Imagine the beast. Behemoth. It's supposed to be an animal, but tank as metaphor works even better in these modern times. It moves across the world, destroying life, happiness, freedom and creativity of men, and renders our world inhabitable. Progress we made, inventions we create, world we build as humans, we do despite of it, not because of it. We do it because we want to get out of the Black Iron Prison. The concept was reminded to me recently, surprisingly, because it is not something easily forgotten. Not easy, but apparently not impossible.
Free market is perfectly possible without innovative minds. Actually, it's rare for a mind not to be creative to some extend, given enough time and stick/carrot, so eventually progress happens anyway. Progress, on the other hand, is also perfectly possible without free market. Remember who the first man in space was? Given enough motivation great things are possible in any economic system. I'm not arguing superiority of one system over another, communists and socialists are responsible for immeasurable suffering directly, capitalists are responsible for immeasurable suffering less directly, but at least initially USA used to be a great country where people were brave and free. But in any case, any motivational system (work for money, work for ideology, work for god), the only common ingredient is human ingenuity. This is what makes the real difference. Who and how provides resources for the genius to work with and work on is secondary issue. And then there is the matter of freedom to use the genius and resources. In communism it required a nod from higher powers. In capitalism it requires a nod from investors, unless you don't need them, so yeah, progress.
The best conditions for our creative potential to manifest are when mind is not occupied with paying taxes, bills, working just to get the the next salary and not starve, concern with "intellectual property" laws, or being concerned about marketability of the final product, etc. It seems no system could create that so far, or even if it could, for some reason it chose not to. Even with the newest technologies it is for some reason considered better to occupy otherwise smart people with bullshit jobs than letting them roam free and fully utilize their potential. Why? Creating right conditions and right environment for the human spirit is what we should be aiming at. With modern technology we can delegate much of the work to machines and computers. Bottom of the Maslow's pyramid, food, water, shelter - all of that, with some initial cost of setting up required infrastructure, could be made to either be provided completely for free, or for marginal cost. We already have 3D printing technologies for building houses, but "free market" dictates that you should sign up most of your working life just to pay for a place to live in, and often it's not a palace with nice garden with great view, but a small flat in not so nice neighbourhood. It's not because it is really worth that much - it is to make sure that you stay working 8 hours a day and not have time to grow. And if there isn't enough work, Behemoth creates games and plays for us to participate in. For us to be played.
The Empire might have never ended, but we're slowly waking up.
to be continued...
