Dear Friends,
It seems to me, it would be really cool, if people lived under a system in which we all competed to help our fellow man the most, top prize going to the guy or gal who succeeded by helping the most, the most. If the competition were dynamic it would be even better. In other words, the system wouldn’t pick just one winner, but millions of winners every moment every day everyplace. Winnings piled upon winnings. The incentive would clearly be for every man woman and child to help their fellow man and be a blessing on mankind. Cuz that’s how you win!
We could set it up as a game. People would go out and provide some service or good for their fellow human beings to consume, then bring back the amount of products or service given and each would get a weighted prize based on the volume. The person who moved the most would get the top prize unless that person used underhanded measures to achieve the numbers. Inflating the numbers entered for example.
Perhaps we could allow entrants to lever their sales and positions with sublets. A sublet could be another contestant who gives a portion of his or her handing out numbers. This would be in exchange for some material help. Allowing people’s needs and wants to be met even more efficiently. If within the game contestants could combine freely and as needed to meet the needs of society.
New products and services could be scaled differently and by a different standard. One that leverages the producer of a new good, service, or way of combining resources. Contestants who invented such things and made them available to the public, could get a special scale that measures people served instead of volume of services or goods. The creator of new stuff could get top prize many years.
The contest would be free to enter, but a contestant could use money he or she has, to enhance their ability to provide products or services, or perhaps invent new stuff. The ability to add in new money to the game would improve the efficiency of the process. It would allow way of creation to get abilities sooner than it otherwise would or could have. Obviously, making creation of a product cheaper by the introduction of better ways of creation, sooner rather than later, would make the game more dynamic.
Imagine how much good that game would be, not only for humanity that would directly benefit, but for the entrant, who would get benefit both through societal improvements and by personal enrichment for having taken part in the rejuvenation of society. In this way entrants to the game would get multiple benefits, a third possible benefit would be one of the top prizes, which would be far more likely than the lotto. The incentives in such a contest would be to improve the lot of Man, not lower the lot of Man.
But of course, this contest exists. It is called the market system, or meritocracy, the same system Marx derided as Capitalism. In a truly market system there is nearly universal prosperity, while in the most socialist countries there is universal poverty. The difference is as stark as it is irrefutable. In a market system, but not under crony capitalism, the creator of new stuff, or the entrepreneur, is well rewarded for significant advances. We freely combine or in other words self organize, to meet the needs of society, economic efficiency and to include those who otherwise couldn’t be included. No person needs to be rich to enter the market system, just willing to work. If he or she is so inclined they can use the resources they have put aside, to purchase the way of creating, or in other words, means of production.
The way to have a prosperous society where no one falls through the cracks, unless they want to fall through the cracks, and lets face it, who are we to presume to deny a human being the right to fall out of society, unless they are escaping moral, rational justice. The contest we are engaged in, the market system, is why we are so much more wealthy than those who labor under socialist systems. Ours, is a game to improve the lot of Man, while theirs, is a game to take the largest portion of a dwindling pie.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
