Cooperative Competitors

The ideas of the survival of the fittest and change within a species came long before Darwin and the theory of evolution. Humans have been breeding animals for at least 10,000 years to improve certain species.

Also, in the sense that females try to attract the strongest males as mates, it could be said that breeding for survival traits within the human race has gone on a long time, too – "forever," as it were. Maybe it was not conscious or socially conscious at first, but the case could be made that deliberate human breeding for survival traits and preservation of human "bloodlines" long pre-dated the breeding of animals and the concepts of aristocracy and nobility.

Note however that the competition for human survival takes place in a social context. That is, it is a cooperative competition in which certain acts draw social praise (aiding survival) while others draw social punishment (making survival more difficult). At its best, this helps everyone survive and "fitness" to survive is more about society than the individual.

This is only the background and infrastructure of society, however. Reality is much more complex. The key is that acts are only judged when they are socialized (publicized). That is why secrecy is greatly prized for individuals at the "highest" levels of societies. True honesty and transparency are only encouraged in the "lower" segments of the population. The fact is that power wants the rest of us to "speak truth" to it. "Speaking truth to power" is not truly an act of defiance or resistance, and it is not the issue. The issue is whether power speaks truth to the rest of us. It almost never does. Almost everything we hear from the highest levels of society is at least misleading if not an outright contradiction of the facts.

Pretty much everybody already knows this already.  For example, it seems likely that the more obvious lies of society's leaders are the source of some forms of paranoia and conspiracy theories. We remind our readers that our leaders regularly lie to us only because many people suppress these kinds of thoughts.  After all, what can we do about it?

The trouble is that this issue is important. No matter how little we can do, we have to do what we can about it. Leadership can get caught up in its own lies and slip further and further from reality. If societies can be said to "go crazy," that is how it happens. The leaders lose touch with reality and the people fail to confront them. History shows that tens of millions of people can die uselessly as a result.

This is also not just historical rhetoric. At least two nations seem to be insane and dangerous at this moment. Because of secrecy, it seems likely that there are several more. Insane leadership should be held accountable and changed before it leads its people and others into disaster.

Therefore we should neither quietly accept nor crazily react to our leadership when it loses touch with reality. We believe that both these responses enable the insanity rather than help correct it.

The U.S. has been pretty good at correcting its own insanity over the years, but it is a constant struggle. Today's example is Lois Lerner, who recently in essence told the rest of us "screw you!" during congressional hearings on the IRS scandal. In effect, she claimed that she had done nothing that might incriminate herself, but refused to answer questions on the grounds that she might incriminate herself. That is a crazy and antisocial set of claims. ("Crazy" meaning unworthy of serious consideration and also out of touch with reality.) For self-defense, we must end her public career now on that basis alone.

Without social punishment for wrongdoing, our cooperative competition, relatively peaceful, ceases to be cooperative. It becomes just pure competition. Dog-eats-dog. That is why so many die when societies lose touch with reality and lose leadership accountability.

We have to punish leaders we catch lying to us. Furthermore, we should always be digging for the truth in order to catch them lying to us. The effort must be made, and it concerns tosoc.org that so many seem to have given up on making our leaders tell the truth. "Politicians are liars and always will be," we are told, as if that excuses us from fighting against it.

Just because the world is not fair does not mean that we should not try to make it fair. There is value and good in the struggle. Our vision of the future should be that society will become fairer and more fair as time goes on, even if we know that our struggle will never succeed in creating a completely fair society. Otherwise we risk creating a world that is totally unfair.

Just because there is no objective truth does not mean that reporters and scientists should not strive to be objective. Between deconstructionism and various epistemologies, it appears that today's reporters and scientists have ceased to try to be objective. In fact, we suspect that a story or research paper that does not promote a strong, politically correct point of view will have difficulty being published. There is value in attempting to find the objective truth about any event, however, because failing to do so – lack of concern about the reality of a situation – leads to insanity.

There is a sort of Gresham's law regarding truth. Gresham's law says that bad money drives out good money. A similar law is that lies drive out truths. It is just easier to accept the lies because it takes extra effort to stay in touch with reality. That becomes especially difficult for the individual when society goes mad. Insane societies try to keep their members away from reality.

Therefore just because all politicians lie does not mean that we should accept it when we catch them lying. There is value to the struggle to try to punish them for it. The struggle is the only thing that keeps society in touch with reality. Without the struggle, the lies take over completely. This happened for example in the old Soviet Union until the government became so ludicrous that it lost control. It was replaced. We are fortunate that the process was so peaceful.

Turning now to capitalism, tosoc.org claims that Western capitalism is failing. In the context of what we have already said here, the failure began in the cooperative aspect of cooperative competition. The idea that the "playing field is level," or even could be made "level," by law and regulation is the lie. The competition is not "fair."

The rich would say that sure, the competition is fair. Anybody who can reach their level of economic power can have all the advantages they have. How misleading. The reality is that almost no one can reach that level. The reality also is that the rich are getting richer relative to the poor. That is not cooperation, it is oppression.

The primary difference between economic cooperation and oppression is this. Cooperation allows the rich to reward those who help them, employees and others. Cooperation means that a rising tide raises all boats. The poor do not get left behind.

Oppression allows the rich to destroy their competitors and threaten their employees.  It means economic fear. Oppression means that the rich serve themselves, not society. The poor have to take care of themselves with what is left over after the rich have taken all they want.

The powerful like the idea that they can destroy individuals who oppose them. Not by taking their lives, perhaps, but by taking their jobs, their incomes, their houses, and by putting pressure on their loved ones. We can ruin you, they threaten.

At tosoc.org, our vision is that, if humans ever really needed economic fear for the advancement of society, it is not needed any longer. Economic security is our vision of the future. As we have said many times, we think the primary policy changes that are needed to accomplish this involve multiple exclusive currencies and markets controlled by a government that is paid only in internal currencies.

One of the hardest things tosoc.org has to do to advance our cause is to convince people that trying more of the same old policies is not best. It does not seem to matter that our current policies have failed in the past and are failing now. After all we have done over the last five years to try to overcome the Great Recession, the economy is still just stumbling along. We think that people should be more frustrated with this than they are. We think that they should start considering new and different solutions like ours.

The way things are set up today, there is no way to correct the markets. Attempts to legislate cooperation back into the markets turns into saving the rich at the expense of the poor. That is only natural, since the poor are only needed for votes, not for policy decisions. The politicians lie to get the votes. Actual policy is what the rich control.

We cannot break the control that the rich have over us when we use the same currency that they do. When they pay and hire and fire us directly, as individuals, they have too much control. When they set prices and make monetary policy, they have too much control. They can threaten many individuals, but a single individual cannot threaten them at all.

The only fair way to deal with the rich in a competitive context is collectively. To be treated as equals, we have to combine our economic power until our collective power is about equal to the economic power of the rich. Individuals should only compete in markets that are suitable for their level of economic power. That includes the rich, and their markets should be different from those of the poor.

We need cooperative competition in capitalist markets to make those markets the best they can be. Now that the rich have far more economic power than the poor, the markets are beginning to break down. The rich do not have to cooperate anymore and the markets are powerless to hold them accountable. Legislation and regulation are also failing. Not just economic craziness, but social craziness, is beginning to spread. It is time to renew the struggle against these trends and use new tools, such as multiple exclusive currencies and markets.

The way capitalism should be.

Socialism for the socialists and capitalism for the capitalists.

TheOtherSideOfCapitalism (admin@tosoc.org)

Copyright © 2013 TheOtherSideOfCapitalism

Try and Stop Us!

Soon the U.S. Supreme Court will publicize its ruling on the case involving California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriages. Most people think this is just another battle between the homosexual agenda and its opponents.

Tosoc.org sees it instead as another "no matter what the ruling, the central government wins, everyone else loses" event. It is another step in the increasing conversion of law into regulation in the United States. (See our post The Law is No Excuse.) The most important aspect of the Proposition 8 case is about centralization of power. That is, we see it as giving those in power (the rich) a reason to take the vote away from the people.

One of us from tosoc.org discussed Proposition 8 with a young country lawyer back in 2008. His view was that the courts can and should arbitrarily change longstanding legal precedents if they want. It is up to legislators and the people to correct them if they do not like it. This can be termed the "What 'cha gonna do about it?" attitude, or the "Try and stop us!" approach.

(These are not the kinds of attitudes that we at tosoc.org like to see in our public officials, by the way. Or in the rich. They have enough power without arrogating more.)

Of course "correcting" the courts was exactly what the people of California tried to do. When their courts ruled that same-sex marriage was suddenly OK when it had never been before, the people passed Proposition 8. The majority ruled.

But did the vote matter? To the minority, the majority voted the wrong way. Now a few hundred people (including the U.S. Supreme Court) are on the verge of overturning the votes of millions of Californians. So much for our young country lawyer's comforting claim essentially that the people are sovereign through their votes.

True, it may be that the U.S. Supreme Court will vote in favor of Proposition 8, and confirm the votes of millions of Californians. The trouble is that even if they do, the collateral damage is still serious. Just by agreeing to rule on the case, they have already established a precedent that marriage is a matter concerning the U.S. Constitution. They have established a precedent that they should review state votes about marriage to make sure that the people voted the right way.

Of course, the U.S. Constitution says nothing about marriage at all. It does talk about freedom and democracy, including voting. But all that freedom and voting only means something if the votes count. To say that they only count after review by the Supreme Court is to say that all decisions are effectively made by the whim of the Supreme Court. Except, of course, that the Court does not have time to decide everything. Until the Court gets a chance to review a decision, the illusion of the power of the vote is a subordinate substitute that will keep the people quiet in the interim.

A few years ago President Obama famously told Republicans that elections have consequences and reminded them that he won. The question now is whether votes make any real difference. The lesson of Proposition 8 is that votes do not decide anything. That may be the source of some of the Obama administration's difficulties.

The main reason that tosoc.org sees the Proposition 8 struggle as a covert struggle between democracy and anti-democracy is that it did not have to be handled this way. There was no real reason to bring the U.S. Supreme Court into it. We have no doubt that at some time in the near future, if not almost immediately, the people of California could be brought to reverse Proposition 8 in another election.

That would not have been good enough for the centralizers, however. Allowing Californians to settle their dispute without federal intervention would do no good for the central government. In effect, the centralizers on both sides worked together to force the issue onto the federal level.

Some of them may not even realize that they are centralizers; they may just believe that nothing is ever really settled until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on it. That is the problem. Perhaps we have come to the point where most people see the federal government as the supreme power in their lives. That of course would be one of the goals of those who are consciously centralizers – to change the story of U.S. society so that the people cease to believe that they are sovereign.

What we need instead of centralization is decentralization – of markets and currencies. We need an end to the use of economic fear against the people. In the case of homosexuals, note that the economic goals of same-sex marriage are to make sure that those who live alternative lifestyles gain the federal benefits that current married couples have. That is, it is not so much the people but the federal government that economically discriminates against homosexuals and others, carrying out denial-of-resources attacks against them.

With multiple exclusive currencies and markets, this would not even be an issue. No one would be denied basic resources even in the poorest markets. Earning more than the basics would be up to the individual, and would not be dependent on any personal preferences. The federal government would not discriminate against anyone.

Thus The Other Side of the same-sex marriage issue is that the issue has been co-opted to gain power for the centralizers no matter which side "wins" the dispute, even though the root is in economic discrimination. Better to bypass the whole issue and maintain the sovereignty of the people by removing the economic discrimination faced by those who live alternative lifestyles. The best way to do that, of course, is with multiple exclusive currencies and markets.

The way capitalism should be.

Socialism for the socialists and capitalism for the capitalists.

TheOtherSideOfCapitalism (admin@tosoc.org)

Copyright © 2013 TheOtherSideOfCapitalism

-->

Coming Around

Our tax-collectors increasingly take our money in order to pay international interests. As the debt of the United States grows, only part of the increase is owed internally. The rest of the increase is owed externally.

That is why tax collection in the single U.S. currency is in part a matter of U.S. foreign policy. It is not just about domestic policy. In fact, tosoc.org believes that our response to the Great Recession is better explained when we take the foreign policy aspect of the economic meltdown into account (for example, the treatment of AIG). We could not allow certain institutions to fail perhaps not so much because they would have another Lehman-like effect on our domestic economy, but because they might have that effect on other countries (especially in Europe). If we could prevent it, no matter how much it cost our own citizens, we would not allow our economic troubles to bring down the economies of our allies.

This has a bearing on the recent government scandals in the news. Two scandals are about surveillance on reporters and on the general population. The other is about bigoted, prejudicial behavior on the part of our tax collectors based on the perceived political orientation of applicants for tax-exempt status.

Tosoc.org thinks that it is a fairly straightforward and expected behavior that bureaucrats will try to please their superiors, including the President of the U.S. We think this is true even if the bureaucrats oppose their superiors' policies, up to a point. Most bureaucrats seem to favor the political left, but that does not mean that they will refuse to carry out the requests of a President on the political right.

Therefore we were happy to hear that President Obama was deeply upset by the discrimination of IRS employees against his political opponents. He is not entirely blameless, however. The President has not always kept his own and his administration's rhetoric about his opponents under control, so there may well be a similarity to the Thomas Becket story. ("Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?") The bureaucrats may have mistakenly put anti-Tea Party rhetoric into action, thinking that it would please their superiors. The President now has a chance to show that he will not tolerate the use of government power for anti-democratic purposes.

We can also imagine that some of the IRS employees with leftish tendencies thought it was funny to torment those they did not like. Perhaps they smiled and chuckled as they put their creative powers to work to find new ways to make the lives of their political opponents more difficult.

It is bad enough when the IRS is involved in this kind of thing, but could this also be happening elsewhere? We will probably never know whether other bureaucrats in the Justice department or the NSA used their information-gathering powers not just to spy on reporters and possible terrorists, but to gather information on groups with Tea Party or Patriot in their names as well.

There is no evidence of this so far as tosoc.org knows, but bad IRS behavior suggests that such a thing must now be considered.

Those of us who are more-or-less on the left should strenuously object to this behavior and never participate in it. We should go out of our way to treat our political opponents scrupulously. Why any of us should undermine our goals and the Obama administration in these ways is beyond tosoc.org. We need to control ourselves and not give in to "the end justifies the means" ways of thinking.

This is not so much a moral or ethical position. Instead it is powerfully practical because "what goes around comes around." Why would we build the tools and tactics that will allow the next right-wing administration to oppress us? Richard Nixon would have loved what our sympathizers have done because they justify his behavior. If we do the kinds of things that Nixon would do, then ultimately the right-wingers will also do them. And it will be difficult for us to complain about the anti-democratic activities that we created. It is hard to express how wrong-headed we think the IRS bureaucrats have been.

However, we believe that there is another aspect to this that goes beyond our domestic political struggles. The IRS is responsible for collecting enough money to pay our international creditors as well as to pay for domestic expenses. The discrimination against Tea Party and Patriot groups may have been motivated by the need to gather ever-more revenue for this purpose. Any domestic groups that make it more difficult to collect the increasing amounts to pay foreign interests could potentially disrupt foreign policy requirements. That is, up to a point and somewhat indirectly, the IRS works for international interests. The suppression of domestic interests in favor of foreign ones could be seen as a natural extension of their work.

It is not a pretty thought that our government takes from U.S. workers to enrich foreign interests, but it is something we have to consider. After all, it should not be hard to find examples where the U.S has done the same to other nations. Again, what goes around comes around.

One of the purposes of The Other Side of Capitalism is to find a different way, a way that is not exploitative and does not encourage anti-democratic behaviors. Multiple exclusive currencies and markets should help.

First, as we mentioned in "The Other Side of Defense," multiple exclusive currencies and markets should make it easier to track terrorists by following the money. That is because enforcing the relationships between markets requires auditing of all transactions. It may well be that patterns of transactions could be used to justify phone and email surveillance, meaning that the need for general surveillance of the entire population could be reduced.

Second, many of our domestic struggles are about money. As tosoc.org has said many times before, single-currency monetary policies that satisfy international interests will not likely satisfy domestic interests. Multiple exclusive currencies and markets will decouple international monetary interests from domestic monetary interests. That should greatly reduce many of our domestic differences and reduce the desire of bigoted bureaucrats to discriminate against citizens based on their politics.

Finally, the question has arisen whether the government that demands our loyalty is loyal to us. That question will remain so long as our international currency is the only currency we have. To the extent that foreign interests influence our currency they also influence our institutions and officials who use that currency. Put that together with the fact that our treaty obligations constitutionally have the power of law and we have a system in which our government's interests could become opposed to our people's interests. If that happens, then there will be pressure on the IRS, the Justice Department, and the NSA to use their powers against the threats that the people pose. That would be a sad and tragic situation.

With the multiple exclusive currencies and markets that tosoc.org has previously described, however, the government's interests will always be in line with the interests of the people. The external currency could be controlled to meet our external obligations and the internal currency (or currencies) could be controlled to meet our internal obligations.

The way capitalism should be.

Socialism for the socialists and capitalism for the capitalists.

TheOtherSideOfCapitalism (admin@tosoc.org)

Copyright © 2013 TheOtherSideOfCapitalism

-->

The Other Side of Defense

In some ways, multiple exclusive currencies and markets would not affect the security systems of the United States much at all. In other ways, there would be considerable changes. The idea is that as many as possible security-related personnel and contracts would be paid in internal dollars exclusive to internal markets just like government personnel and contracts in general.

Not much would change for the average soldier or sailor (war-fighter, if you prefer). If necessary a separate military currency and market could be arranged, but at this point we do not expect that. It should be enough if they and their families join civil families in a market at a similar economic level. The only differences would be those that are necessary for their additional security needs and for military necessity. All those things should be easier to accomplish with a flexible internal currency – within U.S. borders, at least.

From a social perspective, the lives of citizens in those markets would be more economically like the lives of the military personnel. Healthcare would act much like military healthcare at those market levels. Prices in general would also be similar (because of collective purchasing power). The purchasing power of military personnel should go up because, large and centralized as our military is, it does not have the consumer purchasing power of the equivalent civilian sector. Again, a flexible currency and market targeted for their level of economic strength should help military personnel and their families considerably compared to today.

Multiple exclusive currencies and markets will also help security. As we have mentioned before, individual loyalties will be easier to predict if individuals are not legally allowed to own or control external currencies. It will be harder to bribe or to launder money across the new, controlled currency and market boundaries, especially with the additional auditing that will be required. It will be more difficult for those not loyal to the U.S. to operate in internal U.S. markets. As it stands now, most foreign entities have enough dollars to suborn almost any individual person.

Note that this also means that those who participate in external markets cannot hold positions related to U.S. security, not even as a volunteer firefighter. The reasons for this are noted in our post on loyalties. Those who want to serve in the U.S. government or any position related to U.S. security have to fit in internal markets. That means if they are already in external markets, they will have to exchange their external wealth for internal wealth and join an internal market, perhaps losing a large portion of their wealth in the process. This is because the markets will be regulated so that all participants in a market must be of approximately equal economic strength.

This does not mean that rich people will not be able to serve in the government or in the military. We expect that the wealthiest internal U.S. market under tosoc.org's system will be quite wealthy. In fact, we expect that U.S. Senators, for example, who are quite rich today, would remain quite rich even if they switch to an internal market. The difference is that their economic affairs would be subject to the same regulations and auditing as those of anyone in any other internal market.

The most difficult part of all this is the human interface between internal currencies and external currencies. Some internal personnel will have to have control of accounts denominated in external currencies. In addition, the external accounts will typically be quite large in order to accommodate collective purchases and income. The motives for misuse of the external funds will be quite powerful. For example, we can imagine that an individual could be tempted to grant a large favor (in money terms) to an external entity, then flee the country to a wealthy life elsewhere arranged by that external entity. When dealing with amounts possibly in the range of tens of billions of dollars, the cost of setting up one criminal and family for life is minuscule.

It will require very strong controls to prevent misuse, but at least the number of those with the power to misuse the external funds can be kept small. It is a lot easier to watch a small number of people.

Overall we do not expect that the implementation of tosoc.org's suggestions to have any negative impact on U.S. security. In fact, we believe that our security will increase for several reasons. Our soldiers and their families will have more purchasing power and will live lives more like their equivalents in the civilian economy. The economic welfare of government officials and anyone involved in U.S. security will be tied to the economic welfare of the U.S. as a whole. Finally, it will be easier to track down those who misuse U.S. funds because there will be many fewer who have the power to do it. The vast majority of people will deal only with internal markets and will not have the opportunity to deal privately with foreign entities. We believe that these are strong reasons to try out a system of multiple exclusive currencies and markets.

The way capitalism should be.

Socialism for the socialists and capitalism for the capitalists.

TheOtherSideOfCapitalism (admin@tosoc.org)

Copyright © 2013 TheOtherSideOfCapitalism

-->

The Other Side of Education

Our readers know that tosoc.org does not generally use typical left-wing terminology like "class warfare." We think many of these terms give the wrong impression. Yes, there is a lot of conflict, but it is not "warfare." Very little of it falls into a true life-or-death category. We think it is unfortunate that the natural language of conflict tends to come from our "war" language. We think that can lead to unnecessarily violent thinking and then to unnecessarily violent acts. Even worse, it can lead us to make mistakes. We should be careful how we say things and how we use our internal language to think about things. That is why tosoc.org tries not to use war language for economic and social topics.

Please keep this in mind when we say that the basic tool in conflict is denial of resources. When we talk about putting "the squeeze" on one another, that is what we mean. That is, getting between people and what they need so you can pressure them to do what you want. From an economic standpoint, this means using economic fear. Or using the threat of poverty. Austerity.

At our current worldwide technical level, for example, we could eliminate malnutrition. Enough food could be grown and the distribution systems could be constructed to feed everyone adequately. We can no longer blame mass starvation on natural disaster, lack of transportation, or just ignorance. It is no longer an unfortunate event. It is a choice. In fact, the vast majority of economic disasters today are man-made. They are "denial-of-resources" attacks.

That topic deserves a lot of work by itself, but here it is a lengthy prologue to our comments on education. Looking at it from The Other Side, the U.S. educational system is rife top to bottom with economic fear and denial of resources. Here are some hypothetical points of view to describe the current system.

Child: You have to go to school to pass the tests to get a degree to get a job to make enough money so you can live.

Parent: You have to send your kids to school to have time during the day to work at a job to make enough money so you can support your family.

Ambition: You have to make the best grades to show yourself superior to go to the best college to get the best degree to get the best job to earn the most money to make the best living.

Ambition: You have to get the best job to make the most money to buy the best home to get in the best school district to give your kids the best chances to make the best grades to ... (And so on. See Ambition above.)

School to Child: We stand between you and the job market.

School to Parent: We stand between you and your ability to work.

School to Ambition: We stand between you and success.

Grading Curve to Children: Most of you are second-rate. Or possibly, most of you are losers.

Rich: I am safe.

The basic lessons taught by our school systems have nothing to do with what most people think of as education. The basic lessons are about the fact that the educational system is given the power to assign the young to their places in society, meaning that educational opportunities and resources are distributed according to how well a child does in school, among other things. Except for the rich, of course.

Tosoc.org has a different vision of education. We would rather see a system in which the young actively seek their places in society rather than be assigned to them. We think that schools teach a certain passivity. We also think that the methods used to place students are somewhat artificial and unrealistic. Schools train students to be average students for the most part, not active citizens.

Tosoc.org's vision of education starts with these new hypothetical views.

Child: I am safe.

Parent: I am safe.

Teacher: I am safe.

Rich: I am safe.

This looks to us like the only equality that really matters.

When tosoc.org hears the word "competition," our natural reaction is "markets." Note however that a market is completely different from the idea of competition in nature. A market is a human social phenomenon in which humans can compete without destroying one another. A market is a place where humans can both compete and cooperate. In fact, as soon as humans stop cooperating and start destroying one another, there is no market.

If human competition best takes place in the context of markets, tosoc.org asks whether competition and education best go together, too. If so, then our relatively monolithic educational system is set up the wrong way even in its own terms. If we really want competitive education, then the educational system needs to be organized into a market (or markets). Let the markets place young people based on their performance in free markets, not based on distorted grades, transcripts, and standardized test scores imposed on a distorted market by a monolithic authority.

Tosoc.org however does not believe that education and competition fit together very well. Schools should not teach economic fear or use denial of basic resources for socialization, or justify them as tools that students can learn to use against other people.

In essence we believe that education and competitive social placement should be separate. The first lesson we would teach the young is that their basic needs will be met, but that they should want and work for more than that. Competition in human society should not be a life-or-death issue. Competition should begin at the next level above survival. The competition should be about how far the young can improve themselves and others and about how far they can improve not just their own lives, but also the lives of others.

Education is self-improvement. Thus it is a tool that is used in the competition. But getting an education should not itself be competitive. Making education competitive means that it becomes a resource that can be denied and it will be denied as a result of the conflicts that arise out of the competition. That is how the current educational system works.

Without trying to lay everything out at once, tosoc.org would take the competition out of schools. The primary purpose of schools would be to teach students about human competition and cooperation. (In other words, about free markets and the less-desirable alternatives.) If students understand where human competition fits and how it works hand-in-hand with cooperation, it should be obvioius to them why they need to educate themselves. Their schools are also there to help them accomplish that.

Tosoc.org would move the competition between the young out of schools and into markets. We are already promoting the idea of multiple exclusive currencies and markets, so it is not a stretch to imagine currencies and markets for the young. These markets would be designed to encourage and help students actively find their own places among their peers. The goal is that they will ultimately find their places in the broader society of adults.

Human society should not be a totally dog-eat-dog environment. We need competition to inspire us but we also need safety and cooperation to avoid the reinstitution of slavery and genocide. We need to be educated well enough to understand competition and cooperation. Tosoc.org thinks that the current educational system is really about competition and the use of economic fear in human conflicts. If we could change the system, we would make the educational system just about education and self-improvement, and move the competition into markets. A free market is the best tool to use to get the proper mix of cooperation and competition out of human beings.

The way capitalism should be.

Socialism for the socialists and capitalism for the capitalists.

TheOtherSideOfCapitalism (admin@tosoc.org)

Copyright © 2013 TheOtherSideOfCapitalism

-->