I'd like to introduce another idea to Canadian economic politics, and would just be curious to read your thoughts on it. It's what I'll refer to here as political economic structuralism.
In Canada, most of us are familiar with the capitalist-socialist spectrum. First, I'll analyse them here and then point out the flaw I see in such a limited political dichotomy. To make the ideas more concrete, I'll use language policy as an example, as that'sone I'm most familiar with. But please understand that the ideas can apply to any other part of the economic system.
Capitalism:
The basic idea is to let the free markets reign. We know, however, that there can be some glitches to the system, such as monopolization, oligopoly, and usury whereby money makes money, while poverty risks grinding a person to a halt.
To take an example in language policy. Since English is already dominant in a number of industries, in spite of its being difficult to learn, requiring a large investment of time and money with still no guarantee of success, people still spend large amounts of money to try to learn it. Native speakers of English, however, can make money from it by teaching the language, writing and publishing textbooks, dictionaries, and grammars, etc. And the more the language spreads, the more monopolized it becomes by one particular ethnic group which reaps the rewards, namely the English-speaking countries. As a concrete example, according to Francois Grin in 2005, the EU is subsidizing the UK economy by from 17 to 18 thousand million euros a year in second-language teaching alone, even though the UK is already the wealthiest nation in the EU!
Without any kind of government intervention to restructure the free market economy, this injustice can only be left to continue indefinitely. It eventually becomes a stagnant system of perpetual extremes of wealth and poverty.
Socialism:
Socialism simply rejects capitalism as corrupt anyway, and so doesn't even bother to try to restructure the free market system. Instead, it aims at simply alleviating the symptoms of the illness by raising taxes on the rich and giving it to the poor. Since the structure itself is defective, however, the money just ends up flowing back to the rich anyway, resulting in the system being forever dependent on the state to raise the taxes on the rich to give the money back to the poor, since the socialist state is not particularly interested in restructuring the system, the root cause of the problem, itself. As a result, we become forever dependent on the welfare state.
To take an example from within Canada with regards to language. The Quebec government has Bill 101 to constantly guard against the spread of the English language to protect French language jobs for those who don't know English. Since language is naturally monopolistic, however, unless we restructure the system itself, Quebec will forever be dependent on Bill 101. Same with the indigenous languages, they will forever be dependent on government support since again the structure itself is not fixed. And so it likewise is doomed to fall into a stagnant and inefficient system of permanent government intervention to try to counteract the faults of the free market.
Structuralism:
Structuralism involves the restructuring of the economic system so as to make it permanently self-sustainable. It is different from capitalism in that, at least in the initial stages of the restructuring process, government or some other organizational not-for-personal-profit involvement is required. It is also different from socialism in that, once the restructuring process is complete, government invovlement is no longer required. In this respect, unlike capitalism and socialism, both of which lead to stagnant systems, structuralism is foever dinamic. To take an example with language again:
According to Francois Grin of the University of Geneva, a switch to an easy-to-learn international auxiliary language such as Esperanto coud eventually save the EU, including the UK and Ireland, 25 thousand million euros a year. Under such a system, governments would need a plan to first adopt, create or revise an easy language for the purpose, and then through legislation, promote it in some way to counteract the monopolisic effects of English. Once that language replaces English as the dominant language in the economic structure, government intervention is no longer as needed since that language woudl have replaced English as the new dominant language of the system, thus being able to hold its own in the economic system. At that point, government could retreat fro it assured that it shall remain well entrenched in the new system. The ease of learning of the new language would also give people time to preserve their own languages too, so that there woudl no longer be any more need for government to protect minority languages. At that point, the government could then move on to deal with other structural problems in the economy.
Conclusion:
If we could move away from the oversimplistice dichotomy of capitalism and socialism, and instead focus on economic structuralism, it could be possible over time to achieve the goals of socialism but more efficiently through a moderately capitalistic system, whereby capitalism and socialism, rather than seeing one another as opponents, could view one another as friends rather.
What other ideas would you have on how to restructure the free market system so as to achieve socialist ends of economic justice but more efficiently through the private sector itself?
In Canada, most of us are familiar with the capitalist-socialist spectrum. First, I'll analyse them here and then point out the flaw I see in such a limited political dichotomy. To make the ideas more concrete, I'll use language policy as an example, as that'sone I'm most familiar with. But please understand that the ideas can apply to any other part of the economic system.
Capitalism:
The basic idea is to let the free markets reign. We know, however, that there can be some glitches to the system, such as monopolization, oligopoly, and usury whereby money makes money, while poverty risks grinding a person to a halt.
To take an example in language policy. Since English is already dominant in a number of industries, in spite of its being difficult to learn, requiring a large investment of time and money with still no guarantee of success, people still spend large amounts of money to try to learn it. Native speakers of English, however, can make money from it by teaching the language, writing and publishing textbooks, dictionaries, and grammars, etc. And the more the language spreads, the more monopolized it becomes by one particular ethnic group which reaps the rewards, namely the English-speaking countries. As a concrete example, according to Francois Grin in 2005, the EU is subsidizing the UK economy by from 17 to 18 thousand million euros a year in second-language teaching alone, even though the UK is already the wealthiest nation in the EU!
Without any kind of government intervention to restructure the free market economy, this injustice can only be left to continue indefinitely. It eventually becomes a stagnant system of perpetual extremes of wealth and poverty.
Socialism:
Socialism simply rejects capitalism as corrupt anyway, and so doesn't even bother to try to restructure the free market system. Instead, it aims at simply alleviating the symptoms of the illness by raising taxes on the rich and giving it to the poor. Since the structure itself is defective, however, the money just ends up flowing back to the rich anyway, resulting in the system being forever dependent on the state to raise the taxes on the rich to give the money back to the poor, since the socialist state is not particularly interested in restructuring the system, the root cause of the problem, itself. As a result, we become forever dependent on the welfare state.
To take an example from within Canada with regards to language. The Quebec government has Bill 101 to constantly guard against the spread of the English language to protect French language jobs for those who don't know English. Since language is naturally monopolistic, however, unless we restructure the system itself, Quebec will forever be dependent on Bill 101. Same with the indigenous languages, they will forever be dependent on government support since again the structure itself is not fixed. And so it likewise is doomed to fall into a stagnant and inefficient system of permanent government intervention to try to counteract the faults of the free market.
Structuralism:
Structuralism involves the restructuring of the economic system so as to make it permanently self-sustainable. It is different from capitalism in that, at least in the initial stages of the restructuring process, government or some other organizational not-for-personal-profit involvement is required. It is also different from socialism in that, once the restructuring process is complete, government invovlement is no longer required. In this respect, unlike capitalism and socialism, both of which lead to stagnant systems, structuralism is foever dinamic. To take an example with language again:
According to Francois Grin of the University of Geneva, a switch to an easy-to-learn international auxiliary language such as Esperanto coud eventually save the EU, including the UK and Ireland, 25 thousand million euros a year. Under such a system, governments would need a plan to first adopt, create or revise an easy language for the purpose, and then through legislation, promote it in some way to counteract the monopolisic effects of English. Once that language replaces English as the dominant language in the economic structure, government intervention is no longer as needed since that language woudl have replaced English as the new dominant language of the system, thus being able to hold its own in the economic system. At that point, government could retreat fro it assured that it shall remain well entrenched in the new system. The ease of learning of the new language would also give people time to preserve their own languages too, so that there woudl no longer be any more need for government to protect minority languages. At that point, the government could then move on to deal with other structural problems in the economy.
Conclusion:
If we could move away from the oversimplistice dichotomy of capitalism and socialism, and instead focus on economic structuralism, it could be possible over time to achieve the goals of socialism but more efficiently through a moderately capitalistic system, whereby capitalism and socialism, rather than seeing one another as opponents, could view one another as friends rather.
What other ideas would you have on how to restructure the free market system so as to achieve socialist ends of economic justice but more efficiently through the private sector itself?
