word forge: paydivism vs needivism

one of the things i’ve always enjoyed doing was making up names for things, in software development i’ve often had my ideas for names of products or projects used, i think i’m good at it, i might be, i feel like it’s something i gain from my autism. creating new words is quite common in philosophy, usually the words that are easy to say and have some intuitive link to what they’re describing gets them to stick (and this is also why i don’t like the word transgender — which i wrote about here). so i’m going to try and create new terms whenever i see the need arrising and i’ll prefix the title’s of those texts with “word forge” to indicate that this is what’s happening.

today i want to look at the words capitalism and socialism, everybody seems to have a different definition for what capitalism or socialism is, from overly simply to overly complex, from “law of nature” to self-destroying, from who owns factories to who owns roads, often times these definitions stray far from their common usage in the quest to make sense of the world. i too am on this quest, and i too have my own definitions for these words, but maybe using new words would be better than just adding to the noise.

in my humble opinion the most significant and fundamental distinction to be made is that of distribution, how things get divided up amongst people, the existence of people who are poor and homeless is irrifutable evidence that whatever system we have now does not distribute things based on who needs them but rather on who can afford to pay / exchange for them. if we distributed things to those who needed them rather than those who could pay for them we would eliminate poverty.

being the default mode of distribution right now we need not worry too much about conveying the idea of what distribution based on ability to pay is, but when discussing alternatives to this those alternatives need to be explained and so it would be great if some notion of it could be found within its name. now it seems like distribution based on ability to pay would still make sense as a definition of capitalism, and distribution based on need would make sense as a definition for socialism, but maybe there are better words that don’t already have contradicting definitions to battle with.

we’re not primarily worried about who owns the land, or means of production, although owning these things does give people the opportunity to meet their own needs if they are able we are primarily concerned with whether people’s needs are met regardless of how that happens, whether by their own hand or another, by self-sufficiency or collectivized production, because i consider self-autonomy to be a basic human need that is currently only available to those who can pay for it, it is included in the definition of distribution based on needs, and so the definition of distribution based on ability to pay or need respectively is broad enough to encompass the whole socio-economic ecosystem of a society.

so we need words for distribution based on ability to pay, and distribution based on need. if both words shared a portion refering to distribution it would make it easier to remember them (association + repitition).

distribution is a bit too long of a word and if we want to imply an economic system by the traditional “ism” at the end we can’t use distribution as distributionism is already taken by an economic theory that seeks to distribute property ownership. when we talk about distribution economically we could use the word division, how do we divide the things that are available between the people who want them.

so if we’re dividing things up based on who can pay for them, we could consider that pay-division-ism, and if we are dividing things up based on who needs them, we could consider that need-division-ism. division is a bit clunky still, and we have access to a shortened form thanks to the common use of the word “divisor” being associated with division, so that gives us paydivism and needivism.

ok, so these words kinda work, we can always change them or replace them but for now they exist for the first time that i’m aware of here, but if i’m going to imply that people need to learn two new words i should give you some examples of what having these words enables in philosophical discourse.

for starters, paydivism can be applied to any economic system where distribution is determined by ability to pay, whether paying in hard resource currency like gold coins, or cryptocurrency, or regular state-backed currency, or barter system, or labour voucher, or labour-time. whenever somebody has need of something and the fulfilment of that need requires them to pay in whatever way it is paydivism.

the problem with paydivist systems is that for a person to live a meaningful and dignified life they require their needs to met, but as they can only have them met if they can pay for it, they hold no intrinsic value to the system and rather their ability to pay is what is valued. this makes all paydivist systems ableist as not all people are able to make payments of any kind and so those who aren’t able to pay are considered to have no value. paydivist systems love it when someone who was previously unable to pay for things gains that ability, but they’re fundamentally opposed to meeting people’s needs should they lack that ability.

when we discuss anti-ableism needing to be anti-capitalist it’s not sufficient as there are anti-capitalists who would oppose their difinition of capitalism while promoting some other paydivist system that again would result in only those with the ability to pay being valued.

of course there are some attempts to solve this within paydivist systems, for example the idea of universal basic income is to give people a basic amount of money that they can use to pay for the things they need and the hope is that everybody will at least be able to afford food, shelter, water, electricity on that stipend.

the chances of that basic income being high enough for those on it to live comfortably is infinitesmally small, but, even if it were miraculously agreed to by those whom it would cost (eg by higher taxes), it would simply be placing a minimum economic value to people while not really valueing their desires for comfort and dignity.

even if the amount people were given was high enough to provide a comfortable life there would still be luxuries beyond their reach, the person born to rich parents would still have much more access to the tools and knowledge that will help them succeed and continue to have access to those luxuries.

i’m willing to bet that things like being denied treatment by health insurance, or even a person’s own desire to learn or manufacture something costly, these can never be met when their value is set at a low bar and those costly things are still only available to those who can pay for them. and who decides what should be available to those on basic income and what should be a luxury that only those who are able to pay can access?

basic income still does not disinsentivize corporations from overproducing, creating artificial scarcity to drive up prices, market speculation creating bubbles, destruction of the planet, and industries who’s sole purpose is to extract as much capital from people while giving them as little tangible value back (like insurance or gambling).

as soon as you switch to a needivist system overproduction will completely cease (save for a small margine that would be _needed_ to cater for fluctuations in demand). artificial scarcity is abolished as there is no way for those manufacturing it to capitalize off of the scarcity any longer. and our need for a habital planet 100 years from now can be met without needing astronomical amounts of imaginary numbers to be moved around first.

needivist systems place value on the individual person, they are designed to cater for their unique needs. all healthcare becomes free, all food becomes free. we become limited only by the resources available and our ability to produce the things we need from them, not by needing to try and do this while chasing an often conflicting goal of making the endeavor profitable.

it can be said that any movement of a society from paydism towards needivism will result in a material improvement in people’s lives, and any movement away from needivism towards paydivism will materially worsen the conditions of people’s lives. and these improvements or worsenings will disproportionately effect the victims of ableism either for the positive with needivism or negative with paydivism.

this distinction allows us to measure how close we are to an ableism-free society by assessing how much such a society distributes things based on need vs ability to pay. some systems which have paydivism for luxuries but needivism for necessities are objectively better than purely paydivist societies.

but it’s important to remember that our needs are not merely economic but we have need for community and autonomy too. and so even a system with needivist distribution of needs can still have paydivism if needs like autonomy are only affordable to specific people (eg those in leadership if there are still hierarchies). to be fully needivist a society needs to also have full autonomy for its population and it will not harbor universal community-destroying behaviours like sexism / racism / transphobia etc.

so there we go, paydivism as a replacement for capitalism if you want to refer to any system that distributes to those who can pay. and needivism as a replacement for socialism if you want to refer to any system that distributes based on need. if i could make those the default definitions of socialism and capitalism i would, but i can’t, and thus the need for these new words.

thanks for your time :) if you liked it may i recommend this other post i made regarding the uniqueness of gender and the specter of cisgenderism.

if you want to chat about this stuff find me on facebook.