And, I apologize if I have mistaken you for a strong GOP type. I assume (please correct me if I am wrong), that you are more a liberterian type. . .
I'm a Capitalist. Feel free to visit
www.capitalism.org for a brief overview of Capitalism.
Remember what I wrote earlier about "Commons?" This is an alternative to both the system you advocate for, and the system I advocate (at least to this day) for: it is a system that holds THREE legs of the stool in equal respect and responsibility (the market, the government and the people as a community MADE UP of individuals, with individual rights that are greatly enhanced by the common rights). Where the government would provide the services that individuals cannot obtain on his own (i.e., big projects, infrastructure, research, protection, etc. .) while the market would be focus on enhancing not the INDIVIDUAL greed, but the individual and communal well being and prosperity, and where the people would be equal partner in making decisions for the good of EVERYONE, protecting the weak, and encouraging the strong, supporting everyone's special abilities, but not neglecting those whose abilities are not "quantifiable," to obtain a BALANCE between the three legs of the stool.
Utopia? Maybe. But it certainly doesn't require ANYONE to be hurt!
Excerpts from
The Principles of Communism, Fredrick Engels, 1847
What will this new social order have to be like?
Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
What will be the consequences of the
ultimate disappearance of private property?
Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished.
There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past. Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone.
The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all the products it needs.
In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members.
As I said, the "commons" looks to be a somewhat condensed, or paraphrased, version of how Marx and Engels described Communism. Far from being offered as a dictatorship that hides behind an Iron Curtain, their vision of Communism was very different from the Communism the world saw in Soviet Russia and still sees in other countries of the world. If you have an interest in learning more, I recommend reading Engels,
Utopian Socialism:
The newly-created gigantic productive forces, hitherto used only to enrich individuals and to enslave the masses, offered to Owen the foundations for a reconstruction of society; they were destined, as the common property of all, to be worked for the common good of all.
