Chapter 8
Nutritious Options
“The divisive notion that businesses exist to maximize profits for shareholders must be replaced by the integrating idea that businesses (and other organizations) provide a framework in which people can create benefits and share them fairly. The divisive notion that the money system exists to make money for those who run it, must be replaced by the integrating idea that its function is to provide society with a mechanism of collective choice. The divisive notion that it is the government’s primary function to maximize economic growth, must be replaced by the integrating idea that government’s function is to enable us to allocate society’s resources, and distribute claims upon them, according to values that are generally agreed and accepted.” – James Robertson[425]The free lunch enabled by plurocracy, CAPE, and the principles and approaches explained in the last two chapters, tackles the disease rather than symptoms, does not prioritise the economy over the environment, treats neither nature nor people as economic resources, and provides a mechanism and motivation to reduce work and consumption rather than compel futile attempts at eternal expansion. Hence, ecological care, repair, and rejuvenation need no longer be rejected or postponed because they might reduce profits, jobs or growth – instead, a more objective, less biased assessment can take place. Additionally, without a need to economically compete, instead with institutions and arrangements fostering community and cooperation, a free lunch allows and encourages fundamental changes to current attitudes and values. For example, whereas now “an important part of consumerism is driven by emulation, status competition, or simply having to run to keep up with everyone else, and is basically about social appearances and position”,[426] a free lunch society’s reliance on cooperation discourages similar motivations.
A free lunch also offers a few other nutritional possibilities…
8.1 The Value Of Money
“Money… is a calculus of value, an accounting system, which indicates the entitlements of people (including organisations) to purchasing power and thus enables us to recognise the claims they may make on society’s resources[,]… a resource allocation system… [T]he validity of the money system can be established only by widespread public agreement that it does indeed work fairly and reliably as a mechanism of collective choice. That is now the way, and the only way, that money values can be established as ‘correct’.” – James Robertson[427]Wealth can be created only by labour – hence, any currency’s ultimate backing consists of the capacity to do work for which the currency is exchanged. If CAPE is simplified, as has been suggested, by the adoption of essentially static wage rates, then the ‘value’ of a currency can be defined as a certain amount of time spent at a particular type of work. With one dollar defined as the payment for (say) five minutes of carpentry,[428] money can have a stable ‘labour standard’.
This approach, however, needs extension to suit international exchange, because each nation can plurocratically place different relative values on different types of work. For example, those who traditionally build stone or brick dwellings might value carpentry less than masonry, whereas in places where wood predominates, the opposite might happen. To define every currency in terms of just one job cannot take these differences into account.
Different national plurocratic wage-valuations can be averaged out using a ‘basket’ of jobs[429] – a sort of average of all work – or ‘composite-job’. Work most essential for everyone’s survival – such as farming, house-building, and medical care – might form the majority of a composite-job, but it can include as many jobs as desired, each taking either an equal or a weighted fraction of the total. Each nation’s currency can then be defined as the payment for so many minutes of work at the composite-job, perhaps equating to (say) a minute of carpentry, a minute of farming, thirty seconds of plumbing, forty-five seconds of medical care, or any combination of these and/or other labours.
Each nation’s currency defined in this way can easily be measured in terms of another’s. As an example, if the USA pays 40 dollars for an hour of work at the composite-job, while Spain pays 200 pesos for an hour of the same work, then one USA dollar equals five Spanish pesos.[430] And with wage rates fixed, so too are exchange rates, making currency speculation impossible.
Such an approach to exchange rates also suggests an international currency. If we follow a suggestion of Keynes and call a unit of international currency a ‘bancor’,[431] then one bancor might be defined as (say) the payment for one hour of the composite-job. Then, using the last example, a USA dollar equals one-fortieth of a bancor, and a Spanish peso, one-two-hundredth. While this requires international agreement as to the precise amount of work-time corresponding to a bancor, the choice could be made almost arbitrarily. Indeed, it might conceivably arise de facto from bilateral trading, without any formal international agreement. Likewise for the establishment of an acceptable composite-job.
8.2 Fair Trade
“…the crux of the balance-of-payments problem,… is the psychological one of being unable to break free from long-established habits of thought. Until we are ready to dare to think unorthodox thoughts we must dismiss as illusory any hope of being able, permanently, to emancipate domestic policy from the vicissitude of international trade and capital movements.” – E.J.Mishan[432]Although it makes sense for all nations to aim for as much self-reliance as possible, some nations will always find it much easier to produce certain goods and services than others – not much chance of growing pineapples within the Arctic Circle, for instance. So CAPE has to cater for exports and imports…
Because importing only makes sense if it costs less than to produce the same goods locally – taking into account all costs, including externalities and transport – prices set locally by CAPE have no importance for deciding whether to import a product. Instead, goods can be imported and exported at cost, with no tariffs involved – at least for trade between free lunch nations. Importing from capitalist nations, however, will almost certainly require paying their profit-inclusive prices, which therefore may well exceed those of the same goods produced by free lunch nations. However, relative efficiencies of production will probably still leave some capitalist goods worth importing. In such cases, free lunch nations can compensate for the profits included in goods they import from capitalist nations by increasing – above cost – the prices of their exports to (just) those nations, by amounts equal to the profits of the imports.
For consistency with CAPE’s overall approach, the costs of imported goods need to balance (and so be afforded by) the prices charged for exports. This can’t be guaranteed to always happen, of course, but imbalances need prompt nothing more inconvenient than altered working hours to restore balance: longer hours to increase exports, shorter to reduce them. If exports exceed imports, then in the following year (assuming local production goes to plan) less hours need to be worked to either export less or else import more (with appropriate CAPE-reductions to local prices). Whereas if imports exceed exports, then the next year requires longer working hours, or improved productivity, so as to export more to make up the balance (with appropriate CAPE-increases to local prices).
Hence, each free lunch economy needs to plurocratically determine what it requires from other nations, and what it can export to cover the costs of importing. It needs to do some work solely for export purposes, just as happens today, by producing additional quantities beyond local requirements using existing production facilities. (Of course, different nations have different resources and, for complete fairness, this must be taken into account – I attempt to do so in the next section.)
As for the prices set for imported goods, if they replace goods produced (at greater cost) locally, then their prices are already established, and only need alteration to suit CAPE: export production increases to afford such imports, but because local production decreases by an amount equal to the higher costs of locally producing the imported goods (at least in the absence of any other changes), total costs reduce, and CAPE requires a proportionate reduction to all prices.
But if imports consist of goods not previously produced locally, then their prices can be set plurocratically at any value that suits the overall changes to the economy and the corresponding CAPE-adjustments to all prices.
With such an approach, the most efficient – those who produce for the least cost – will continue to be sought after (even more so than now because of the greater stability and accuracy of costs). Of course, delivery costs also have to be taken into account by CAPE, but it will still probably cost less for, say, Alaska to import pineapples from tropical areas than to try to grow them in greenhouses.
Now although total imports are meant to CAPE-balance total exports, no need exists for balancing imports and exports of any specific nation. Instead of the map’s current priority over the territory requiring a permanent supply of enough foreign currencies to afford all imports, foreign exchange can be handled purely on paper – as an adjustment of international CAPE accounts. Such a convention might work best, though certainly not only, with an international currency, although this need not be produced as either paper or coin.
If, as an example, the USA buys a five-peso product from Spain, Spain’s international account increases by five pesos (a credit), while the USA’s drops by the equivalent in dollars (a debit) – or, more easily, both accounts alter by the corresponding number of bancors. Actual hard currency is not required: accounts are simply set up by agreement with ledgers loaded, much as a banker’s pen now creates credit, and the IMF creates SDRs. The backing of such accounts consists of the agreed mutual intention of all trading nations to balance their imports and exports overall – perhaps backed by formal agreements for limits to deviations from balance, and appropriate counter-measures to be employed if imbalances persist.
Even so, yearly fluctuations need not cause concern – only when a large national surplus or deficit persists does a problem exist, but this seems unlikely to occur in a co-operative world unless as a result of differing levels of development between nations. To discourage this, to ensure that appropriate technology and other means to produce goods are made available to all, to help develop the poorest nations (though not to the level of the worst excesses of the developed world, which probably is not even possible), and to relieve incipient international tensions (and motivations for seeking refuge in other countries), exports to poorer nations can be discounted in proportion to the depth of their poverty…
8.3 Fairer Trade
“The fruits of development are multiplied, not divided, by being shared.” – Medard Gabel[433]Each nation could be assigned a ‘wealth’ rating, based perhaps on average income, per capita GDP, or more substantial, wide-ranging and/or complex data. In a free lunch economy, the length of the working week could be used: the longer the week, the lower the wealth rating, because poorer nations have more work to do to catch up with the rich. Of course, different cultures seek greater or fewer material conveniences than others, and so, such a rating could only be treated as approximate. However, precise accuracy is not needed…
Whatever the measure of wealth employed, assume it has a range of zero (for those nations all but obliterated by war or natural disaster) and ten (for the world’s richest). So, Australia, might rate nine, Turkey seven, Liberia four, and so on.
Exports to poorer nations can be discounted according to the poverty ratings of both the exporter and the importer. Using the examples just given, Australian goods can be sold to Liberia for 4/9ths of their cost, or to Turkey for 7/9ths. Liberia can buy Turkish goods at 4/7ths cost.[434]
The ‘missing’ payments, by plurocratic agreement, can simply be adjusted on the books (credit-accounted). To buy a $90 Australian product, for example, Liberia debits its trade account by $40 in favour of Australia, which credits itself with the discounted $50 (or the international currency equivalents as per the last section).
Discounted trading, clearly beneficial to poor countries, could be initiated by a single developed nation, because it would open up its export markets. Over time, however, the poor would be made rich, and wealth ratings would all gradually converge – at which stage, or soon before, discounting, having served its purpose, could be abandoned.
The arrangement does not need to work in reverse, with, for example, Australia buying Liberian goods at over twice their actual price. The poor, in this way given not usable products but extra money, could return it to rich countries in exchange for appropriate technology at normal prices – however, the higher prices would dissuade importing from poorer nations, and costs would be less easily assessed. Instead, the rich should pay normal prices for poor nations’ goods, with the poor receiving discounts from the rich. I call this approach Poor-And-Rich Exchange – PARE (whereas when the rich take priority, it seems better described as RAPE).
Some readers might regard the acceptance of part-payment, and the mere recording of the rest as paid, as an impossible self-deception. Yet we deceive ourselves whenever we think the poor deserve the same treatment as the rich. It does not pay the rich to have anyone else poor, no matter how distant, because the poor’s desperate struggles to survive often foster crime, ecological and social decay, and other travesties that bedevil everyone, as well as occasional mass exoduses that result in more refugees than even the richest can easily accommodate. Hence, altruism and self-interest overlap rather than compete: the rich serve themselves best if they also serve the poor, by helping pull them up by their bootstraps. Indeed, with PARE fostering the sharing of resources and wealth, even national security seems likely to grow, and the need for defence and the threat of war diminish.
In any case, the money-magic of PARE can be believed in at least as easily as that of government bond creation, bank credit, and the various other self-deceptions of modern financial engineering – once the mental shackles of capitalism are escaped. And because PARE allows what is needed to be done, it deserves belief not as a self-deception but as an additional choice by which a free lunch’s nutritional capacities can be fully unleashed…
8.4 Development
“The purpose of development is to increase the life-support capacities and individual freedoms of any particular locale, region, or even the planet as a whole… Development does not mean total self-sufficiency or independence, but rather a self-reliant sufficiency with a synergetic interdependence with other locales and regions.” – Medard Gabel[435]Development is not growth, though it is too often treated as synonymous. Currently, L$D compels growth which prevents the developed world from settling for enough, while ensuring the developing world continues to lag. But CAPE, especially with PARE, has the capacity to sustainably develop the entire world.
Nevertheless, for PARE to work best, the specifics of each nation receiving discounts need to be taken properly into account. For instance, Schumacher advocated providing what he called “intermediate technology” to the Third World – goods “appropriate for labour surplus societies”.[436] Recognising that “knowledge can be applied in a great variety of ways, of which the current application in modern industry is only one”,[437] Schumacher defined intermediate technology as that which can make “use of the best of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralisation, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources,… designed to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of the machines… [and] vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the super-technology of the rich… [S]elf-help technology.”[438] Such an approach, as Schumacher noted, accords with what “Gandhi said, the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass-production, only by production by the masses.”[439]
Calling for “a ‘regional’ approach to development” to avoid urbanisation and rural decay, Schumacher suggested that the Third World needs to set up workplaces “in the areas where the people are living now, and not primarily in metropolitan areas into which they tend to migrate… [T]hese workplaces must be, on average, cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers without this calling for an unattainable level of capital formation and imports… [T]he production methods employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimised, not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organisation, raw material supply, financing, marketing, and so forth… [P]roduction should be mainly from local materials and mainly for local use.”[440]
Schumacher’s vision has practicality. As Gabel wrote: “There is no reason why the highest standard of living possible – measured by such things as access to desirable food, clothing, shelter, clean water, sanitation facilities, health care, education, transportation, communication, recreation, cultural facilities, and self-fulfilling employment – higher than anyone anywhere currently enjoys, couldn’t exist in a rural setting.”[441]
Truly sustainable development might also best be pursued using something like ‘least-cost planning’, a technique by which, for example, electricity companies save costs by buying and distributing high-efficiency light bulbs to customers, rather than building more power stations to cater for increased demand. Least-cost planning not only encourages the minimisation of costs and therefore work, it also assists ecological and social care: if the costs of cleaning up the unwanted consequences of some economic practice exceed the gains achieved by using it, then least-cost planning argues for changing the practice. If costs of recuperation are recorded against the offending producers (when feasible to determine), CAPE can be better used to properly assess performance, plan for the future, and ultimately discourage the negligent habits.
Least-cost planning works not just locally but globally. As an example, least-cost sustainable development might justify paying Brazil to stop burning its rainforests: payments in the form of free or discounted exports might well cost less than the sums likely to be otherwise required to deal with the effects of a future Brazil without rainforests. Similarly, paying Third World women to avoid or delay pregnancy – in advance of sufficient development stabilising populations – seems likely to cost less over time for the developed world than coping with the effects of overpopulation.[442] To cater for such payments, CAPE simply adds them to its costs, and in its usual fashion adjusts prices and working hours accordingly.
But however it is afforded, and to whomever it is directed, development need not be pursued within the artificial constraint of financial year planning. The development of renewable energy technologies, for example, often involves decades of trial-and-error research before commercial goods result – judging success or failure on any single year’s performance therefore makes no sense. As Gabel wrote, that “economics is on a yearly accounting schedule… naturally came about because our accounting system grew out of agriculture… Industrial processes [however] do not necessarily, and perhaps never, have the same production rates as agriculture… [Hence,] yearly accounting… is somewhat arbitrary, and for some processes, not well suited.”[443]
Logically, any project’s success or failure can be determined properly by its performance only over a period suitable for that project. This can be handled easily enough by CAPE which, though it requires planning for specific periods (most probably a year), nevertheless has the capacity (see section 7.5) to afford all necessary work – including research and development – for as long as the work needs doing, by using project accounts (as detailed in section 7.8).
8.5 Surplus
“Ruth Benedict, the American anthropologist,… was studying aggression in various tribal communities and found that societies in which aggression was low or absent had a social structure such that actions which advantaged the individual also advantaged the group as a whole… Conversely,..[societies] in which an individual while acting for his own good is likely to be acting to the detriment of the group… tended to be very aggressive.” – Peter Russell[444]A free lunch can do all manner of things that capitalism and socialism cannot. For example, capitalism has attempted to create food reserves every now and again, but, essentially, it goes against the grain (sic). Probably the best attempt was made in the 1930s in the USA, when “the New Deal established what it called ‘the ever-normal-grainery,’… Under this program local representatives of the government would seal the farmers’ harvests in local grain bins and pay them a fixed price adequate to cover their operating costs. Keeping surplus grain off the market kept the prices up.”[445] But as the New Deal faded away in the wake of World War 2 and the Cold War, so too did the ever-normal-grainery, to be replaced by production cut-backs and farmer subsidies for keeping fields unplanted (well in excess of the need for periodic resting of the soil). The situation today is further compounded by the abandonment of long-established and productive plantations, methods, and agricultural sites because of competition from poorer nations using cheaper labour but often unsustainable methods, and by the conversion of farmlands to the growing of non-food crops such as biofuels.
Gabel has suggested a method for ensuring a global food reserve which has as its main feature something very similar to free lunch price-setting. He wrote: “The selective feeding of some people rather than all people is inherently suicidal in an interdependent closed system… Food is stored for security; there is no security if there are food shortages that one group of armed people attempt to keep another group of armed and hungry people from getting… [T]he only way to amass a multiple-year storage of food for the entire planet in a limited amount of time is to produce a large surplus each year. One of the best ways of furnishing the incentive to produce a surplus is to guarantee a market for the producer/farmer. Establish a price before the crop is planted. Armed with the knowledge that a bumper harvest will not lower the prices that he will receive for his produce, the farmer can bring all his resources to bear on producing as much food as possible. The surplus would be purchased to stock food reserves in the developing countries around the planet and, when those are full, in Antarctica… Priorities for purchase could be set up so that the poorest farmers and the small farmers had the highest priorities… As storages increased further, another priority would be established that would place the purchase priority on foods grown with production techniques judged to be regenerative.”[446]
Gabel also proposed that food reserves be co-ordinated by a “Global Food Service”, a group having “as its special interest all of humanity, not the maximization of profit for a specific and minute subset of the overall global food system… [It] would be non-political and non-profit.”[447] As “a meta-system to the nation-state and trans-national corporation, [it] could do things that neither of these institutes seem capable of. It could be ethical.”[448]
A free lunch and a Global Food Service go hand in hand, not just semantically, but also operationally: a free lunch provides the motivation for ethical behaviour that capitalism lacks, because it treats all goods and services – and also information on improved production techniques – as something to be shared among all, rather than hoarded by the privileged no matter how desolate the condition of the underprivileged.
With CAPE guaranteeing the incomes of all, including farmers, a free lunch requires only one amendment to Gabel’s plans: instead of the Global Food Service purchasing surpluses, they can acquire them for nothing – as CAPE does not factor production of surpluses into its prices, they need have no price. This applies for over-production of any goods – they can be stockpiled in all feasible instances, as insurance against possible subsequent shortfalls, so as to compensate and possibly even to avoid the need for extra work that those shortfalls would otherwise cause.
To encourage surpluses and so quickly “amass a multiple-year” food reserve, plurocracies – probably for a few years – can plan for production beyond their needs. Such excess production can be easily afforded because all work is shared, and because CAPE absorbs the extra costs (a very small proportion of the economy’s total) into the prices of all consumables. Instead of, as today, the prospect of extra purchasing power motivating people to work marginally harder than necessary, sufficient incentives reside in the increased prospects for long-term nutritional security for home and abroad, and the consequent lessening of the risk of war. Farmers, with incomes guaranteed by CAPE regardless of performance, are nevertheless motivated to produce surpluses, where possible – even beyond any planned excess – because, via CAPE, this reduces working hours (whereas constant shortfalls result in famine, or at least a probable change of job for the offending farmers).
8.6 Sharing
“…power[:]… the interior capacity of persons and groups to control their own lives and to contribute creatively to the lives of others.” – James Robertson[449]A free lunch can also avoid hard-sell waste and redundancy. In affluent suburbs of developed nations, for instance, most households possess their very own lawnmower, lawn-edger, power tools, and much other equipment for garden and house maintenance and repair – and use most of it no more than once a week, and no less than once in a blue moon. Yet people can have just as much convenience, with far fewer costs – and therefore less work – if they pool their resources: one lawnmower would usually suffice among ten, twenty, or more households, as would perhaps two or three drills and saws, and so on. Pooled equipment could be stored in a common tool shed, preferably situated near the middle of each group of households.
Individual households using collectively owned equipment serve themselves by looking after it as much as they do their own. Overt efforts to co-operate - for example, rostering of some tools such as lawnmowers - might be needed, but this constitutes a small price to pay compared to the inconveniences and costs of owning and maintaining one’s own tool arsenal. One notable group operates (or at least operated) a similar system with great success: the Scott Bader Commonwealth – a chemical producer whose employees all have shares in the company – provides (or provided) its workers with the free use of a well-stocked tool shed located on its grounds (as well as equipment for car repairs and maintenance).[450] Similarly, in California, the Berkeley Public Library offers its members free borrowing from its Tool Lending Library.[451]
Pooling resources and increasing self-sufficiency allows groups of households to gain in many other possible ways. Trainer suggested that a few simple co-operative steps at the neighbourhood level can eliminate “all need for sewage treatment works, mains pumping for domestic wastes… [and] most water supply mains.”[452] This demands little more than the collection of rainwater from home roofs, and each “10 to 20 houses… [to] flush their wastes into the one garbage gas unit [for electricity generation], which would also produce high quality garden fertiliser… They might all draw from the one windmill and heat storage tank, and make most use of the house on the block which has been converted to a group workshop, craft centre, library, computer terminal, store, drop-in centre and focal point for meetings, hobbies, leisure activities and entertainment. Where the back fences used to meet there might be a compact collection of jointly operated fowl pens, fish ponds, fruit-trees and greenhouses.”[453] Permaculture instead of (or in addition to) purely ornamental lawns and gardens also helps increase self-sufficiency.[454]
A free lunch makes the sharing of resources not only practical but desirable, offering an antidote to continuously expanding consumerism. Indeed, the potential inherent in a free lunch for improved lives and lifestyles seems restricted only by our imaginations…
8.7 Creativity
“The most important work in the world, and the pre-condition of everything else we do, is that of mothers having babies. But because mothers are not paid for their baby production it is not regarded as work… The answer is not to pay mothers for having babies (or for doing housework) but to phase out the market economy itself; only then will the work of motherhood be properly seen and recognised for what it is.” – Peter Cadogan[455]Whereas L$D-competition must grow to survive, must always require more and more, must ever expand into every last nook and cranny of our lives, a free lunch has capacities for the opposite: the minimisation of work, and the gradual reduction of the market economy. Because of CAPE, the less work we are paid to do, the more spare time we have and the lower the prices we pay. Consequently, a free lunch encourages us to re-examine how exactly ‘work’ is defined.
On this subject, section 7.2 briefly mentioned that CAPE makes it possible for much work in the arts, entertainment, sports, recreation, and sex ‘industries’ – among others perhaps – to return to being done for pleasure instead of for money. To this end, I offer a few suggestions, specifically concerning the arts (although some of the suggestions could also be used, perhaps in modified form, for at least the entertainment and sports ‘industries’ if not others)…
Whether creativity is pursued in regard to music, painting, sculpture, photography, literature, or other perhaps less categorisable art forms, it flourishes best when people have the time and financial freedom to explore their interests without concern of remuneration. A free lunch enables this because anyone can pursue their muse in their copious spare-time while living off income earned for other paid work or from a citizen’s wage.
Nevertheless, most if not all plurocracies will surely value the best and/or most popular artists sufficiently to reward and further encourage them by treating their efforts as payable work, thus freeing them from some or all of the time spent at other necessary work. In other words, some artists can be paid as such, either for the entirety of an average working week, or for part of it.
Choosing how many artists deserve full-time or part-time ‘professional’ status again can be left to plurocracy. Some level of subjectivity can’t be avoided, with public perception and popularity sure to play the major role. But other factors will also influence decisions: for example, in some nations or regions, long established artistic traditions might motivate the granting of professional status to a larger proportion of aspiring painters; whereas in other places, they might be excluded entirely. Artists’ wages might also vary depending on the nature and costs involved in their art. Perhaps some plurocracies, rather than having professional artists (or as well as), might include in their CAPE budget an art fund to be used at their discretion but ad hoc. The choice, as always with plurocracy, will remain with the people.
Whether a paid professional, or an unpaid amateur, all artists have costs associated with their art: paint, brushes, canvas, stone, musical instruments, equipment, electricity, and any other resource their art requires. These costs, as well as wages of professional artists, need to be estimated and planned for by CAPE, with sufficiently ‘big’ artistic project proposals – ones involving significant costs and resources – requiring agreement at a suitably high plurocratic level in order to be approved and pursued. The final total costs of artistic endeavour must then be added to all other costs so that CAPE can balance the grand total with that of prices (as per section 7.1). However, as section 7.5 explained, all free and discounted prices have to be taken into account – which raises the possibility of making at least some art free…
Probably a price (perhaps in some cases discounted) needs to be set for concerts, gallery displays, cinema film-screenings and other art performances, because these have costs beyond those of the individual artist. Nevertheless, much of the art itself can be made free – indeed, doing so makes it easier to decide which artists deserve professional status…
Imagine if the output of all musicians, writers, film-makers, or any professional or amateur whose art can be accessed from the Internet, is made available to download for free, with a record retained of each occasion this happens, but with downloaders obliged to provide a rating (say out of ten) once they have read the book, or watched the film, or heard (perhaps for the third time) the song or album. (If anyone fails to provide a rating within a given time, say a month, the download is ignored.) However, ratings need not be locked, but instead should remain free to be revised. In this way, a measure can be made not only of the number of people who had at least sampled the art, but also what they thought of it. Images of non-downloadable art such as paintings and sculpture could also be put on the Internet to publicise their artists’ work and to allow rating in a similar fashion as the downloadable art.
The highest-rated artists, in this way thus recognised for having either widespread popularity or more fanatical appreciation by fewer numbers, can then take priority for CAPE funding to pay them fully or partly for their work, whereas less successful others can be left to pursue their muse in their spare time. The dividing line can vary from one plurocracy to another, as they see fit, but of course it also has to take into account what can be absorbed by CAPE without detrimental effect on working hours or prices.
Whatever the specific details, artists will undoubtedly continue to be drawn to the possibility and allure of platinum albums, hit films, million-seller novels, and associated fame, but no matter how much success they achieve, their income cannot exceed the plurocratically agreed wages assigned to their work. They can’t get rich, but they can comfortably achieve recognition. Whereas amateurs will be spurred to continue their efforts, not just for their own personal satisfaction (which, if not trammelled by financial constraints, often provides all the motivation that’s needed) but also by hopes of promotion to professional status.
As for the art produced, if free, mass produced downloadable art can be made available as just described, whereas ‘unique’ art such as painting or sculpture can be stewarded rather than owned: undoubtedly some will be commissioned by interested individuals or plurocracies, but the rest can be given away by the artist to the first party wishing to steward the art (subject to the artist’s approval). Art commissioned or otherwise obtained by plurocracies of any level can be made available to the public in the usual ways, but need not stay within the boundaries of the stewarding plurocracy – it can sometimes be loaned to others. As for art already in existence, current owners retain the art but become its stewards, with an implicit obligation to share significant art – indeed, the abolition of excessive wealth in a free lunch future argues for most private stewards of art treasures to donate them to their city, region or nation to steward publicly.
Alternately, if art is not free, each professional artist can have a figure, possibly discounted, for each CAPE period which they charge in total for all art they produce over that period, with the flexibility to price each individual work as they see fit, subject only to their prices adding up to the assigned total. Then, professional artists would have a ‘producer’ account as explained in section 7.8, one credited with a figure at the start of each CAPE period, from which their expenses are deducted, and to which revenue from sales are credited. Amateurs, on the other hand, would have no ‘producer’ account, their costs being afforded from their ‘consumer’ account, and the prices of their work necessarily zero.
This last approach however runs into problems for professional artists who create mass produced downloadable art such as music, because the number of sales cannot be anticipated, making it impossible to accurately proportion the artist’s total prices across individual prices. I suggest this makes a strong additional case for having free art, at least for anything that can be downloaded. However, the final decision as to which if any art is made free, as always, will rest plurocratically with the people.
 Chapter 7 |
Chapter 9 |