What kind of society do we want?

The first question that needs to be answered about socialisation is: What kind of society do we want?

The social order of most democratic societies today is governed by a constitution and written laws. In most cases, the legal structures in place solidify the way the world was viewed in the late 18th Century — namely as a timeless machine that functions in a certain way, within constraints that are fixed by nature and which can perhaps be discovered, but which cannot be changed.

At that time, the predominant thinking was that a fixed supply of objects (and also ideas) exist and that mere observation would lead to progress, as data points and observations would reveal truths and separate them from falsehoods much in the same manner as which one might separate the wheat from the chaff.

Our democratic societies today are largely configured by such ideas, which were codified centuries ago, and which are in many instances no longer appropriate today.

For example, the thinking behind the economic laws of supply and demand only had very vague notions of what is actually referred to as “supply”. If a farmer brought 100 bushels of apples to a marketplace on any particular day, that might be considered to be that supply of apples on that day. There is very little indication that the global stocks of coal (let alone oil) might be considered to be “non-renewable resources” — the whole notion of renewable vs. non-renewable was entirely unknown. The composition of the clouds and atmosphere were most likely considered to be entirely up to “natural” laws, which were also the basis for such concepts as natural rights. Pollution was a virtually unknown concept.

In the meantime, the world has changed. We now see that ideas can be created almost out of thin air and replicated virtually ad infinitum. We now realize that if we push hard enough, then the “laws of nature” can be bent out of shape. From our present perspective, the laws of the 18th Century created first and foremost a “level playing field” — and looking back from today, the present day entrepreneur’s primary objective is to figure out how to rise above these apparent rules of the game, and also to figure out how to exploit the difference between what is physically possible and what is merely the natural evolutionary trend line… in order to “win” by reaping profit from the difference between these two worlds.

A central element of the philosophy behind this notion of profit is the idea of “self-interest” — an implicit theme that is fundamental to the practice of economics. Over the past 2-3 centuries, economists have taken the “easy way out” by simply assuming that there are some phenomena which are within the scope of economic behavior, and other phenomena which are referred to as “externalities”. To this day, the pollution at the Fukushima power plants are not considered to be the result of economic behavior, but rather that this is the result of a “natural disaster” — and therefore it need not be considered to be an economic event. Likewise with such events as the “Arab Spring”, the Murdoch Scandals, the terrorist Anders Breivik, or the riots in London — all of these are simply excused as “abnormal” events (in other words: none of these events are considered to be part of the systematic order, which we consider to be simply something like a “normal” or “natural” order of society).

For the economist does not think much about society, but rather focuses on the economics of self interest — and according to this view, the leakage in Fukushima does not affect the self-interest.. and neither do revolutionary uprisings, deranged individuals or the actions of mobs gone amok. All such supposedly abnormal phenomena are conveniently removed from the focus of economics with a parenthetical remark stating simply that all such events are externalities.

Likewise, if anonymous investors decide to sell, then that is not something that ought to be regulated by so-called “free markets”. Today, free markets are idolized much in the same way that a young virgin might have been sacrificed to a volcano thousands of years ago. People in Fukushima or Tokyo, London or Frankfurt, in the United States, in China or Greece, Italy or Africa are not exploited, they are simply the victims of abnormal, erratic, unpredictable disasters.

Unlike the profits and losses of banking institutions, the fate and lives of members of society cannot be easily predicted. This is, however, not true because of any observations about nature, but rather because we choose to configure our society according to principles which are grossly outdated. We thereby seek to simply explain reality in a way that placates our conscience.

We choose to pretend that the electronics products produced in China are unrelated to suicide among teenage Chinese workers. We choose to believe that high wages or special privileges for an elite group are not related to the working conditions in third-world countries, or that they lead to unemployment in first-world countries. We choose to pay attention to the brand names on products that exploit the naiveté of not only the workers who produce these products and the unemployed who are thereby crowded out of the market, but also consumers who pay a premium price for these branded products.

We seek to create and brand such elitist non-human corporations and to pretend that these entities are not chosen social structures, but rather that they follow natural laws, simply because we pretend that these corporations are non-human (and they are non-human simply because we have chosen to define them that way). Our orientation towards corporations and such institutions as the legal and judicial systems which are the basis for governing social behavior is also convenient, because this way we can pretend that we are yet again playing “by the rules” and “on a level playing field”.

All of the stakeholders of all societies — of each method of organizing social order — can either support these legalized regimes or reform them. Just as the Mitläufer in Nazi Germany are in part responsible for the Third Reich, so too today’s consumers are responsible for the corruption in Japanese, Chinese, British or American societies whenever they become stakeholders in the Japanese, Chinese, British or American economies. We only delude ourselves if we consider Fukushima or New Orleans or Athens or London as “natural disasters” — in fact: insofar as we all profit from cutting corners, we are also all responsible for these mistakes.

Let me use one particular example to underscore how the 18th Century world view no longer accommodates today’s realities. In order to maintain the philosophy of limited supply, printers and publishers (and even more importantly lawmakers) established a legal system to turn written texts into material objects which their author and/or publisher could sell in limited supply. Today, this system is now completely defunct — insofar as almost any such material object can easily be duplicated by almost anyone, almost anywhere, virtually without any limit. Systems of copyright, trademark and patent protection are vastly out of date and for the most part entirely ineffective today.

Although the socialisation of market supply thinking has lead us to a society in which brands + celebrities matter more than relationships and social engagement, over the centuries other alternative systems have been established. One such system is less focused on artificially limiting the market supply of artefacts, and instead more focused on validation of content via the approval of review boards. In this system (of featuring content into a particular context), widely used in professional journals, the number of copies available of a text is not as significant as the approval of the review board itself — thereby this system is more oriented to social engagement than the artificial scarcity which copyright, trademark and patent systems rely on.

And in this manner we can also choose alternative ways for how society functions in general. Social order is neither a “God given” fact, nor must we adhere to laws written centuries ago as if they were written in stone. We can choose the type of society we wish to live in (and also to grow in, to thrive in, etc.) — and indeed: we must make this choice before we are able to take a first step towards socialisation.

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