Should Our Basic Human Needs be Treated as Commodities?

[dominus]

Should houses be treated as commodities? The more I've given this thought, the more I've come to the conclusion that decent housing is a fundamental human right. We all need it just in the same way that we need decent health care. Should the condition of our health be treated as a commodity? I don't think so. We all need to eat healthy. Should food be treated as a commodity? Again, I don't think so. If our primary human needs are monetized than it's inevitable that many people who have less than others will suffer a poorer quality of life. I'd like to know what others think about this issue and welcome your thoughts.

[danejasper]

Should houses be treated as commodities? The more I've given this thought, the more I've come to the conclusion that decent housing is a fundamental human right. We all need it just in the same way that we need decent health care. Should the condition of our health be treated as a commodity? I don't think so. We all need to eat healthy. Should food be treated as a commodity? Again, I don't think so. If our primary human needs are monetized than it's inevitable that many people who have less than others will suffer a poorer quality of life. I'd like to know what others think about this issue and welcome your thoughts.

Would you argue for socialism when it comes to housing, food production, perhaps clothing as well. This gives me visions of bread lines in the USSR; it wasn't a very productive system.

[daynurse]

Would you argue for capitalism when it comes to housing, food production, perhaps clothing as well? This gives me visions of long lines at food banks, crappy clothing from overseas, homeless with cardboard signs in grocery store parking lots and on roadsides, rising gas prices; it wasn't a very productive system.

Would you argue for socialism when it comes to housing, food production, perhaps clothing as well. This gives me visions of bread lines in the USSR; it wasn't a very productive system.

[Praksys]

Good show Dane!. There seems to be an excess of disconnected capital in the world looking for a 'return' on investment. It is disconnected from the 'real' economy and human needs. How do we reconnect so everyone has a house and health care, etc? The three factors of the Economic Process, Land Labor & Capital, Money too, are not commodities when considering their true nature. Land Labor and Capital are really the 'boundaries' of the economy. We just need to learn this economic fact of life. No, I'm not suggesting socialism or 'command' economy. Capital can be social - no ism's required. Capital needs to be placed into the path of initiative, of good ideas and intuitions. How to do this is the question of our epoch. Land labor and capital can also be thought of as Place (environment) people (so called, labor) and profit (so called, capital). These are the 3 bottom lines! Capital needs follow human capacities and initiative that meets human needs. The spiritual potential of capital. When an individual is financially successful through there inventiveness, luck or whatever, they could not have done it with out a civil society around them. Roads, clean air and water (hopefully) a good education and good kindergarten teacher, your neighbors growing up, etc. As Ben Franklin used to say, "If you don't want to contribute the 'extra' you have to others around you then go live with the savages and stay out of the society that allowed you to make your fortune. Daniel O. Associative Economics Cafe

Should houses be treated as commodities? The more I've given this thought, the more I've come to the conclusion that decent housing is a fundamental human right. We all need it just in the same way that we need decent health care. Should the condition of our health be treated as a commodity? I don't think so. We all need to eat healthy. Should food be treated as a commodity? Again, I don't think so. If our primary human needs are monetized than it's inevitable that many people who have less than others will suffer a poorer quality of life. I'd like to know what others think about this issue and welcome your thoughts.

[paulswetdog]

Why does it always have to be the old "Socialism = Stalinism" trope? Can't we even look at what socialism might provide without dragging out that tired old boogyman, Uncle Joe?

Hey, I don't know about you, but I don't see this terminal capitalist system as working all that well. Maybe if you are in the 1%, or the top 10%, but what about the rest of the planet?

Pointing at the failure of the Soviet Union to discredit "socialism" (whatever that term actually means), is a "straw man argument".

["Mad" Miles]

Those who confuse Marxist-Leninist failed "efforts" at "Communism"*, one of which is currently the most productive and expanding national economy on the planet today, with Socialism, are bound to repeat the mistakes of history.

*Whether a truly sincere effort was made, to achieve the stated goals, is a knotty discussion unto itself. I would say that like most systems of control, there was a lot of "happy talk" and very little commitment to actual, concerted efforts to make any of it real. Political control seems to have been the first and foremost priority for the rulers of the U.S.S.R..

Even one faction of the M-L movement called Soviet "Socialism", State Capitalism (Trotskyists' term for the Soviet economic "System").

The modern economies of Scandanavian countries, Germany, Holland, France, Italy and a few other places, as in all of Great Britain, have far more to do with Socialism than anything we saw on the "Eastern" side of The Cold War.

And when speaking of Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, etc. such terms are so broad, that you aren't saying anything meaningful until you define which sub-tendency/category you are referring to. A common error that is seen here on a repeated basis.

An error often made by those who think "Command Economy" without further description, is an adequate reference to something real. Since Von Mises and Hayek were debating Keynes back in the thirties and forties, and afterwards, and it was the lumping together of Fascist (Germany and Italy) with Communist (Russian Soviet Socialism) as the Command Economies juxtaposed to the "Free Market" Capitalist economies of Great Britain and the U.S. which were the paragons of all that is good in a market, without much acknowledgment of the role of Central Planning in the U.S., England and Western Europe during the WWII and post-war reconstruction efforts.

In other words, a superficial antagonism between two generalized Straw Men, in a theoretical debate that was unconnected to the reality of the time. (Let alone the last thirty to forty years of economic policies in the West!?) A debate which is no longer given any credence in the circles of Economic academics, except in marginal pools of isolated ideological backwater, such as George Mason "University".

As we've seen over and over, put some serious money into promoting the most archaic and debunked of ideas, and you can still create a semblance of credibility. At least a semblance among those ignorant of the history of the debate, in the wider world.

The recrudescence of abstract conservative libertarianism, since 1980, is a directly related, parallel, example of the same thing. A concerted effort to sell it as a relevant political philosophy, has produced results. As we can see from the vociferous promoters of Ron Paul here on a daily basis. Let's hear it for the Olin Foundation and the Koch brothers! Just a few of the predominant players. But who knew about the Koch brothers before the Walkerization of Wisconsin?

And Dane, I'm a radical democrat (process, not party) an anti-authoritarian, I've never celebrated the Russian Revolution, at least not post-1926. (At the latest. The crushing of the Kronstadt Rebellion was the end of hope for that cause. That was 1921.)

At the same time there were breadlines across Russia, there were breadlines across the entire Western World. There was rationing in Great Britain after WWII up into the early and mid-fifties.

History is complex and useful examples need to be specific enough to establish themselves as relevant to the point made. Otherwise it's just whistling, or projecting some other substance, into the wind.

Guess what? There's many a "capitalist" economy where housing, and other necessities such as food, education, medical care, social services and basic culture are seen as universal rights. They tend to be run by Social Democratic systems of government. Something we do not have here in the land of "free markets". The reasons why, historically complicated having to the with different histories of working class resistance to exploitation, are many and varied.

When making comparisons between substantially different societies, it pays to acknowledge and explain those differences. Explanations that make sense are rarely couched in gross generalized terms such as, Socialism, Communism, Democracy, Central Planning, Command Economies and so on.

Not that it will stop those with ideological axes to grind and no interest in nuanced discussion, from trotting out the tropes of obfuscation. Too many think there's only one kind of Marxism, and it's synonomous with Tyranny. Those people can't be helped. They're stuck.

But I've never found you, Dane, to be someone who is intellectually or politically sclerotic. Breadlines? Whose? Where? When? Why?

As deluded as I think they are, there is a certain constituency in Russia that longs for the pre-1989 days. And objective, statistically based, measures of well-being among the general populace, give them some valid reasons to think so. For me, the tragedy of modern Russia is that they traded an authoritarian, bureaucratically ossified, form of State Capitalism, for a seemingly "free market" form of authoritarian Capitalism, which is in reality a kleptocracy controlled by the former bureaucrats. And the Mafias. Sort of like the U.S. in the '20's and 30's and on.

Who knows what will happen in the long run in Russia, maybe "prosperity" will reach down to most people? But from what I can tell from this distance, it's unlikely. It seems they've adopted the worst aspects of both the old and the rival system. That's also a big topic and who has the time or patience to explore it here?

You want a nightmare image to distinguish the U.S.S.R. from the West? The Gulag fits the bill. Except that if you were to ask my former students at San Quentin what the relevant differences are/were, you might get a spirited argument that the similarities far outweigh any such differences.

[CSummer]

I appreciate the 'spirit' of this question, and I'd like to offer another way to ask it:

What kind of world do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a world where everyone's basic needs are met if they're lucky enough to have a job or some other source of monetary income? Or do we want to live in a world where all basic human needs are met - or where everyone has at least the opportunity to meet those needs - regardless of income?

The important difference is the lack of the word "should," which turns it into a question of morality and makes it instantly argument material. If instead we ask "What kind of world do we want to live in," then we begin to lay the groundwork for creative cooperation. We open the possibility that we could begin working together to create that world - at least on a small, local scale.

If we say that all basic human needs should be met regardless of a person's financial situation, we will generate resistance as soon as we move to impose that on others. If those of us who want to create and live in that kind of world come together and form communities (as alternative socio-economic systems) with the intention to work toward that end, we may find a lot of people eager to join with us. I've written on that briefly here under the Occupy Everywhere category (where I wrote "We can meet all basic human needs without the use of money . . .").

It is not within our power to impose our morality on others (if it is, we have a problem). It is within our power, I believe, to begin working cooperatively to build the kind of society we want to live in and leave to future generations. First we have to come together around a set of shared values that define what we want. Toward that end, I've started a new thread under Talk titled The Field: Seeking Common Ground (I plan to post a proposed set of values soon.)

CSummer

Should houses be treated as commodities? The more I've given this thought, the more I've come to the conclusion that decent housing is a fundamental human right. We all need it just in the same way that we need decent health care. Should the condition of our health be treated as a commodity? I don't think so. We all need to eat healthy. Should food be treated as a commodity? Again, I don't think so. If our primary human needs are monetized than it's inevitable that many people who have less than others will suffer a poorer quality of life. I'd like to know what others think about this issue and welcome your thoughts.