Productivity
Here, of course, arises the simple question:
― All
these people who offer their services for free,
how do they live? What
will they eat?
But that the answer is equally simple too:
They will live off the
wheat that is
produced with the help of
the tractor.
Just as the services of
the physician, the inventor,
the banker are available to
all, so all the
produced goods are available
to all.
And surely you cannot doubt that the coordination
between production and people's needs is not a
problem in the era of the computer and the Internet.
Already today, as you well know, through
e-commerce,
without taking a step out of your room, you can
purchase
goods offered in another country or another continent,
and
the postman will bring them to your door a few days
later.
― Yes,
but I don't want to eat only dry bread, I want cake.
No objection. If we have enough cake for everyone, why not.
But if you want to eat cake, when the others don't
even have
dry bread, then you know very well that this is nothing
else but
a return to our old selfish system which we had until
now and
which is responsible for the state we are in.
And please don't start with:
"You know, I have special skills
and I offer more".
Skills that are presented selfishly are the skills of predators.
And since you say that you are offering something,
why are
you looking for a reward? Unless you didn't mean an
offer, but
a transaction, that means a return back to the old
situation.
Did you know that there are giant offers for the
welfare
of humanity which are not valued in cash?
The inventor of penicillin, for example,
refused to accept even a single cent
from his discovery, which saves millions
of lives every year.
The objection to the proposal of abolishing the wage is known:
An economic system not based on reciprocity
(I give you, so that you give me) would necessarily
have reduced productivity.
Is this not proved by the communist experiment?
Absolutely correct. We don't even need to make an experiment.
That the capitalist
system has
higher productivity is
beyond doubt.
If you use the carrot (the extra wage)
and the whip (the dismissal) you can get much more
from the workers than if you appeal to their human or
patriotic feelings.
We could have predicted long ago
the outcome of an experiment in which are compared
two systems with such a fundamental difference
concerning productivity.
When they came to the point of spending
gigantic and ever-increasing amounts in
competition
for armaments (the most unproductive expenditure),
logically the system with the lower productivity
collapsed.
In a system without the reward of labour
we will actually have reduced productivity.
But is this fact enough to condemn it?
If we are going to repeat the competition, then
yes.
The system with the reduced productivity is doomed.
If next to it there is another system that has
higher -
productivity, then this will dominate. No matter how
inhumane or destructive for the environment it might
be.
As the competition is based on productivity,
the system with higher productivity will win.
You do not need great
intelligence to predict this.