According to the logic on the American spectrum, you have communal, social-democratic, conservative-republic and libertarian living. Each type has different assumptions, expectations and methods for how to manage money, resources and people.
Commune: Complete public ownership, average citizen contributes greatly to management
Social-democracy: Mostly public ownership, large professional government
Conservative-republic: Mostly private ownership, small delegating government
Syndicate: Complete private ownership, average citizen is expected to self-manage
We spend so much time vying for domination and little time building each lifestyle by its goals. So I ask how each system operates and how it tackles different needs. A big one, perhaps the most important one, is education.
Let's say you had a town of 50,000 people who all agreed to live by once complete system.
What would a high school look like in each of these systems?
QUESTIONS:
1) How would parent involvement vary? Which would have the largest amount of home-schooled?
2) How would curriculum vary?
3) Would the syndicate focus more on home economics and personal welfare?
4) Would the communal focus more on interpersonal relations and teamwork?
5) If the republic had its charter schools, would they separate them by special needs -- average -- gifted?
6) Would the democracy focus on public administration more than business?
7) How would the view of science change? Would the more private the system, the more theories are open to interpretation? Would the more social systems want fixed, agreed interpretations?
8) Would liberal arts be more important in a private or social system?
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2 comments:
This is a response to someone who emailed me a comment:
To Read The Paper,
Guessing how voluntary associations would shape their education systems is very relevant. You say, “the most pressing issue is how individuals in each different system would work towards their respective goals”. I agree. Many idealists feel they fail to live out their goals because The Man and The Other oppresses them. Eventually I will ask HOW to form these four voluntary associations. But for now I ask, “And what would you do any differently than what you are doing now?”
As I read your essay, I realized your style of writing is above mine. I’m glad, because then I had to read what you were saying several times to insure I understood you. You say, “The only possibility for communism to not force people to do what they don’t want to do is for every individual had the same exact value judgments… which is absurd, and we can henceforth deduce that communism always implies coercion and violence to attain its ends…”
Perhaps my premise wasn’t communicated well. If people were free to engage in complete voluntary association, how would they manifest the ideals they claim they desperately want to manifest? This isn’t that absurd of a concept. All across America there are conservative Christian homeschooling networks, eco-village communes, Afro-American urban communes… The Amish, who live about 50 miles south of me, certainly haven’t killed people to insure their existence for 200 years.
In the same sense, all four of these systems are viable when they are agreed upon by the people involved. You like the free market? So do I. You use “free market” as your term to describe the freedom of choosing your child’s school as opposed to the annoying restrictions of a government system that has no incentives to respond quickly to a parent’s concerns because the parent can’t impact the school immediately by removing their tuition. I agree, I agree, I agree with you about that. I agree so much, I propose voluntary association as the answer to half of life’s immediate needs: food and water, education, shelter, healthcare, etc.
I’m not talking taking over all of Russia, Germany, or China and promoting ethnic superiority to people I hate and forcing the people I like to believe in my utopia or starve out on the tundra. Nor am I talking taking over four and a half continents and promoting businesses to the potency of armies to steal resources from 1.3 billion people as quickly and efficiently as I can.
I am taking a leaf from Harry Potter and sorting people by their desires, wants, ideals and perceptions. So I ask to you about a town of 50,000: small enough to believe realistically that they would all be socio-economically similar, but large enough for economies of scale.
Getting back to education, it is partly a matter of what the community needs its citizens to know and, like everything else in life, how people get along. Economics and market theory tends to sterilize culture and personality right out of how we perceive a community to really work. A mother can take her child out of a school, not because of how efficient the school is, but because the school teaches evolution. No amount of economic theory can solve that culture clash. However, based on what the people involved in that situation want, the results can be different.
I challenge people to tell me what those differences are. Hopefully people will admit the short comings of their system so that they can brainstorm mitigations and solutions rather than become more defensive and more shortsighted.
I want to ask you this again, and I hope that this time you consider my proposal a little less absurd.
If 50,000 people got together at the edge of suburbia and arcadia and said, “Lets make a society that is strictly _____.” What would they do and how would they tackle the service of education? It would probably be best if you stuck to describing the economy you want to live in, so that you don’t devolve into stereotypes.
~ Katherine Natasha
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