The Future of Civilization. II
3 Ideals & Reality
Before we proceed I’d like to reflect a bit on what has been done above. The genre of this paper is a thought experiment. This means we contemplate some kind of ideal situation where certain ideals exist, interact, and develop.
3.1 Examples
If I state: “private property entails economy development” will it be true or false? I believe it is true. And if this is not clear it can be explained: Private property entails business development and competition which causes economy as a whole to develop. And if this is not clear it can be explained further on. But what are we talking about? We are talking about certain ideals: Ideal (of) private property, ideal (of) trade, ideal (of) market, ideal (of) economy. In further theoretical development said ideals will split, interact, develop. And all that theoretical movement will be just that — purely theoretical development in the realm of ideals.
3.2 Real versus Fantastic
But this is not all. We want our ideals and their interaction to be real. Ideals real? Yes, absolutely. For all theoretical development can and, for the sake of truth, must be checked against reality whenever it is possible. This can be done by examples to illustrate the theory or by the theory to explain facts, by prediction of future or by design of things and actions in the physical world. In doing so we can see how close ideal development was to reality or, in other words, how real it was. Or, in yet another words — was ideal development realistic or fantastic. This is why, for example, a law can be incepted in the US for a limited time so that it could be checked out whether it worked or not when time was up. That is, in my terms, ideal law making may be realistic or fantastic but lawmakers wouldn’t know that in advance. In certain areas like mathematics and logic, it is possible to say whether we know for sure how real is interaction and development of ideals. For example, 1 + 1 = 2 for real… under certain ideal conditions. To sum it up: In-between-ideal relations may or may not be real. Having realized that we are ready to proceed.
4 Checking Against Reality
Summing up our first endeavour in the world of ideals we found that unrestricted free market development leads to the monster of one-monopoly-for-everything, the Monopoly, and that the society having acquired the monster is effectively equivalent to the one of crude communism. Now, let’s do a brief checking against reality.
4.1 Crude Communism
Humankind up to the present has produced several societies with the state ownership of the all means of production. I see no need to name them and list their specific features. It is safe to state the following: First, societies which imposed crude communism as such upon themselves are often horrible to live in. Well, it may be more or less horrible at best. Second, we see them die one by one due to economical weakness and living hardships challenged by international communication.
4.2 Free World
Now, if we check our ideal model against reality of states of the free world, we can see them realize the danger of unrestricted monopolization and try to contain it via anti-trust regulations of different kind. How successful are they? There are different opinions there.
Some people believe states of the free world do not allow real monopolies to develop. Others are aware that existing monopolies get restricted in various ways on a case by case basis, and believe the problem is addressed best it can. Still others just claim states of the free world are successful enough, regardless.
A more developed argument may sound as the following. We know what communism looks like and how bad it is while the only alternative to communism is capitalism. Since monopolies develop naturally within free market we cannot count on a better solutions than various restrictions imposed on monopolies or their activities and thus may consider the current state of affairs as good as it gets.
The question is whether it is so, or probably not? And this is a big question.
Say, there is a rule applied, to the best of my knowledge, all over the world nowadays that alcohol cannot be sold to teenagers. It is a rule implemented in specific laws in different countries and applied without exceptions. There are other rules and laws which can have exceptions defined by those rules and laws. This is the logic of the “rule” or “law.” It is applied with or without exceptions defined within. But what about a rule or law which is applied case by case only, in other words, to exceptions only? I don’t understand the logic of such a “rule.” It is not a rule but something else not having been named yet. This kind of pseudo-rule is to implement a principle which is not defined and determined in certain enough terms and because of that cannot really work. Therefore, it is logical to state that if anti-trust policies are decided and applied case by case, it is appropriate to call them ineffective at their core. Indeed, they act like medications dealing with symptoms instead of the disease. And we know what happens in real life when a disease as such is not addressed, don’t we?
5 Where We Are?
After the above, we smoothly entered a new turn in the investigation. In order to understand the logic of our subject we took it into infinity. We saw what it turned there into — the Monopoly. That gave us a device to explore and comprehend the trend as such in order to understand our subject. We can now turn back from infinity and look into our subject while it’s still on the way, in development.
5.1 The Monopoly-to-Degree
We have a state which used to be a free market economy, then some businesses grew unrestricted and unlimited, and as a result, the state is moving toward one-monopoly-for-everything, the Monopoly. This is how we understand it now.
Can we try to evaluate how far it has gone? To do that we would need an evaluation method, milestones, peak point, point of no return, etc… And I don’t have that. A concrete method of evaluation of the moving toward Monopoly is a task for the professionals in the field.
Probably, an important or even crucial point is when particular monopolies emerge. It was known, for example, that in classic capitalism a market was considered monopolized when 7–8 major players were left. Maybe, on the further way after that point an important milestone is when at least one monopoly per market emerges. Maybe. Again, I am not to offer specifics. They certainly exist and must be determined, as I mentioned already, by professionals.
Let’s imagine now that our ideal state has reached the “first milestone,” whatever it could be, on the way to the Monopoly. What does this mean? It means that we deal with a state of one-monopoly-for-everything to certain degree already. Not a hundred per cent but to certain degree. It is not a totally state of crude communism yet but to that certain degree it is. What degree? The degree of monopolization. Monopolization of what? Means of production, social life and power.
5.2 Logic or not Logic, Monopolies Cause Problems
The harsh outlook we come up with in the above section can be argued out of practice, which is a logical fallacy, of course, but let’s listen.
For example, that rationale may be confronted as follows: According to the pondered theory, the Monopoly to a degree is Crude Communism to that degree. Crude Communism presupposes low development but it seems that low development is not inevitable feature of a state moving toward one-monopoly-for-everything nowadays because nowadays any state of the free world is in this situation because it encounters and deals with monopolization continuously. Still they develop and do well.
What can be an answer to this? OK, they do well to a degree. Is this state of affairs the best state possible? What about problems which seem unsolvable in the most developed states of the free world? Even the basic problems, known for thousands years, such as lack of affordable housing, health care, and education, or even hunger? They persist to this day.
What is the reason and cause for that? I cannot point my finger to any but existence of monopolies.
Monopolies in the past, as a matter of rule with insignificant exceptions, used various means of bad faith competition up to direct violence. That allowed them to stay as they were, that is, stagnate. That was quite natural because allowed monopolies to stay in power without increasing productivity, modernizing production, any investment in development of any kind. It was just easier to swallow up or destroy actual or potential competition than take care about development.
Why do I bring this up? Because those observations are just to illustrate n essential property of a monopoly — its trend to stay as it is. And this is logical. That property corresponds to the very idea of monopoly, which means absence of competition, which means absence of a reason to develop, period.
Therefore, even if some monopolies in some places sometimes for some reasons behave somewhat “better” nowadays that, essentially, does not change much. It, first of all, does not change the nature of things, that is the nature of monopoly and thus — its essential properties. That means, in general terms, monopolies are a problem. This is common knowledge and common sense, actually. What do we add on to this? We add on an outlook on a whole state, which has monopolies in it. We look at it as a state of Monopoly-to-a-degree, meaning Crude communism to that degree.
5.3 Nobody is Immune, Nobody Knows Where to Go
This is a problem all over the Globe. The degree, political forms, history, other specifics differ but there is no state completely free from that plague nowadays there. That means, in other words, the shortcomings of crude communism to a certain degree affect societies all over. Consequently, the troubles befalling people of a crude communism society befall people of our state to a certain degree. In what degree? In the degree of monopolization of economy and social life and corresponding consolidation of power…
It doesn’t matter which aspect out of three leads in time or in social structure. Monopolization of economy and social life and consolidation of power go hand-in-hand. They are inexorably intertwined in reality. They are deduced from each other in theory. This is what matters: As much as a state’s economy is monopolized as much the state undergoes negative consequences related to the monopolization. That state may fight monopolies, may try to alleviate negative consequences of the monopolies’ very existence but all these do not amount to a solution to the problem in principle. Any and all measures to that effect are patches to cover symptoms, to gloss them over but not to cure the sickness. That is, if a certain state does well comparatively to others, that means they manage to neutralize some symptoms, certain negative effects of monopolization better than other states. Still, it is just about symptoms getting neutralized, nothing more.
We need to realize, acknowledge, and accept that since only some negative consequences of monopolization are dealt with but not monopolization itself, and since nobody understands what to do with the core problem as such nowadays, all healing actions are blind. Therefore their final outcome is unpredictable.
A blind action can incidentally be remedial. Why not? It doesn’t even mean the step in the right direction. It can be just right step, say, to get out of a muddy puddle onto a patch of dry land. But that, again, by no means equals to moving in the right direction, could be just the opposite.
So again, thus far we haven’t seen what could be a solution yet, in principle. Nobody has. This is where we are.
The question now is what to do? First theoretically.
Theoretically we can try to investigate other aspects of our subject, other trends in its development. In this respect I want to note that trends, as a matter of rule, are not difficult to see. No, usually it is not difficult in terms of knowledge and intellect. But what is difficult? It is courage to acknowledge them, to face them as a problem statement, regardless whether a solution is in sight or not. You need to start with a problem statement if you want to solve the problem.
PS. The rest of the work:
Part 1. Free Market, Monopolies, Crude Communism: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/part-1-8c68d5030757?source=friends_link&sk=7613c0f6aadbb17b89a2b35a0b0195d9
Part 2. Ideals, Reality, Fantasy. Where to Go?
Part 3. Ideal Solution, My Wishes, Problem Statement: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/the-future-of-civilization-iii-1548e4295352?source=friends_link&sk=d0f93e2c44f54b06de26480be38f3be2
Part 4. Economy of Free Time, Dialogue of Cultures, Etc.: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/future-of-civilization-iv-57ec15b2d7f0?source=friends_link&sk=041a84363733649a47b403fa4fde98a2
Part 5. Culture, Civilization & Automation: https://medium.com/where-does-this-world-go/the-future-of-civilization-5-4ea72ac2f705?source=friends_link&sk=1b8017e58afa7f33c5120dd73f879f27
Part 6. Socium of Small Groups, Socium of Freedom: https://medium.com/@anatolyvolynets/the-future-of-civilization-small-groups-1033297794c9?source=friends_link&sk=91dddf1ea25c823d33ee80fd5077dadd
Part 7. Transition from Present to Future: https://medium.com/@anatolyvolynets/the-future-of-civilization-vii-60e7220ae250
Part 8. The Disease of Intellectual Property: https://medium.com/@anatolyvolynets/67ef8718113c?source=friends_link&sk=1da4f7c199d2c8e08f2b20b84d7d5682
