Neocapitalism will become a serious possibility once every home and every citizen is connected to the web and e-currency starts to flow, we can abandon capitalism in favour of this new system.
Ok this is how neocapitalism works: instead of people getting paid by their employer to go to work everyone goes to work on a pseudo-voluntary basis. Then the government issue a fixed amount of e-money to every citizen regardless of who they are and what they do. Suppose this arbitary figure is 40,000 units of currency given out annually to everyone. Out of that 40,000 units a citizen is only allowed to keep a small portion for themselves, say 1000 units, this would be the basic wage that they would be expected to be able to live on equivalent to unemployment benefit, disabled people would of course be allowed to keep more to meet their special needs. Then each citizen must give all the remaining units (usually in this case 39,000) away to other people or organisations at their own discretion (this could only be practical, sensible and monitorable electronically which is why this system would only be implementable in the future).
The idea is that because you cant be selfish and give money to yourself each citizen would have to think about who deserves it most (teachers? firefighters? the homeless?). It encourages each individual to think about what areas of society need the most improvement and gives them a greater feeling of political power and influence which is a step way above democracy, which has only a single vote for everyone once every few years. It would eradicate social classes and redistribute wealth in a more sensible even way to those who need or deserve it most.
Since on their standardized electronic forms citizens will be allowed to choose from the complete list of charities and non-profit organisations as well as individual people as to who they designate their e-money to, it is likely that a lot more money will end up going to charities which would further redestribute wealth to the benefit of third world countries for example. Individuals will be more charity aware and this could have a big impact socially.
This system also encourages people to be good citizens as people are not likely to give to criminals and they would end up living near to poverty. People who decide to do whatever is currently perceived to be very useful to society and who fill a particular niche or fill a shortage in certain areas are the people who are most likely to benefit. They will be the ones that rightly end up with the most wealth as they are paid democratically by those who see value in what they do.
On top of all of this the capitalist machine is still allowed to run. Naturally companies are still allowed to make profits, and how these profits are distributed is completely up to whoever is in charge of them. However in this system there is less likely-hood of a hierachy of fat cats running big companies as people become more socially and economically aware, and more responsible.
Neocapitalism is an economic fusion of the best bits of capitalism and communism together with some original ideas of its own via the utilization of the new possibilies available in the digital communications age.-- Xen, Feb 03 2003 This is some sort of wacky socialism with forced charitable giving? Watch how fast the number of charities quintuples. Fishbone. Why the hell would we do this?-- waugsqueke, Feb 03 2003 waugsqueke there is no force involved, you can give to whoever you want, but surely you dont disaprove of more money going to charity.-- Xen, Feb 03 2003 // Then each citizen must give all the remaining units...//
"Must" suggests force to me. I do disapprove of having to give away 97% of my income, yes.-- waugsqueke, Feb 03 2003 You could give to your friends and family, they could give back to you and you never know you might end up with all that 97% that you've given away coming back to you.. possibly a lot more if you've been good to everyone.-- Xen, Feb 03 2003 Xen, this doesn't work for three reasons.
capitalism works, if imperfectly, because it ties performance to personal results.
If all of the money goes to charity, then the people running the bread lines are the only ones with cash. Effectively the charity becomes the government welfare program, and you have communism again.
There are some necessary jobs out there that are harder than others to accomplish. In your system these would be avoided like the plague, since there is no incentive to keep them.-- RayfordSteele, Feb 03 2003 Rayfordsteele: If those necessary difficult jobs were avoided like the plague then society would soon see a shortage in those kinds of jobs and the incentive would then be there as people would quickly realise how to stop the shortage by paying the people more who are doing those difficult jobs, so those people who did the difficult necessary jobs would indeed end up with more money.-- Xen, Feb 03 2003 Sorry, I misread that part. Then the only serious remaining difficulty would be perfect and accurate communication of the job requirements, difficulty level, etc. I'm not certain, but a competition may arise confusing the issue of who's more 'deserving.'-- RayfordSteele, Feb 03 2003 Also a lot of independent personal decisions as to how the currency is distributed would have some severe side-effects.
For a start fraud would be easy as people only know about their personal decision so it would be hard for an individual to audit the books. Secondly it would be too complex for many people so recognisable "brands" would get most of the money and they in turn would probably have to spend some of it on advertising to maintain their high profile. Finally as virtually all news tends to focus on bad news rather than good so a lot of well-deserving causes/employees risk being overlooked.
Also the addition of regular capitalism makes it all redundant anyway as companies would seek to earn enough to be able to independent from the internet distribution of units of currency.-- Aristotle, Feb 03 2003 Let's try this - send me your money...-- thumbwax, Feb 03 2003 Utter nonsense, for so very many reasons.-- angel, Feb 04 2003 random, halfbakery