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Originally Posted by Five-hole
Second, I have a great degree of skepticism how Brand's new world order would actually work. Profit is bad? Massive corporate taxes? Some measure of redistribution of wealth I can maybe get behind, but haven't we seen that the profit motive is what makes humans do anything at all? If we remove the profit motive don't we need coercion to make people do anything?
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Profit isn't the incentive of labour for the vast majority of people. For most people, the incentive of labour is simply living. For most people, profit is something unattainable and even a foreign concept. Typically, nobody profits unless someone else is receiveing a (labour : reward) deficit somewhere. Since about the 1500s, the West has been able to isolate these deficits to 3rd world countries, but that is changing. The global village is making it a lot tougher to control these things.
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For example, if there's no incentive (of profit) to produce food, industrial agriculture will grind to halt. How are we going to feed the world's people? Out of the kindness of our hearts? How are we going to heat our homes? Any political revolution that doesn't address the fact that 7 billion people need their basic needs met (and I realize that a good portion of those people's needs are not being met at present) is a non-starter for people like me. It's going to make things a hell of a lot worse before they get better.
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We DON'T feed the world's people... there are people starving all over the world. The fact industry in the West in profit driven is a big reason why it's like that. We produce enough food for the world, but there is no profit in the distribution because the people who need it can't pay for it.. Logisitcally, we could do it and no one over here world starve to death trying. It might turn a few billionaires into millionaires at the worst.
There are wars and turmoil in many regions because the necessities of life (and a big part of the reason is because we support regimes that keep them that way so they can make our cheap crap and our tycoons can make a profit).
And I totally admit that I am part of the problem. I live a western lifestyle that takes advantage of these things, but at least I can admit that I don't care about the world's people either (and neither do most people whether they admit it or not).