Setting aside Capitalism vs. Communism (or maybe I just think I am), this structure vs. that. Why is it that there aren’t really huge lists of alternatives? Where are the people who are imagining new government structures?
Like electing citizens to office at random, like we do with jury duty (forget the word for it). Or totally different arrangements of legislatures. Or even a pure democracy in a modern sense. That one is especially probably a terrible idea, and they’re not even that unique, but who is brainstorming this stuff? Is it mostly just sci-fi authors? Where is it talked about that isn’t already bending toward a team in the already-existing scheme of things? Even the most radical sorts are referencing back to books/ideas that are a century old. There are ultimately like four ideas and we just kind of gave up? That’s all of them?
Why have we seen so few different approaches tried? Or seemingly even imagined? I feel like even in fiction, it’ll be 2,000 years in the future and the whole thing is structured like a glorified city council ruling entire star systems. I feel like it’s difficult even for our minds to imagine anything truly inventive, in that sense. Is that baked into the concept? Is it because we’re just dumb monkeys that only understand “big strong monkey better?” HAS this stuff been written about extensively and I’m just unaware (probably, yes)?
I think whether we like it or not economic systems have forced their way into our political systems.
And anyone with any existing power is strongly incentivized to kill any “new ideas” in the womb. As they would most likely represent a departure from the current system that they benefit from.
Any dramatic restructuring is going to be a very “significant” event. We may currently be on the precipice of one such event in the United States, this remains to be seen. The existing power structures have been significantly destabilized and pre-existing norms and rules are being outright ignored.
Power will shift, it remains to be seen how much and to where.
In any case, we may have the opportunity for you to see some new interesting governmental concepts, or perhaps a return to some classics, or a mix of the two (a little overtly capitalist fuedalism perhaps?).
We sure do live in interesting times.
I think this might be the best time to start having these conversations: when things are getting bad for almost everyone, and there is so much governmental upheaval that changing the economic system becomes a lot less disruptive than it would be during good times. It’s only going to become more and more clear that capitalism is failing.
My favorite economic system so far is a land value tax with UBI. I still don’t know exactly how businesses would operate, but this system would eliminate the parasitic generational wealth siphoned from hoarding property and housing. It would also allow for people to not work if they’re unable to.
I’m sure it’s probably just delusional hopium that we could ever get through the threat of fascism and come out of it with a better system than what we had, but that’s about all I got left right now. The rest is just doom.
Personally, I don’t actually want to see Yarvin’s Technocrat “Freedom” states where the disabled are turned into biofuel.
Yeah… The spectrum of options arrayed before us appear to be heavily weighted towards enforcing arbitrary hierarchies which is… Not ideal.