)
• Build and perpetuate social|technical systems that streamline such extraction, abstracting responsibility
• Fail to track chain of responsibility and punish powerful people who facilitate such extraction
• Generate dissatisfaction and demand by negging (most advertising wraps carefully designed insult inside appeal to savvy, vanity, or loyalty)
• Conduct business and life as a zero-sum game

Fairness in a crowded world with limited resources

• Require full financial transparency of those in, or campaigning for, public office
• Eliminate political action committees and all campaign contributions except equal public funding
• Establish steeply progressive taxation of income, property, and inheritance of individuals and businesses as an agreement and condition of participation in society
• Tax financial transactions to slow parasitic risk trading
• Exchange value (things|services|money|time) with explicit consent of all parties, including:
• Allow workers to form unions negotiating safe conditions and fair compensation
• Assure access to universal healthcare, safe housing, clean water, and basic provisions
• Build and protect social|technical systems that facilitate and enforce these principles
• Dismantle systems that stratify wealth, status, and rights (judge by downstream social effects, not stated intentions)

Excellence

• Realign incentives; recognize profit as only one of many important indicators of benefit and success
• Municipalize critical infrastructure
• Generate demand by offering better products and services
• Explore and create mutually-beneficial relationships and specific transactions that multiply value beyond mere fair exchange
• Evolve social|technical systems that facilitate and encourage such symbiosis and development for all people
• Those systems must be inherently anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-sexist, and anti-ablist
• Prioritize social ethics when considering a new venture

(Regardless of technology, post-scarcity ain't gonna happen as long as economical evil reigns.)

2018-01-01

By Val Delane
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0