On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, Gordon Fitch wrote:
> So we're really not done with airplanes. Good. Now, do you
> all want to tell me who you're going to coerce, and how, in
> order to get the airplanes, steel plowshares, and so forth?
Both sides of this debate seem to accept the premise that people will only do socially useful labor if they are coerced and/or enticed with economic incentives. I guess I don't hang out with economists enough, because that conception of human nature seems to be clearly inconsistent with human social activity. People take care of their children, they do pro bono work, they do volunteer stuff, they help strangers in need. Granted, people do not always live by the sermon on the mount, but there are many, many examples of people doing the right thing because they care about the welfare of other people.
So to me, this debate about whether people will build airplanes in an anarchist society is strange: if we feel it's in our mutual benefit to have planes, we'll work out a way to have planes. To say "people will have to be coerced" paints a pretty bleak picture of human nature--a picture, I want to stress, that is clearly inconsistent with actual social relations, even in a capitalist society.
I think it's quite within the venn circle of human potential for people to say, "listen, here's this nasty chore--picking up garbage, harvesting apples, factory work--if you think it's socially useful, do some of it". I realize the logistics here are tricky, but the apparent impracticality is more a product of our enculturation about the limits of human nature than it is a product of the limits of human nature itself.
Miles