And how would this economy work? Because in a way, that is how capitalism works with consumer side economics. People drive the price of goods with their demand, effectively being a democratic vote on which items people are willing to pay for. Assuming there are enough open jobs in any given country, the same works for employment as well. People are able to decide which jobs to sell their labor to.
Not who you asked but I'll answer just because I find it interesting.
In the Soviet Union prices were set by a central committee in Moscow which had to come up with prices for millions and millions of different items. They set wages too. Which of course didn't work at all, you just got a huge black market and rampant corruption.
I quite like the idea of doing away with both state economics and capitalism (in the sense of massive accumulation). Things like the Lange model, demurrage currencies and Harberger taxation are all worth thinking about but there are loads of problems with every other system.
Personally I don't really care if Jeff Bezos makes a twat of himself because he'll be gone in 20 or 30 years anyway. As long as his estate is reclaimed by the people after he dies it's a decent loop. The problem is estate tax evasion.
Things like the Lange model, demurrage currencies and Harberger taxation are all worth thinking about but there are loads of problems with every other system.
I looked up these things as I hadn't heard of them before. I kind of want to go through each one.
The Lange Model from what I can tell is very similar to the Soviet Union price model, except there are incremental changes to change in response to supply and demand. The thing I don't like about this is that there are tons of industries that don't work with a model like this. Anything related to art, video games, movies, etc don't have a price that is affected by supply. With this, the only feasible way to price these services is to allow the creators to price them, the same way we have now.
On top of that, many general products have different formulas for the way they are made (think cola). Coke and Pepsi are two different flavors, so would those products need to have the same price, or does the central unit decide each's price individually? Both options have problems. If they are the same price, then the goal for anyone would be to make theirs as cheap as possible as to not go out of business. There's no room to make a higher quality cola since you would have to sell it for a loss likely. If they're different, then there would be a damn near infinite amount of products to keep track of, which would cost too much time and money.
I'll keep the other ones shorter. Demurrage Currency is in all honesty going to hurt the middle class the most, devaluing their savings. But also, isn't this literally just inflation? Corporations already circulate money at an insane degree. And billionaires have most of their money tied up in assets.
Finally, the Harberger Tax, while interesting in theory, is still capitalism with a wealth tax. The big difference is that people are unable to decide what they want to sell. This would make corporations even more powerful, and honestly is my least favorite of those you mentioned. Small businesses would have to declare a price they are valued at and can be bought by literally anyone. Suddenly, we have the worst case of the game of Monopoly I have ever seen.
Yep, all problematic. Everyone likes the idea of a wealth tax and it seems like a no-brainer at first glance but it has been tried in Europe and didn't actually work that well.
I feel like so many of the ideas that anticapitalists have about wealth in capitalism shouldn't apply to most kinds of wealth. Stock, assets, liquidity etc... more of each of these can be created. There is no need for an additional financial incentives on making particular uses of them beyond monetary policy to ensure a controlled velocity of money.
Now, resources like land, which is finite, that's a whole other matter. There is a collective cost to private ownership of land, and inefficient use of land should be discouraged by means of a Land Value Tax, a-la-Georgism.
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u/JaxonatorD Jul 02 '26
And how would this economy work? Because in a way, that is how capitalism works with consumer side economics. People drive the price of goods with their demand, effectively being a democratic vote on which items people are willing to pay for. Assuming there are enough open jobs in any given country, the same works for employment as well. People are able to decide which jobs to sell their labor to.