Python Liberation Front

Beware the Ides of March: Capitalism, Monopoly, Information Age, Happiness, Neolithic Phase Transformation, New Age Oracle.

Capitalism: The Pilgrims, the first English settlers in New England, found that private interest was best able to motivate folks to grow enough food to adequately feed the population; they first tried communal farming, but failed to grow enough to get them through the first winter. After that, it was every family for itself, and a family either grew enough food to survive or else perished.

Likewise, in more recent times, capitalism has proved to be better than any other system in maximizing the production of goods and services. The United States is the pre-eminent example of unbridled capitalism.

Monopoly:  Still, it seems that in today’s complex society, companies often strive for a monopoly or a near monopoly. In fact, only by obtaining a monopoly or near monopoly do corporations earn the very highest profit margins. And of course, having a monopoly makes a business person sleep well at night. I’m a business man, and I know whereof I speak.

But does a monopoly still produce the same kind of good motivation to produce better goods and to better serve customers, as in the Pilgrim example above? I don’t think so.

Information Age: The times in which we live are different than earlier times. The computer revolution has produced a new type of intellectual property and wealth that is different in kind from land and other "factors of production". Software is the clearest example, but it will be by no means the final example.

Applying the typical capitalist formula, that of seeking monopoly, has and will make some individuals rich. But the society or culture that harnesses new age thinking to the subject of maximizing information and true societal intellectual property will far outperform the current capitalist/monopolistic system with its legal nightmares.

Happiness: The USA produces the most capitalist wealth, but people are not happy.

Neolithic Phase Transformation: When farming was developed, human society went through a phase transformation. Everything changed. For the first time, food was plentiful enough to allow settled communities to grow in population and for humans to diversify their activities and specialize in writing and other activities beyond subsistence hunting and gathering.

Maybe the average farming person was less happy than your average hunter gatherers, I don't know. But eventually, an axial age came about over the whole earth, around 600 BC, when many cultures produced Buddhas, Prophets, Philosophers and statesmen who re-ordered society for the greater good of all.

New Age: Maybe we are at such a point. If so, then you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. A change is going to come, and I see a slow train coming, up around the bend....

Where are our new disciplines, our new specialties, our new arts, our new sciences, our new ways of living? For the first time in human history, we can create more consumer goods than we can use as a species. Will we keep on building more and more things until we clutter the earth and suffocate ourselves? I am not against growth. I am for people. I am not against the environment. I am for people. I am not anti-money, I am for people. I am not against capitalism, I am for people.

We need a new economics, one that allows us to build better total wealth, not just more things. Let us build new things, not just more. Let us create new ways of being human...