Extreme Capitalism
(Up to: Economics Why IDon TLike Capitalism )
I often wonder what a completely capitalist culture would be like.
OK, I don't, really, because what we have already is enough to be getting on with. But hey.
The thing that holds our society back is its indecision, its limbo state, hovering ditheringly between the individual and the collective, and gaining the real benefits of neither. What is needed is an assertive extremism, a push towards one or the other. And under its current momentum, it certainly feels like the capitalism tendency is a realistically attainable scenario.
So what is needed for this future to come about from where we stand today?
Eradication of public space
Firstly, public space, and all the public infrastructure that supports it, is in the way. This will have to go, and I mean all of it. Just as the right-wing policies of the 80s rapidly moved previously publically-owned services into the private sector, so the trend should continue.
The first to go would obviously be Britain's health service. This has proved to be ineffective under a government burdened by trying to fund various organisations, fight wars and maintain order, all at the same time. Thus by relinquishing the health agencies into provate control, the government would have more time and resources to concentrate on their more essential tasks. Secondly, this is a natural transgression, as the rest of the medical industry is already one of the largest in the private sectors, health being of utmost importance and people willing to buy anything for theirs. So the coupling of newly-privately-funded bodies with the existing medical marketplace would be mostly seamless.
To gain maximal benefit from capitalist machineries, the currently-monolithic set of services would be split into a number of smaller "disciplines", each of which then being auctioned off to the highest bidder, with a maximum of 2 "disciplines" to go to any one bidding party - enough to prevent an overall monopoly, but avoiding possible friction and resource scarcity should each bidder only be able to gain one organisational segment. This also ensures that some companies will hold more sway within the sector than others. Furthermore, the auction system ensures that the government gain the most amount of financial (or alternative) backing through this handover.
We should then turn back to transportation systems, focusing our attention to other forms of transport that have yet to be freed of their socialist inefficiencies.
The road system makes as much sense to be public as the rail network does - both require a continual form of upkeep by a consistent body, and this can be paid for effectively as well as being incensed towards improvement by a company that is ultimately answerable to those who use it. Others have described a more detailed explanation of how this transferral can be achieved, but in summary, it states:
- The failure of the roads is due to separation between the currently responsible Highway Agency, and the citizens that the roads serve. This comes from the intermediate governmental layer. Meanwhile, taxes intended to improve road services get caught on the channel back, ending up instead in the Treasury's coffers.
- A number of companies, for example "Roadtrack", would therefore take corporate ownership of the roads system, and the shares in these companies would be distributed per type of road, according to the users of those roads. i.e. Main, trunk roads would be handled by a particular company, and everyone would have equal shares, as everyone uses these roads.
- However, this suffers a number of problems. Firstly, this assumes that all people that can use a particular road use that road equally. In practice, this is obviously false, as certain industries and professions depend upon the infrastructure undeniably more than others. Thus, to be fair, shares should be distributed accordingly. This should be decided by a process of application which determines the dependency of the party upon the roads they are applying for, hence large businesses that deliver their livelihood via non-renewable-energy-source-driven means will natuarally have a larger share than an individual who may use a major trunk road twice a year for vacational purposes.