Muse – Free Ourselves of Capitalism?

Capitalism has its good points. It promotes, in general, competition and that improves innovation by the general fact that if you make a better product than your competitors, it increases the likelihood that consumers will buy what you make and not what the other guy makes.

But it also focuses human achievement into the realm of profit. It makes wealth the new idol of civilization and the accumulation of wealth as a new measure of status and influence.

Capitalism is the order of the day in America. People get powerful b y having money and remain powerful by properly wielding it and the influence it carries to further their goals. Be they the goals of the individual or the goals of the organization. Money changes peoples minds. It binds parties together through obligation.

Money might not be the root of all evil, but it is a corrupting influence on them. And overall it can lead a nation astray, keeping its people focused on the here and now and only the most insignificant future when eyes should be lifted far ahead for the better of all.

The flaws of capitalism are easy to see. When the bottom line becomes the primary focus, other things fall by the wayside. Matters of safety, health and other such important factors are left as secondary goals with the purpose of keeping things within acceptable norms to keep public or government opinion from stymieing the quest for profit.

When people are making money in one way, they are often reticent to change as society changes. RIAA is an example of an industry member who finds change to be unacceptable, fighting that change in ways that don’t endear them to the very people who pay their bills and employees through consumption. Microsoft is another who is less motivated by a need to better their product and more motivated by wooing, then locking in their customers to their proprietary software.

Pursuit of the dollar is, while an enticement, a less than ideal one. Of course, ideal goals are hard to ingrain in the fabric of our society today. It’s rare that people achieve for the benefit of humanity as of late. That they seek to discover and improve for the excitement of learning new things and making real what was thought impossible years before. Yes, that sort of stuff doesn’t pay the bills, yet man does not live by money alone.

This came most prominent to me as, in part of an RPG scenario, I more or less detailed a sort of commune style of society. Everyone worked at what they enjoyed the most, no one was paid but the fruits of labor for the entire community were shared out equally. All children were given a proper education without worrying for budget issues and no one went hungry. It’s the sort of environment I would love to live in.

Of course, it only exists in fiction. The group that formed this commune were small to start with and had known the evils of a corrupt society. All of them focused on the crafting of a peaceful society, it was easy to see how they could form such a cooperative system. Yet in today’s world we are entrenched in how things are done. We’re taught it from birth to grave and it has become an essential part of how we view the world. It’s hard to break from something like that, even when better ways are obvious and present themselves. It takes a massive paradigm shift in society.

The type commonly brought about by tragedy in the movies. Which does not bode well for us at all. Do you think a better way is possible for the US? Or for humanity in general? Could the fanciful notions of a society focused on advancement of the human race, free of the corrupting influence of capitalism, ever truly manifest themselves?