by Robert Burk

Created on: June 09, 2009

The biggest problem is the lack of responsibility. The vast majority of people look to someone else to provide them with a job. Guess what, they are looking out for themselves. This is said to be a good thing, from 1776 we have been told that if a few rapacious persons care for nothing except to accumulate as much wealth as they are able the market will force them to act like the best possible person and this will end up producing the best of all possible worlds.

It's plausible at first blush but this is 2009. We are talking 233 years. The market is just not that effective and should it be? We are human beings, are we supposed to be relying on an invisible hand to make everything turn out right? Where is the responsibility or accountability in that?

The market works through the mechanism of money. The idea is that a person who wants money is going to have to serve the interests of those with money. The idea was that the consumer would be king, but think about who has the money. Who buys the scientific research and pays for the publication of scientific opinion? Who pays for the election campaigns of our politicians? Who actually pays the wages of CEOs who run the largest corporations? What is your budget for influencing what these people provide?

Even if collectively the middle class pays the most taxes, individually we are all but invisible. The large corporation can get the ear of our legislatures because it is one voice that speaks for millions of dollars, where are voice represents a few thousand dollars in tax payments.

You maybe have noticed there are few ex politicians working beside you, that is because they use their political office to leverage fancy public relations positions in law and insurance firms. Who can they afford to upset, you or their future boss?

This would be just a gripe session if there were not an alternative. The key to creating an alternative way of life is not the system per se. Capitalism did not succeed because it is incredibly efficient. It success is based on the carrot of greed. Capitalism promised that if someone went to the trouble and risk of saving enough capital to invest in a business the person would be free to reap the rewards. The system itself is corrupt and wasteful and it creates strife and destruction as well as social decay but it encourages and enables businesses to be set up and this is what enables it to succeed where so many other systems have not.

The super cooperative system,

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