Can free access lead to political integration?

Richard Jenner

Theorist

When observing the political landscape of almost any country, we mostly see a seemingly never-ending conflict between the left and right wings. We see the left wing valuing public services as a social entitlement, which supports those in poverty so that no-one is left behind economically. The left wing also believes the rich are unfairly benefiting from the labour of the working class, and therefore the rich should be taxed more to fund these public services. They also believe public services lift all people up, which leads to technological innovation and social progress. The left also accuses the right wing of cronyism by selling off public services to their friends, and they also believe privatisation leads to increased costs like high health insurance, which the poor cannot afford. Essentially, the left believes the state should provide people with access to free or very low cost public services, paid for through progressive taxation (the more you earn the more tax you pay). The right wing in contrast believes in free enterprise as an individual right, and they believe in supporting businesses so that people can create their own livelihoods. The right wing also values lowering taxation to encourage people to make risky business investments, which they believe leads to technological innovation and social progress. The right also accuses the left wing of making poor people dependent on the state and creating high taxation, which they believe is an expensive drain of resources. Essentially, the right believes people should work to earn a living, and services should be privatised with the associated costs being market driven.

In my honest opinion, both sides actually have good points, i.e. low cost public services are indeed essential to a large proportion of the electorate, and private enterprise can indeed lead to innovation. However, while these points may be true, they are also connected to the issues we heard earlier: that of potential state dependency on the one hand, and potential individual destitution on the other. In addition, the pros and cons of both political wings are actually a reflection of the limitations of the current economic system itself, i.e. the monetary market system. Whether we look at public policy, taxation, public services, or private enterprise, we see that the ability to produce in our society is limited to the amount of money that governments, businesses, and individuals have available. We also know that money value is inherently scarce (and has to remain so in order for people to perceive it as valuable), and that money is also created out of debt, which has to be repaid back with interest on top, even though that interest doesn't exist in the money supply. This creates a system of manufactured scarcity, and the resulting social stratification unfortunately creates a whole host of social problems. This includes poverty, inequality, greed, addiction, and crime. This would perhaps be acceptable if scarcity was an inevitable part of life, however we know that we can create an abundance of goods and services today using technology that we already have available. In fact, we have everything we need to create abundance today: the technology, resources, knowledge, and feasibility to make it a reality. The truth is, it is actually already technically possible to provide for free a large proportion of the goods and services we use today on a global scale. And, with automation continuing to develop, this potential is set to continue. However, due to the scarcity of money value, we cannot create abundance because there isn't enough money value to go around. Creating more money would just result in higher prices (inflation), thus money value will always remain scarce. But what if we came up with a different model that doesn't use money: would we be able to create abundance? Before we do that, let's first quickly look at the extreme ends of the current system to check if they have anything to offer.

We know from history that any significant leaning towards the political left or right tends to end up with either state controlled communism (extreme left wing) or corporate controlled fascism (extreme right wing). We have also seen in the past that both of these extreme political ends still use money, and they both tend to end up with a centralised dictatorship where a small elite group makes all of the economic decisions for the society. We also know from history that this doesn't work economically, because a small group cannot predict what everybody else will want to consume. And with so much control over the economy, there are also issues with incentivizing enough human labour to produce the required level of supply. With communism for example, people can only work for the state, they cannot build up their own business, and they cannot create a surplus for themselves. While the communist idea may be to create equality, this system is based on scarcity and thus tends to become corrupted by people wanting access to more resources, which actually leads to stratification. And with fascism, people can only work for a corporation, there are no public services, and there is no social safety net. While the fascist idea may be to create equality, this system is based on scarcity and thus tends to become corrupted by people wanting access to more resources, which actually leads to stratification. As both of these ideologies are based on the artificial scarcity of money value and thus both lead to stratification (which creates many social problems as already stated), they both tend to lead to a poor outcome, unfortunately with famine and brutality often the result, historically. Therefore in my opinion, the best outcome if we are specifically looking at a monetary market system is to have a mix of public and private assets, i.e. essential public services should be run by the government and funded by progressive taxation, and all non-essential services to be offered through lots of private competition that are well regulated by the government.

However, what about if we look at an entirely different system, one that doesn't use money or markets? Can we design a new economic system that produces a free abundance of goods and services, and how would this change our political situation? And would politics work better if money was no object? Would a money-free society mean we can outgrow our obsession with the left and right political divide, which is largely caused by arguments about money? Is it possible to integrate our political parties into a functioning whole by combining the left and right wings and work together to build a better society? Let's find out!

The main debates that are raised in the current political system tend to be related to the acquisition and use of money, whether this is obtained through taxation or from private investment. Decisions are then made as to what to do with this money. This includes raising taxes for public services, or creating policy to allow private companies to provide their own services. This money, whether obtained through taxation or private investment, pays for the fixed costs (i.e. the business startup costs, such as the costs of procuring and running the buildings/factories and developing or buying the means of production), and it also pays for the marginal costs (which are the added costs for every additional item made, such as the cost of buying additional resources, paying for human labour, and the costs of distribution/delivery). However, what happens when automation develops to a point where most human jobs are automated and much of these fixed and marginal costs become zero, due to the reduction of human salaries that companies must pay? And there is serious potential for this to happen as human labour is replaced with machines and algorithms at every stage of the supply chains. At the moment, human labour is usually required at each conversion stage of a raw resource turning into a good or service. However, when human labour is automated, the salary savings will incentivise companies to increase their profits by lowering their prices to attract a greater market share. And if one company does this, others will have to follow suit to remain competitive in the marketplace. This combination of automation and market competition will then drive both the marginal costs and also the market prices to zero. While it may seem like a paradox that the profit incentive will eventually lead to free goods and services, this is the outcome of a market system using automation to literally change form into a sharing economy. And because of this the monetary market system will eventually no longer exist because automated companies will have to price goods ever cheaper to maintain market share, while consumers (who by this point will largely be out of work) will have very little money to buy the goods that are being made, which will lead to goods and services becoming free by necessity. The monetary market system will at this point be obsolete, and indeed will no longer exist once the sharing economy matures. It will take some time for the sharing economy to take form, with certain goods and services likely becoming automated (and thus free) earlier than others. It is also likely some services will be bundled together to extend the price mechanism a little further. One example of this that we see today is free delivery with online purchases. Another is free texts and minutes with a mobile contract. And, as we are talking about smartphones, this is an excellent example of ephemeralisation, where we are able to do more and more with less and less resources. Your smartphone literally changes form every time you use a different app, and the vast majority of these apps are free. Therefore you no longer need to buy a different item for each of these products, your smartphone simply does it all in one. The ability of smartphones has developed over time, but the consequences are far reaching, and the fact that these apps are free has had a significant effect on our economy. Think of all the jobs these apps have displaced, from photography to accounting to retail.

Now finally, how will this affect politics? In a sharing economy, governments will no longer need to raise income from taxation or investment to build and maintain the social infrastructure. They will have free access to resources (the same as citizens). This means they can develop and maintain their country's food production systems, water and sewerage systems, buildings, healthcare systems, education systems, transportation systems, energy systems, and communications systems to the highest standard, as money will no longer be required. These systems will largely be automated too, which will make the government smaller and more efficient over time. Therefore the focus isn't how do we raise money to fund these social infrastructure projects - which usually ends up with a left vs right political divide - but how do we organise ourselves to be more efficient and effective in the design of our society to better meet people's needs? And the answer may be to integrate our political parties into a functional whole. The left currently focuses on helping those most in need, and the right focuses on getting people working again. However, the new focus should be this: to get the economy working for all of us to meet all of our needs. This isn't to make us dependent on technology, but to make us independent from it. When technology is only half developed like it is today, it still requires human labour to complete the job. Therefore technology is actually dependent on us to complete work, not the other way around, and unfortunately this holds people back. Freeing people from occupational servitude will enable us to do what we want with our lives. This means acts of service, creating art, developing new projects, developing our skills, socializing, sports, having fun, science, spirituality, problem solving, teaching, making new rules, preserving the past, leading, theorising, developing a shared vision, developing our values, and developing our empathy and morality will still be essential tasks for us to undertake. And these pursuits will be much easier to develop in a free access society where the artificial scarcity of money value no longer exists. And in an integrated, functioning society, it is these types of tasks that our political systems should be focused on facilitating. We need to outgrow the need for money so that our politicians can focus on the very thing they should be working on: the application of our social values. And if this transformation of political integration can be set into motion, and if we can integrate all of our political players into a single functioning political party, and if we can simply give our political leaders what they need, then we will see a healthy, happy, confident, securely attached, independent, and capable society emerge. And I believe that this is what we must move towards.