Reply #115: Banana Republic [View All]

[orwell]

I've got to do a major computer upgrade (converting to a RAID array) so I may be gone for awhile but I'll quickly try to respond.

First of all I don't see a controversy. I don't know what something is worth to someone else and I can't know. I am not them. All I know is that I need 10 bananas a day to survive. If others want to enter into a mutually beneficial relationship, (I pick your bananas for you but you get some insects for me and we swap,) we would have to come to terms as to how many bananas are worth how many insects. That would constitute a "transaction."

In simplistic terms, all "transactional" goods and services are worth whatever the parties agree upon. Of course, this can be a highly complex decision as more and more parties become involved. That is why I tend to look unfavorably upon coercive systems where transactions are determined by cartels (OPEC for example). I tend to favor agreements freely entered into by all the parties involved because only they know what they want/need out of the transaction.

That being said, we are nowhere near our Bananaland example in so called "free-market" USA. There are many coercive elements that determine the parameters of the transaction, the Federal Reserve being the prime offender. You have rightly identified the favoring of certain types of capital and economic transactions in our current tax code and societal organization. We have certain cartels (energy, medical, financial, media to name a few) that operate with little effective oversight and skew the transactions in their favor.

As far as rewarding labor, especially for productivity, I am a firm believer in employee stock ownership and profit sharing. I even think it is worth codifying into social legal frameworks. This form of "labor banking" would not only blur the "perceived" line between labor and capital (one that I claim should not exist), but it would radically transform most corporations into more than simple economic units.

Got to go bang my head into my computer. Maybe a banana would help.