With only minor modifications, Peoples´ Capitalism could realistically be implemented in virtually any democratic country in the world. A capital financing institution that pays dividends to the general public, together with a nationwide mandatory savings plan, is not irreconcilable with any form of government except totalitarian dictatorships. The NMF and DRP could function in a socialist economy like Sweden, or even in a communist country like Yugoslavia, just as well as in more conservative countries like Britian, or the Unites States, or West Germany. Equally significant is the fact that Peoples´ Capitalism might also be applicable to less advanced economies like Egypt, or Iran, or many of the nations in Africa and Latin America.
What kind of a country (indeed, what kind of a world) would emerge if the proposals outlined in this book were implemented? Almost certainly, material prosperity would increase. The availability of investment capital, the removal of disincentives to increased efficiency, the stabilization of prices in spite of heavy investment spending, and the focusing of modern technology on critical social problems all would work together so as to increase the production of wealth.
In the short term, NMF investment spending would create employment, encourage the modernization of industry, and in general, promote economic development. Meanwhile, the DRP would keep disposable income from rising (and thereby causing inflation) before newly constructed plants could begin producing more goods. In the long term, the sale of goods produced in newly built plants by newly purchased machines would generate NMF dividends. These dividends, together with the redemption of DRP savings, would give consumers the additional income to purchase the additional output. Over the longer term still, rising NMF dividends would induce many persons to voluntarily leave the labor force, thus eliminating the threat of long-term unemployment caused by major advances in computer-based automation. The overall result would be a degree of personal economic freedom and financial security far beyond what the world has ever known.
The NMF and Limits to Growth
Unfortunately, the development of nationwide or worldwide affluence on such a scale would in itself constitute a peril to human well-being. The planet earth is clearly finite. There are limits to growth.1 Affluence has historically led to increased levels of certain kinds of pollution and wasteful consumption of natural resources, many of which exist in limited amounts. If the result of the NMF were to simply increase the disposable income of the entire population so that everyone could engage in wasteful consumption on the scale presently practiced by the affluent minority, then the NMF would quickly lead to worldwide catastrophe.
This is a problem of considerable magnitude since it pits the interests of the "have" nations against the "have-nots." Those countries that have already achieved a measure of affluence through industrialization are becoming concerned about the implications of pollution and the limits to growth. Yet much of the world´s population still lives in unbelievable poverty and squalor. Who is to tell these people that they should not improve their desperate condition? How can persons living in air-conditioned houses and driving gas-guzzling automobiles communicate their concern about the environment to people whose children are starving.
This problem is virtually insolvable within the constraints of classical economics. The existing needs of the present world population have already made us dependent on massive industrialization. Rural peasants in India, for example, are now dependent for their very survival on grain raised by highly mechanized agricultural techniques in South Dakota. Industrial machines must augment human labor if a large percentage of the present world population is not to die of starvation. Furthermore, there is presently no practical mechanism for the great masses of humanity to derive any significant fraction of their income from industrial machines other than as compensation for labor. Neither socialism nor capitalism presently incorporates a system of wealth distribution that offers any alternative to the classical scenario of industrialization. Even in China, the major portion of the national product is distributed as compensation to labor. This implies that the only existing road to affluence is through industrialization in roughly the pattern laid down by Europe, Great Britain, and the United States.
Classical industrialization, of course, requires urbanization. Factories and mills cannot be operated without a large, well-trained labor force. Workers must be recruited from rural areas and concentrated in cities. There they must be homogenized into disciplined production workers. Largely self-sufficient farmers and, in some cases, nomads and tribal huntsman must be reduced to tenement dwellers and taught to accept the routine of industrial work on a regular schedule.
This entire process creates enormous demands for energy and other resources where little or none existed before. New housing must be built; food must be transported from distant areas; and sanitation, education, and social services must be provided. Roads and automobiles become necessary, along with filling stations, oil refineries, used car lots, and the inevitable junk yards.
The path of classical industrialization is extremely costly both in terms of physical and human resources. It seems unlikely that the earth could sustain the levels of pollution or the drain on resources that would result if the entire world were to follow the example of the United States and Western Europe.2
An Alternative to Urbanization
Peoples´ Capitalism might provide an alternative to the classical scenario of industrialization. If the NMF were a primary source of investment capital, economic development could be accomplished through highly automated industries without the need for significant increases in urbanization.
Automatic robot factories could be built in underdeveloped countries near sources of energy, raw materials, and transportation facilities. These plants would not require a large labor force so there would be no need to uproot the population from the countryside and concentrate it in cities. This would allow economic development without the social upheaval that ordinarily accompanies industrialization.
NMF public dividends would distribute the benefits of industrial technology to the people without requiring them to significantly change their living patterns. Traditional rural customs could be preserved, and virtually self-sufficient lifestyles close to nature would not be disturbed. Industrial development and wealth distribution through an instrumentality like the NMF would enable even tribal and nomadic cultures to prosper without substantial alteration. Most of the population could continue in the same living patterns that their ancestors practiced successfully for centuries. Tribal chiefs would not need to become shop foremen. Farmers and villagers would not need to adopt regular hours as factory and mill hands. Nomadic herders would not need to become tenement dwellers. In short, the NMF would allow non-industrialized cultures to share in the wealth from modern industrial technology without becoming urbanized.
Furthermore, economic development could be achieved much more rapidly than by conventional methods. Increased economic wealth would become available as soon as robot industries could begin production. There would be no need to spend long years educating and training a generation of workers. Education would come, of course, but more as a result of increasing affluence than as a precondition.
Some of the output from automatic industries in a developing economy would be used for foreign exchange to pay for the high technology equipment that would have to be imported. The rest could be distributed through public dividends or taxed for domestic needs such as health care, education, improved agriculture, and preservation of the ecology and wildlife on which many tribal and nomadic cultures depend.
Increasing affluence by this means would not significantly increase the world´s consumption of resources or the level of pollution. In fact, just the reverse. Primitive cultures that have endured unaltered for centuries are inherently stable and resistant to change. In most cases, social innovation occurs only under great duress such as results from war or famine due to overpopulation or destruction of traditional hunting or grazing lands by competing cultural groups. If primitive peoples were supplied with sufficient income from high technology industries so that they could preserve and protect their native habitats, they are quite likely to continue their traditional lifestyles and improve their environments in such a way as to reduce pollution and improve the ecological balance.
Peoples´ Capitalism thus offers a means by which non-industrialized countries might completely leap-frog the first industrial revolution. NMF financing and income distribution would make it possible for a nation to develop from a technologically primitive non-wage economy to a post-industrial non-wage economy without the cultural dislocations and environmental disasters caused by conventional industrialization.
Continued Growth and the Environment
Peoples´ Capitalism could also reduce the environmental impact of continued economic growth in countries where industrialization has already reached an advanced stage. Distribution of income through public dividends would make income from high technology industries available to rural residents as well as urban. This would reduce incentives for the rural poor to migrate to city slums in search of high-paying employment or, as it often turns out, of more liberal welfare payments. NMF dividends would be paid equally to everyone, and the resulting real benefits would be greater in areas where the cost of living was low. Thus, not only would rural residents have less reason to abandon self-sufficient non-resource-consuming lifestyles in the country, but many urban and suburban residents would be encouraged to move to areas where the cost of living was lower.
Furthermore, the role of the NMF in providing income other than wages and salaries would reduce the absolute necessity for creating jobs at any cost. Much of the make-work, featherbedding, and deliberately wasteful practices that are now used to prevent unemployment would become unnecessary, and the pressures for unplanned growth would be greatly reduced.
This does not necessarily imply that economic growth would cease or that consumer demand for more luxurious lifestyles would disappear. It does mean, however, that if personal economic survival were no longer strictly dependent on job employment, a great deal of the pressure for environmentally destructive growth would be alleviated.
Equally important, NMF financing of highly automated industries would release society from the absolute necessity of massive urbanization imposed by the labor requirements of industrial production. As industries of the future become more automated, the requirements for a highly centralized labor pool will decline. Distribution of profits through a mechanism such as the NMF will then allow people to free themselves from the dominance of machines. Once entire industries become capable of operating themselves, there will be no need for people to structure their lives around the needs and requirements of machines. Factories will not need human workers, and vice versa.
NMF income could free people from the tyrannies of mechanization and allow them to live more by their own internal rhythms. Lifestyles quite likely would move closer to nature, as people divorced themselves and their families from the congestion and frustrations of the industrialized world.
The implication is that, if future economic development were accomplished through an instrumentality such as the NMF, increased affluence would not be incompatible with the environmental constraints of a finite planet. Peoples´ Capitalism thus offers hope for a resolution of the fundamental conflict between the interests of the "have" and the "have-not" peoples that today represents such a strong potential threat to world stability.
The NMF and International Relations
A proposal for an economic system that promises to both increase wealth and distribute the benefits to everyone in an equitable manner has profound and far-reaching implications. It is an ideology that promises something for everyone. It is a means for producing a bigger pie, together with a guarantee that everyone will obtain a larger share. It thus seems possible that the NMF might have benefits in such problem areas as international relations and overpopulation.
Within every nation that adopted it, the NMF would provide increased financial security for the individual and thereby increased personal freedom from political coercion. Such an event, if it were to occur on a worldwide scale, would certainly have an impact on international affairs.
To begin with, any country whose internal economy was rapidly expanding would become preoccupied with domestic prosperity. The average citizen would be too busy improving his own condition and that of his family to be mesmerized by inflammatory rhetoric. Blood feuds, like those in the Middle East or in Northern Ireland, thrive only in areas where economic conditions appear hopeless or where progress seems possible only at another´s expense. Where prospects for the future seem bright, people are too busy improving their financial condition to waste much energy on fighting. This is true on an international as well as local level. Most wars in recent years have arisen either directly or indirectly from conditions of economic deprivation. J. Bronowski in his recent book, THE ASCENT OF MAN, argues that war is not a natural human instinct, but instead is a highly organized and cooperative form of theft. He claims that war originated only about ten thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rode out of the desert to rob them of what they could not provide for themselves.3
Robot industries financed through the NMF would make the acquisition of wealth by industrial production far easier and more certain than the conquest of other countries. On the other hand, any nation whose economic strength derived from robot industries would have the technological capacity for a very effective military defense.
Furthermore, equitable distribution of wealth internally would tend to ease domestic political tensions and frustrations. Thus, the prospect of a better life through peaceful economic development would make conflict seem unproductive to all but a few crackpots. Even these would not be especially dangerous if there were no dispossessed masses to be enticed by promises of retribution or conquest.
The NMF and Overpopulation
Although it is not generally recognized, overpopulation is in large part due to economic factors .4 Average people throughout the world have good reason to believe that a large family is their best insurance against poverty in old age. Old age is a grim prospect at best, and the thought of having to face the sickness and infirmity of declining years in loneliness without anyone to care or render assistance is a horrible thing to contemplate.
The NMF, of course, could not provide companionship in old age, but it could provide a secure source of income for life. The NMF would not only make people prosperous during their working years, but would continue providing a full income during the retirement years. Thus, the NMF would largely dispel fears of poverty in old age and thereby decrease many of the personal anxieties that create social pressures for large families
.A second factor that is related to high fertility rates is the inferior social position of women. If a woman´s status is primarily determined by her role as a childbearer (as is the case in most underdeveloped countries) then the incentives for having a large family are great. If, however, a woman´s status is determined by other factors, then the responsibilities of caring for many children may be regarded as socially disadvantageous. The payment of NMF dividends to every adult, male and female alike, would strongly upgrade the independence and social position of women in most societies throughout the world, and especially in underdeveloped countries. This could not help but reduce the incentives for childbearing.
NMF dividends would, of course, only be paid to adults. Thus, the NMF would not generate incentives of its own for large families. Quite to the contrary, additional children would visibly dilute the per capita income of a family unit. In countries where overpopulation is an extremely serious problem, the government might actually tax the NMF dividends of any parents having more than two children. This is an extreme measure, but it would be fair in that the additional social overhead incurred by large families would be felt by those directly responsible. The result would be that only persons desiring a large family would tend to have them. This would serve to quickly solve the problems of overturning taboos and of educating the masses in birth-control techniques. The prospect of losing some NMF dividends would generate powerful incentives for people to change their customs and get themselves educated.
Unfortunately, overpopulation is often least recognized as a problem in countries where the situation is most critical. In many nations, a large population is viewed by government officials as a source of national security. Poor nations tend to be militarily weak and often consider a large population to be their principal weapon in the struggle for national survival. For example, the Communist Chinese government frequently has voiced the opinion that China´s strength lies in her large population. During the cold-war years, Chinese leaders often argued that, if war broke out with the United States, China might lose every battle but would eventually win the war simply because the U. S. could not possibly kill them all. This basic argument, though usually not stated in such explicit terms, lies behind the reluctance of many poor but populous countries to initiate serious efforts at birth control. People are the principal resource in many countries. Human bodies are the one thing they can produce in large quantities, and they view attempts at population control as a threat to their national security.
In such cases, the NMF would provide a much more attractive means of achieving national security and of enhancing nationalistic pride. The NMF would make it possible for even the most backward nations to increase their economic wealth and power through advanced industrial technology. This fact alone might bring about a greater change in governmental policy on population matters than all of the mathematical arguments of Malthus and his latter-day counterparts. If this is true, then the NMF would indeed have a profound impact on what is perhaps the most serious long-range threat to human civilization – overpopulation.