The Occupy movement is hands down the most potent culmination of moral and sociopolitical purpose I have seen on this large a scale in my lifetime. As a youth I aspired to embrace the ideas of the 60′s that I was exposed by my parents, but it rocks to have something alive and new to be part of. It’s leading us to evolve our expectations of democracy. Or for many of us, it’s finally starting to seem plausible that we might finally knock some sense into the world. The early months of Occupy have done tremendous good in gathering attention to the problems of inequality and greed, and we have established new networks of commitment with like-minded folks to push for change. Having followed the movement closely, it’s becoming clear to me that ideas are important. Really important.
While pondering the ridiculousness of the polarized political idioms that pervade our language and funnel mainstream thought into a pointless stalemate, I stumbled across a simple idea. Perhaps this, or something like it, can dislodge us from the narrow stereotypes that conventional left/right thinking tends to follow.
If we could somehow guarantee that every person’s compensation matched their contribution, then our economic problems would cease to exist. Nobody gets any more wealth than that which they have created for others. Perhaps it’s here, at this embarrassingly simple point of equilibrium where capitalism and socialism can harmoniously coexist. What if?
Let’s imagine a world that operates perfectly by this rule. How? Well you see, it’s metaphysically enforced by angels who run the cosmic bank. Ok, now what would it be like to live in such a world? If you are poor and in dire need of money, then all you do is just start contributing to others. In this imaginary world, you would be compensated instantaneously and fairly. If getting rich is your thing, then just do something big, something that will contribute to many people and you can be generously compensated. Just don’t harm anyone or the environment in the process. Harm is a negative contribution, so if you do that it will cut into your compensation. There’s no hiding from the angels, for they see your every thought. You would never see any sneaky subliminal advertisements that try to sell crap you don’t need. Businesses only get compensated for contributing to an actual need, so there would never be any point in pursuing annoying sales tactics that promote over-consumption.
Although imagining such a world on the outside seems unrealistic, couldn’t it be the truth that it’s already how things work on the inside? A person who has compensation that matches their contribution will always be happier and at greater inner peace than a person who doesn’t, regardless of which way the imbalance lies. Above all, this tells me that we must unlearn the habit of blocking our own conscience in order to win, and relax our survival strategy to encompass a broader and more natural set of goals. By doing so, we not only stop oppressing others, but we fulfill our own need to be at peace and in better health.
I have committed, and I invite others to commit to try and live by this rule (at least in terms of your thinking), if for a few days, and see how it feels. If it feels good, then keep doing it!
While I like the concept, that would mean that people like us would probably be paid a lot less because our contributions are strictly for entertainment.
Another consideration is scarcity: the kind of work I do is very high in demand and not many people do it so I am compensated well. This same rule applies to CEOs: it’s not like the work they do is super hard, special, or has some special training… it’s that scarcity drives up the demand for that type of labor: heck many CEOs don’t even have a degree.
The effect of scarcity would still apply, I think, since the value of your contribution is higher if it’s hard to get the services you offer. But more importantly, the massive wealth currently hoarded by the 1% would be spread more evenly, causing the 99% to experience a huge boost in their incomes relative to the cost of living.
The definition of “contribution” I use is pretty wide, BTW. It’s simply the amount of value delivered.
Oh, and intentionally manipulating value to increase profit wouldn’t work because it’s stealing, and stealing is a type of harm. Hehe… fun to keep imagining!
Hey Jer,
I like the idea a lot.
The original and primary difficulty I was thinking about was: how do you measure contribution? I have personally tangled with a number of people who think that we already have such an arrangement, and the measure of contribution is… wait for it… Money!
While this is clearly false, people think (and argue on national television every day) that it is true.
One of the roots of such fiction is the idea (propounded in economics classes every day) that the economy is simply a price-setting instrument, because “all the economy does is balance supply with demand.” This takes value and therefore contribution to be a commodity for consumption, and not something permanent. The profound flaw with this is visible if we compare the monetary value of ML King’s contribution to that of Steve Jobs. Whoever believes that value is decided by the market would argue that setting up a system of measure that is independent of the people who make their money through economic activity /just is ‘insert evil regime word here’/.
Most wealthy people think they are getting just what they deserve, under this regime. They would have to become aware somehow that this is or could now be false when it comes to worldly wealth. Furthermore they would have to leave money behind as the measure of value, and devote themselves to this ‘spiritual currency,’ as the real form of value.
More importantly: how would you measure it? You punt on that, in two ways:
1) angels know, that is, somebody knows how to assess the value of a contribution, even if we don’t. This is a problem, because it is the most practically important thing in the universe to know, and if you do not, how do you decide what to do? What actions are good, which ones are self-undermining or ‘negative contributions’?
2) You know inside you, and the compensation is inside you as well: the reward and the balancing out need not be accomplished in the world. This latter argument is surely close to being right, but it would take a lot of argument (see Plato’s Republic) to establish that justice and positive contribution, even if invisible and totally unrecognized in the world, are greater in pleasure and ‘compensation’ than the opposite.
The idea of acting “as if” this were already the case in the world is a beautiful one–like Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, in which we act as if all our activities contributed to and reinforced the good and the good deeds of everyone else–even if there is no evidence for this in the world.
More practically: you say that you just need to make a huge contribution, and you will be rewarded. How are you going to make such a huge contribution if you are homeless, destitute, and have three kids you can’t feed? The fact remains that such contribution will pass through the world, or be in the world, and some people have more stuff, more resources to muster to do that.
So inequality may well remain under such a regime unless everyone acts by the same principle.
In other words, you are certainly right to say along with Kennedy that we need to think about what we can do for the world, instead of what it can do for us. The hope is that by doing this we this can change the world, which I think it can.
Mark
Wonderful analysis, Mark. Money is just the compensation side of the equation, and you’re right, it’s the way we measure contribution (value) that is the problem. The fundamental driver of free markets is selfishness, and thus the way that monetary value is measured by free markets is based on the selfish aims of those who participate in them. This system will never take into account the costs inflicted upon those who are outsiders to the free market transaction.
The Story of Stuff (http://www.storyofstuff.org) explains how the price of goods we consume does not reflect externalized costs. When you buy a pound of beef in Brazil, the price you pay doesn’t include the value that was destroyed by deforestation to create the farms that produce the beef. This is what I mean by negative contribution. The rainforest pays for our cheap beef with the lives of its inhabitants. Entire species go extinct and nowhere does this immeasurable loss of value factor into the free market equation that determines the price of beef in Brazil.
The argument that money alone can accurately measure contribution is fundamentally flawed. Anyone who believes this is participating in a large scale act of collective ignorance. It’s easy to believe because so many people have believed it for so long. It is inconvenient to admit, but our real measure of the economy should not be the GDP. It should be total net contribution.
By the way, this ties into the subject of one of Mark’s recent posts, which I highly recommend, called “Money from Nothing: Two Reasons GDP Is Not Related to Well-Being”: http://sensefunction.blogspot.com/2011/12/money-from-nothing-two-reasons-gdp-is.html
What about those not capable of contributing basically? Would there be a safety net?
I’m glad that you mentioned this Wendy. I was thinking about it too. It’s probably quite rare that even a badly disabled person is incapable of contributing anything at all, but in those rare cases I should hope there was some kind of safety net. Right now I can’t come up with a good picture of how that might look, but I imagine that somehow it would happen as a natural side effect of the incentives that are built into the system. I will definitely ponder this one some more.
It certainly would be preferable for there to BE more incentives for all to work than there are now, as much as people comfortably could, but we all need to be cared for at times too. There are lots of basic needs going unmet currently, especially due to a lack of healthcare availability to all, while money across the board is not spread fairly.