The answer possibly lies with technology - I say possibly as I’m not entirely convinced - but we are going to have to look at the issue and perhaps recalibrate the way we live our lives and how we measure and value our lives and lifestyles. Does ‘work’ as we know it dominate to much of our thinking and the way it defines us? I don’t have the answer - not even sure I’m asking the right questions - but it is worthy of discussion.
Well i'm quite willing to pick up on that as is it is line with what i started discussing earlier. Yes i do believe technoligy will significantly alter the the matter in the next decades to come.
i think we have come to the point that many people acknowledge the "value misalignment of capitalism", as in capitalism is all nice and great for the economic elite and they therefore have interest to declare its superiority on a regular basis while denouncing any alternative, but that doesnt mean that the lower classes broadly agree with all that afcourse. What has generally been the issue was "well what is the alternative?", the capitalist elite seems to thrive on a situation where you dont see any other choice than to work by its rules.
However, that doesn't mean that it is impossible for people to self organize in alternative economic and social organizations that aim to work outside the capitalist system by a new value-set that aligns more to their own preference. information technology and such things like techno barter can add significant tools to facilitate such organization since it allows sort of "virtual community's" that arnt nessecarily so geographically driven and methods to organize production chains and services with ought the requirements of using money for goods and assets exchange once set up. This in turn can take away significant "oxygen" from the capitalist system by such systems, for example taking away workers and consumers from that system to bring it to a different form of economic organization and goods production/distribution. What this usually requires though is an initial accumulation of economic assets to build upon that works with rules outside the capitalist system and a form of "subjective value driven effeciency" that llows it to thrive , but essentially it's a method by which capitalist elitism is aimed to be diminished by shunning and avoiding it. The more people choose to work for and live within alternative systems which values conforms more to theirs rather than "capitalism", the more capitalism diminishes in size and importance, which crucially is also a process of public choice rather than to be a confrontational one like say Bolshevism was.
In the past this has been executed to a far lesser extend trough "worker cooperatives" like Mondragon, but technological and structural limitations is probably part of why they didnt grow all so much or fast back in the time of their original conception. They are for one quite geographically based rather than exist so much as a spread out system trough various actors and members connected trough internet. They used to be quite limited by the requirement of working within the monetary system whereas techno-barter would allow a growing market of exchange in kind either within or between such cooperatives.
The key then for such cooperatives is to understand what people really want, even up to the subjective individual basis, and see space there to engage people in a system that works trough other values that aligns more to their preferences. Because its really not like all people are nessecarily all so interrested in what capitalism promotes as a largely superficial materialist driven system, people might value other things as well beyond always having more and more consumerist shit and the effeciency of a "subjective value economic system" is the effeciency to conform and provide those desires beyond the abbilety for the monetary of capitalist economy apparently to do so as effeciently. And that would likely materialise as a growing fractured patchwork of economic systems that compete in being able to provide subjective value to its members, because the likely truth is that there is a great valriety of subjective value perspectives that dont align with capitalism and each require their own aproach to maximise the subjective values they aim form.
This can also be further pushed by emergence of more direct democratic systems. By itself such subjective value economic systems can easily be quite "economically democratic" where thats the choice of its members. Direct democracy would simply be a way where society could facilitate the easier growth of such systems by providing a good "entrepeneurial climate" for it, which could succeed providing that a majority can choose for it. Democratically speaking, the populace is the boss, trough self determination it ought to have the right to make such changes anyway, so therefore its also open as an option so to speak, or as a tool that can further accelerate the emergence of such alternative systems.
Not that effeciency is still key, its simply a matter of the effeciency by which an economic model conforms and delivers to the desires of its members. Such systems would compete, some would fail and some would succeed more so than others likely. Thats fine, its kinda a mater then to find the balance between the diversity of choice that exist withinthe populace and the workabillety of various solutions and models.
