New here, and even though i've favored anarchist philosophy for a long time, i never discussed it with anybody else. So i thought i should ask around and get an idea of what the common ideas are. Specifically regarding economy and capitalism.
Premises, i'll try to keep it short:
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I believe we can agree that "people should be fairly/ethically rewarded for their labor" is a reasonable ideal, and that profit is a much greater barrier to that ideal than tax is. With tax, it's less ambigious if, where and when things "trickle down", and people get some (certainly much room for improvement) democratic (likewise) say in the matter.
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The capitalist economy obviously contradicts anarchist ideals of decentralization. Non-democratic and hardly meritocratic (chance and anti-competitive tactics) power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, arguably more influential for our day-to-day lives than governments.
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Humans are imperfect - imperfectly aligned and imperfectly capable, - so one shouldn't give a human (or a body of humans) more authority/responsibility than is absolutely necessary, and do all that one can do to continuously ensure and audit their alignment and capability. As a political idea you're all very familiar with this, but i also extend it to economy.
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Capitalism does some job at allocating ("investing") labor and resources "intelligently" (using very generous wording), indirectly, into various measures of progress. It doesn't do the best job, very far from it, but i think any alternative one proposes should at least try to do a better job at converting labor and resources into improving everybody's quality of life.
There are some existing alternatives to convert labor. There is for example the concept of worker cooperatives (which could optionally be non-profit), which i find interesting.
But i don't see that by itself scale easily to national or even global level. Especially regarding the labor/resource allocation or "investment" aspect. I've spent a great deal trying to conceptualize an ethical, decentralized and also more effective (at converting labor and resources into quality of life) alternative to capitalism, but i don't feel like my thoughts are worth seriously sharing yet. As a very vague summary, think non-profit worker cooperatives + WIP decentralized, local-first hierarchial method of democratic crowd funding.
I'm curious to hear what thoughts and ideas you have on the subject. Also perhaps literature recommendations (please summarize).
I dont really see why this is a particularly goof ideal to build around the systems we use to express and fulfill our needs. Maybe you could explain why you would prefer to use that instead of ideals like "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" or "well-being for all".
I think an interesting read might be the section I.3 What could the economic structure of anarchy look like? of An Anarchist FAQ.
What I would be interested in is an more insurrectionist / individualist / egoist answer to this question, because their perspective is often not mentioned in these kinds of questions.
I agree i might have been a bit presumptuous.
That is precisely what i was hoping to find, thank you.
I don't personally favor the ideal i stated, i just stated that it is reasonable, presuming it to be the default for most people, and so i put it into the premises to generify this discussion. It also provides a compatibilistic default, more on that in 3.
I did not mention it here, but from unrelated but intertwined radical environmentalist ideals, i see almost all forms of labor, beyond what basic necessities (housing, food, education, healthcare) require, as evils in and of themselves. Excess labor should either not be performed or obligatorily used to compensate deficits elsewhere (=> donations, welfare, community funding, science, etc). Aka non-profit for all. Just to advertize the idea, I would also invite you to look into how AT&T burned their excess when they were regulatorily obliged to - Bell Labs was born, and the 21st century was invented.
To elaborate on what i stated in 1, chosing the most challenging/constraining (to the end of providing welfare for all, which i kind of implied with "converting labor and resources into improving everybody’s quality of life") ideal would yield us a model that is most robust, and more agnostic to more specialized ideals (eg what i stated in 2), which can still be implemented afterwards.