I often talk about how there is socialism under my roof, and something very much like it among my closest circle, gradually shifting to outright free market behavior for strangers. Money is a powerful tool for people who want to resolve their different needs and desires without violence. Money is the symbol of a formal promise to return the favor.
People who all want the same thing, however, don't need a formal promise to return a favor. Families and other intimates can get along for long periods with such unified goals that money means nothing within their boundaries. Societies in fundamental catastrophes like wars and natural disasters approach this utopian state for a while.
It's heavenly in its way, but I'll be happier to see Ukrainians restored to a society in which they're all free to pursue different goals again, and use money to sort out their tradeoffs and preferences peacefully.
3 comments:
Tex, you've put your finger on an emotional problem related to what modern planners call "Scalability" -- or lack of same.
In the family or other small group, we learn early, and as children, to resolve disputes by whining for Daddy to make it fair. We learn it, because it tends to work. Not always, not completely fairly. But in general, we learn about fairness and rules and enforcement and punishments. We learn to get along with a highest available authority available to step in and re-balance scales towards justice.
But in the family, daddy doesn't usually settle it with money -- increasing or withholding an allowance. It's more likely pure force. Spanking, or grounding/confinement, or "no dinner until..."
SOOO: In the larger world of politics we tend to get father figures who promise to right wrongs and fight for the family and restore greatness and revenge wrongs -- So if the Treaty of Versailles is perceived to be unfair, the nationalists promise to take (back?) territority for balance. If the banks are perceived to be unfairly foreclosing on small farms, a nationalist promises a "new deal".
Nothing we are seeing in the headlines today is different. The World Economic Forum is a bunch of wanna-be father figures promising a historic "re-set". The wanna-be father of a restored Soviet Empire is actively taking (back?) lost ground. Many here argue the US "history" of racial injustice leads inevitably to demands for reparations. And the inequitable development of Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila compared to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas obviously requires an Aztec father-diety to "restore" Aztlan. All of whom want to take their claimed due, by force.
Reminds me of a poem by Leonard Cohen:
My friend walks through our city this winter night, fur-hatted, whistling, anti-mediterranean,
stricken with seeing Eternity in all that is seasonal.
He is the Kerensky of our Circle
always about to chair the last official meeting
before the pros take over, they of the pure smiling eyes trained only for Form.
He knows there are no measures to guarantee the Revolution, or to preserve the row of muscular icicles which will chart Winter's decline like a graph.
There is nothing for him to do but preside over the last official meeting.
It will all come round again: the heartsick teachers who make too much of poetry, their students who refuse to suffer, the cache of rifles in the lawyer's attic:and then the magic,
the 80-year comet touching the sturdiest houses.
The Elite Corps commits suicide in the tennis-ball basement.
Poets ride buses free. The General insists on a popularity poll. Troops study satire.
A strange public generosity prevails.
Only too well he knows the tiny moment when everything is possible, when pride is loved, beauty held in common, like having an exquisite sister,
and a man gives away his death like a piece of advice.
whole thing here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Bav0wOO7AmMC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=%22kerensky+of+our+circle%22+%22&source=bl&ots=ABNZu6H80F&sig=ACfU3U1r4QWuEQKXp3SuV0t_UyVLXBM0Xg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJgI3mlq_2AhU4l3IEHRqXBZcQ6AF6BAgSEAM#v=onepage&q=%22kerensky%20of%20our%20circle%22%20%22&f=false
Yes, the 80-year comet, the jubilee, the Year of Full Release, like waking up after death to realize there is Life after all.
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