Dawn of the Unthinkable (14 page)

5. Business

There will be a monumental
shift from the capitalistic/profit motive to a more mutually
beneficial mode of operation. The current mode calls for mass
layoffs of personnel to improve the bottom line; this plan will
call for mass hiring, re-training, and accommodation of rapid
turnover. One of the most important tasks that will have to be
accomplished is the reintegration of production plants that have
been sent overseas. To do this, society’s businesses
must:


Attempt to bring back
all business that was sent overseas to take advantage of lower
costs to the United States. Full employment will never be
accomplished if there are no businesses for people to work in, as
is often currently the case. The new plants will be “seeded” into
communities that are being started away from the major metropolitan
areas; this will encourage the rebirth of small American
towns.


Businesses will also be
required to divest itself of certain property if it is determined
that their holdings are in excess of what is necessary to produce
their products. This will follow the generations’ pattern
established for personal property, in that one third of excess
property must be relinquished every twenty-five years. This is so
that proper planning may take place, and the succeeding generations
may be prepared for making do with less. The businesses shall
submit its plan to the divestiture committee for approval, and in
the case of disputes, the legal system may have to become involved.
Divestiture should be as voluntary as possible, and a business
should be given as much input as needed in what will be returned to
society.


A business will be
determined successful by their impact upon improving society, and
how much they manage to contribute. As with all other segments,
evaluators, which can consist of both regular voting members of
society and experts if a business is specialized, will determine
their success and their direct impact on society if it is not
readily apparent. Businesses deemed successful will be allotted
greater shares of resources, and their employees will be awarded a
greater personal lifestyle. This will replace the profit motive but
will also offer ample incentive for innovation.


Wasteful competitiveness
will be eliminated as there will be no need to out-produce other
suppliers. At first, there will continue to be many suppliers of
the same items, but as an atmosphere of cooperation gradually takes
hold, the businesses will mold themselves into interrelated units.
These units will produce different strata of products that do not
directly compete. In this manner, resource allocation will take
into account each firm’s strengths and weaknesses and become more
efficient and planned.

He knew that this was bare bones because a
thousand accounting details large and small would have to be worked
out. This article could not get into such minutia, as it would
become a boring textbook if it did. Instead, he just wanted to
cover the gist of what he was thinking about and let people discuss
it from there. So he left it as is.

He thought about what he would do if it got
published in one of the scholarly type magazines and more
academically gifted researchers than him decided to consider it. He
knew that he could not really hold his own in any debate over
previous attempts at socialism, utopianism, or any other type of
political system. He wondered if maybe he should take a refresher
course in political science or history or something just so he
wouldn’t sound like a complete idiot. That idea excited him; he had
taken his Master’s degree through grants from the Defense
Department when he had worked for them. He’d have to look into that
because there was no room in the family budget for a college course
for someone who already had a degree. There would hardly be enough
to help pay for those who didn’t have one.

Since it seemed like the type of idea that
would piss his wife off, he thought he’d run it by her right away.
“Hey, Kathy!” he bellowed. “Kathy!” he yelled again. She was
downstairs doing the laundry and couldn’t hear him well.

“What?” she screamed back. He always
expected that she would drop what she was doing just to hear him.
She waited until she was done loading the dryer and then came to
see what he wanted. “Now what is it that you want?” she asked.

“I think I’m going to take a college
course,” he stated, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the
world.

“What? Are you crazy? You’ve already had
more schooling than you need, and I don’t want to have to put up
with you studying and writing papers all the time,” she said,
trying to gauge how serious he was. He was really only half
serious, but now that she said he couldn’t do something, he decided
to start a small skirmish.

“Whaddayamean, I can’t go?” he said, trying
to imitate Jackie Gleason. She wasn’t going to respond to his
foolishness, though, that would just egg him on. She had been happy
when he finally got his Master’s degree, not only for him, but
because it meant no more classes, tests, and papers that took his
attention and time away from the family. He had gotten the degree
when they only had two kids and now with three, there was no time
for him to be doing anything other than taking care of them.
Besides, his education had never seemed to get him promoted any
faster at work. And it kept him from working the side jobs he did
which gave them some walking-around money. So she was just a little
dubious, especially as she had never gone to college herself and
felt that she had turned out just fine.

“Fine, you go. We’ll have your graduation
ceremony in bankruptcy court,” she said. He looked up to see if she
was serious. Sometimes his teasing pushed her to the edge of
getting upset, which was rarely his intention. He wanted to correct
her impression quickly, as he wasn’t sure he even really wanted to
go.

“No, I’m not sure yet. I was just thinking
about it,” he said. She seemed satisfied with that; he was sure
she’d have more cold water to pour on it if he actually pursued it.
It could wait, as no one had challenged him to a debate yet. He
started to imagine how a debate would go….

“The floor recognizes Mr. Nicholas Ryan,
author of “The Proposal to Reorder Society,” which has become the
basis of much conversation and debate within these United States.
Mr. Ryan, could you give a synopsis of your highly unusual
proposal?”

“Why, certainly, sir. It’s merely an idea
about how our United States could revamp its political, economic,
and social institutions to create real freedom and dignity for all
people, as our Founding Fathers envisioned.”

“Sounds a little grandiose. Are you sure
it’s grounded in some sort of practicality that would make it even
worth considering?”

“Well, sir, all new ideas seem a little
crazy when they are first proposed, but that doesn’t mean that they
should not be further explored. I’ve attempted to think of all
constraints to my plan, and the only one I see of being a real
burden to implementation is peoples’ attitudes. Money has always
meant freedom in our society, and it would be hard to convince
people that they would have even more freedom if they gave it up,
but I think we could show them the benefits of relying on
cooperation instead of competition.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
How could someone who now has money in their pocket and can take it
and spend it in any manner they want, have less freedom than
someone who must rely on being “evaluated” favorably by millions of
people? It would seem to me that the evaluated person must
constrain his exercise of basic human rights to conform to the
profile which would guarantee him the most return.”

“That’s just the mindset we’re trying to
change, sir. If this system does nothing more than change people
from trying to acquire money to advance their position in society,
to having them trying to maneuver the system to give them more
rewards, then it will be a failure. No, this system is to teach the
children that there is more to life than just acquiring goods, that
there should be an overall goal of having society as a whole
achieve as much as it is capable of. We’ve never had a goal like
that before. In the United States, we’ve always celebrated
individualism. The entrepreneur who makes it big is like a god in
our society, even if he crushes many others on his way to success.
What if that same creative mind was told to focus on how to benefit
as many people as he could, instead of just himself or his family?
Wouldn’t everyone be better off?”

“Perhaps. But often society ends up
benefiting anyway by the output of a person solely interested in
personal gain, such as new drugs to cure disease, or cheaper ways
to build housing. Don’t you feel that the market does a good job in
allocating resources by working through these individualists?”

“It does a job, sir, but not a good one. How
can you say it’s good when millions of dollars are spent every year
trying to create a golf ball that will fly farther while not every
child in the country has health insurance? When our infant
mortality rate is worse than some third world countries?”

“I’m not saying it’s perfect, Mr. Ryan. No
system is. But our current system is gradually making life better
for most; it is probably only a matter of time before almost all
enjoy a lifestyle that will be the envy of the world!”

“I’m afraid I can’t agree, sir. We’re moving
increasingly to a society where the ability to manipulate
information is the key to success, not the ability to toil hard
physically. Before, even if one wasn’t gifted intellectually, if he
labored hard, he might attain success. In the future, with more
production becoming automated, there will be less and less need for
physical labor. So the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’
will continue to grow, until there is a vast chasm between the two.
You could be looking at the nexus of a class war that would
annihilate society.”

“Surely that is unlikely, Mr. Ryan. The
incidence of war appears to be declining around the world, and the
chance of any conflict within the United States is probably very
remote.”

“Well, that may be true, sir, but should the
avoidance of class wars and the gradual bettering of people’s lives
be a worthy goal for society? We have the means to produce
thousands of products that sit on a shelf unused because someone
didn’t or couldn’t afford to purchase them. Is that right? We have
the means to build luxury houses that sit unused except during
vacations; is that right? We have thousands of acres of gorgeous,
usable land that is owned by one person. Is that right? It might be
right if everyone was properly fed, clothed, and housed, but they
are not. So none of that can be right,” Ryan said heatedly.

Ryan shook himself out of this debate,
further convinced of the correctness of his idea. Was he becoming a
zealot? He really hoped not. He disliked zealots of any stripe.
Well, he wouldn’t force his idea down anyone’s throat. If they
wanted to read it, fine. If not, that was okay, too. Societal
reorganization shouldn’t have to be painful.

Luis Estrada Palma was not happy. On a
personal basis, he knew he should have been. He was young,
charming, and good-looking in a mixed Latino-American kind of way.
He had used these advantages to work his way to the position of
General Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World,
better known as the “Wobblies,” an international union of hourly,
non-professional wage employees. While the position did not pay
much, it was an admirable spot to launch his anti-big business
big-management rhetoric, which he did when he felt the occasion
called for it. But he could also take direct action, calling for
strikes where it would hurt the most in the critical industries of
whatever country his unionists were in. It was through these
actions that he found he achieved the most for his people and
attracted attention, money, and more members. The last item was the
one that was making him unhappy.

He had just received the latest membership
figures, and it was not encouraging. Membership, which at its
inception in 1905 stood at the hundreds of thousands, was now
shrinking rapidly. This occurred despite his and his fellow
organizers’ best efforts to increase the ranks. It seemed like
their message of empowering the workers and throwing the bosses out
was falling on deaf ears.
That was the problem when the economy
picked up
, he mused.
More people became able to earn a
living wage and they no longer had the desire to bite the hand that
they saw as feeding them
. They always seemed to forget that
that same hand would quickly push them toward the door once
prosperity ended and profits were threatened. He wished people
understood that the time to act was when things were going good, so
you had food on the table and didn’t have to act like desperate
animals with your backs against the wall. He remembered the
struggles of his union in the past when members were lynched,
beaten, and jailed. The people of those days were committed to the
cause and made great sacrifices to see it through. Now, you could
ask some people who the Wobblies were and most would not be able to
give you an answer. His family was different; they had grown up in
the movement, and his rise to its leadership was a source of great
pride.

Though the union had started in 1905 by
disaffected socialists and unionists, Estrada Palma’s grandfather
had been an early member. He was a grape picker in Napa Valley. The
first union members wanted to stand up to big businesses that were
practically enslaving their workers. It was a wise choice to reach
out to people like his grandfather, as with them being itinerants,
they were not allowed to vote, but they could join a union. The
Wobblies were the first to practice integration, as all races were
reached out to and encouraged to join. The idea of this union was
to form one big union that could affect all workplaces by use of a
general strike which would shut down all smokestack industries
whenever appropriate concessions could not be won from a particular
industry. This idea made sense because the power of a mass of
people from more than one industry striking would bring political
pressure to bear by those not involved but directly affected. So
the Palmas were accepted there, even though they still did not
speak English.