To Slave or To War, That Is the Question

This article crystallizes some of the key concepts I have advocated for: PMdA, Cantillonianism, and Anarchism

Slavery of sorts seems to be the only alternative to war and competition for resources.

Maybe if all the world’s soldiers were to be redeployed to being slave drivers and slave owners, the world would be a better place.

Maybe, just maybe, the many thousand of years of slavery we had before the 19th and 20th centuries actually prevented the very wars we had in the recent centuries.

I would venture to guess, that maybe, maybe, maybe, war is what happens when slavery is eliminated.

Productivity Relation

There must be a negative impact on “human” capital and productivity when “owning” a slave is made illegal. (This is NOT to say that fear is the only or the most effective way to accomplish productivity!).

This negative impact can be seen from the following inquiring lens: what exactly is the new “rule” for acquiring human productivity?

Whether it be a “salary” negotiation, “transportation” costs (related to living away from work), option to “leave” for a higher salary, or a simple refusal to have a task completed due to insubordination or disagreement, the writing on the wall is clear: owning a slave is faster, cheaper and more efficient…

Cost Relation

As soon as the world removed “slavery” from its modus operandi, it became clear that the act of “managing” costs actually becomes a “real” task! A “new” task/job to be performed by the “management” (previously the “slave driver”).

The irony of it all, is that the “act” of managing costs itself became so cumbersome and protracted that it actually added even more costs and time to the execution of a project.

It is as if “management”, rather than the “employees” are the real bottleneck to productivity! And thus, I have argued in the past.

These, however, are only the beginnings of the “cost” problem!

Besides the preeminent matter of labour unions that are formed to insist on “worker rights” and “better pay” (all of which increase the “costs of labour” exponentially), we also have rather insidious matters of managing “cash-flow”, “establishing” demand, “meeting” the demand, “responding” to demand fluctuations, “preparing” for demand changes, and “managing” production process; all of which, rather very extensively, add to the cost.

Had we kept slavery, some of the problems would undoubtedly still persist, but there would have been a “lesser” headache due to reduced “human labour” expenditure and management concerns.

Wars!

Naturally, the human race has not yet become “super-intelligent”. When we see problems, we address them only to “fit” what we now know and observe. As a result, when we identified the problems that came with industrialization, we invented “solutions”, nay solution!, that will address the decreased productivity, and increased cost-of-production problems.

We invented (modern) warfare and imperialism!

Matter settled, apparently…

Except that warfare not only costs human lives, but will not actually and truly add to “productivity” in the sense that, for all the pomp, fear and fire that are deployed to “motivate” humans to “defend” their nations and pride, there is a complete MISDIRECTION of human labour and productivity! Yes, maybe, some of this “misdirection” might only later be found to be “useful”; but that doesn’t negate the fact that the majority of it is still not being geared towards creating value. In fact, pretty much all of it, is devoted to the destruction of the MOST invaluable resource on the planet: human lives!

Competition!

Perhaps! We humans thought, the “antidote” to the “war” problem would be to allow humans to “compete” in the markets: through selling products and services that may benefit the society as a whole in an interconnected and fair “trade” platform.

That sounds “nice”! But it, once again, shows our shortsightedness as human beings. Like I said, we just won’t do “super-intelligence”!

The problem with “competitive” trading in the markets, is that it, by definition, involves the active production of waste. What exactly happens to all the market “losers”? What happens to the capital they spent on human labour, equipment, “management” and distribution/retail?

It is one thing to argue that some of this “waste” is necessary for a “robust” system that requires redundancies, but it has become quite evident in recent decades, that markets are often incredibly bad at determining waste from gold! Even if they were good at it, it takes a very long time, a lot of extremely complex “market-system” dynamics and a lot of capital for markets to “determine” the “gold”! For example, I beg to argue that Microsoft is likely the worst OS ever invented! But let’s say I’m wrong: that the markets decisively and fairly crowned “Bill!”, the King of the Gates of software!

But this would only prove my point: that we are using an extremely dangerous market “metric” to judge a product’s value: that of the number of sales it generated and the number of users, companies, developers and hardware vendors that “use” the product. Numbers! Not “value”, is what we are now asking the market to tell us! We could use the “numbers” to determine the value, but that’s not the same thing as arguing that “value” could be determined via the experience of the first user/consumer of the product. In other words, if the first 10 users turn out to be disappointed, but (by some miracle), the product still managed to sell a million copies; the “market” would have judged the first 10 users “irrelevant” to the denomination of the “true” value of the product. Once again, this is now a numbers game! Not a “value” determination game!

Being a numbers game, this is truly not that different from warfare; especially when one takes into account the many “casualities” of capital lost, suicides from business bankruptcies, jobs “lost”, and the list is extensive but brutal to the lives it affects; all the name of market “competition”.

Forward To The Past!

Which brings us one full circle back to the idea of slavery being the best form of human productivity.

Well, perhaps then, we could “explore” what options we have with regards to how slavery can be useful in avoiding escalating labour costs, wars and competition. Keeping in mind that if one takes the “slavery” concept a little too far, too seriously or even literally, the “war”, competition and human-live-cost problems would only compound!

Option 1

The first option we have is that of government-led “employment” or socialism. The Big Brother will tell us what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why we do it. As slaves of the state: we “serve the people”, our brothers, sisters and friends.

Option 2

The second option we have of anarchism (not capitalism). We do what we want, love and are good at. We trade when we need to, want to or have to. But we are simultaneously given free access to land, natural resources and other amenities to survive the daily “drudgery” of being human.

Option 3

Universal Basic Income. Everyone is “sponsored” by the state, without having to be a slave to the state! In this way, we can have full access to the “modern” facilities and amenities without having to own/have land that one could use for basic necessities of shelter, community and food.

Option Analysis

Option 1 is not sustainable as proven by the facts of history. In fact, there’s no objective way for any government to “judge” what should be produced and how “much” of it should be produced. In other words, even if the “government” concerned was a private corporation, there would be no guaranteed “certainty” of productive output.

Option 2 is the best option as I shall explain below.

Option 3 is a little suspicious. For one thing, there is no way to “cap” the market prices around products and access to modern facilities. Most likely, the product prices would just go up due to increased access and demand. UBI simply won’t work!

The Better Way!

To avoid “competition”, “warfare” and terrible abuses of human-capital, we have only the option of “Cantillonian” anarchism (CA) left.

CA is neither “social” nor “economic” in its key resolution of the human “productivity” problem. It is almost entirely “psychological”. It relates to Rene Girard’s “memetic theory” in that it sees our memetic desires as the root of suffering, laziness and unnecessary conflict/warfare.

Viewed one way: CA is “self-imposed” slavery. It is a “vow” to completely serve fellow humans.

Viewed another way: CA is the perfect resolution to the “productivity” paradox. The paradox involves the reality that we “know” we need to work (in order to survive/eat, among other reasons), and the fact that we never truly know “what” we need to be doing/working-on that somehow “benefits’ society/someone enough for them to “appreciate” it! The socialism/militarism “hack” only focuses on the former element of the paradox. The capitalist/UBI “hack” only focuses on the latter element of the paradox. Both are insufficient!

Let’s not waste any further time on competition, wars and state-slavery… Let’s work! Let’s create! Let’s build for the future!