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NOTE: Most essays on this site represent original theoretical work. If you find these articles interesting, inspiring or helpful, please let me know. If you refer to them, please give me and this website credit. In addition, links back to this page in blogs or from other sites are always appreciated!
NOTE: Most essays on this site represent original theoretical work. If you find these articles interesting, inspiring or helpful, please let me know. If you refer to them, please give me and this website credit. In addition, links back to this page in blogs or from other sites are always appreciated!
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Hero For Christ
Meaningful Work
by Christopher Sunami, 12/6/07
I believe the fundamental challenge for any socioeconomic system is not the production, distribution or manipulation of goods and services. Rather, the challenge is to create meaningful work for the people within the system. If meaningful work can be created, production will be the result.
Communism
One of the chief difficulties faced by communism was the inability to create meaningful work. Although the ideal was that each person should work voluntarily for the good of all, in practice that did not prove a sufficient motivation for most people.In addition, the theoretical equality of the Communist social structure eliminated the rewards of working harder, while the support provided by the state eliminated the necessity for working at all. This meant that the entire concept of work was robbed of its meaning for many people. The same is true, to a lesser extent, in many semi-socialized countries.
Capitalism
Capitalism goes to the opposite extremes in order to maximize productivity. Accordingly, artificial shortages and deprivations are introduced in some locations in order to motivate people to work for the bare necessities of life. In other locations, a culture of consumerism is inculcated so that people will work in pursuit of luxury goods and material status.The problems here are manifold. First, capitalism creates a life of misery for those forced to work for subsistence. Second the “meaningfulness” of consumerism is artificial. The production of most consumer products does nothing to help humanity and can even hurt the human race as when it leads to war or environmental depletion and pollution.
The Solution
In order to compete with capitalism, any new socioeconomic system will need to be able to provide meaningful work more effectively than capitalism. Furthermore, the meaningfulness of that work must align with human beings’ actual wants and needs, rather than those predicted by a fantasy vision of human nature such as that held by communism.One promising approach to that problem is to create a status system that revolves around service to the local community. Pursuit of status has proven throughout human history to be a strong and effective motivator for most people. Furthermore, there is some evidence that communities founded around service ethics have in fact flourished in many different times and places.
The challenge then shifts to finding ways to match the concentrations of power that build up naturally in capitalist societies. In essence, we need a way to divorce power from material wealth, and then concentrate that power in a way that is not vulnerable to the same abuses of power as are rampant in the system we currently possess.