One of the things I’ve been trying to tackle in my brain box recently is the idea of what a post capitalist system would look like. I’ll not further beat the tired corpse of the analogy of a fish in the ocean not knowing what water is. I do however think it’s helpful to actually model out how a cooperative only system of economics and production could function.
There are countless areas where the only differentiation in consumer goods is personal preference or affordability. How different really are all the different products across the same type amongst brands? Products don’t vary too wildly in most areas, the big three is mainly: build quality, affordability and repairability. Sure there may be one company that corners a market but it’s generally only because they strangle competition in the exact opposite of a free market. What amazing new technology is in the 2025 iPhone compared to the 2018? Aside from a different UI and slight differences in camera, maybe a larger battery that they nerf after a while anyway. Do the top models of phones really have that much over each other?
There is a misconception that forms of non-capitalist economies are driven by owning nothing, that literally everything is shared, even your toothbrush. This of course is a fallacy but it strikes at the core of what could be the main fear with throwing off our consumerist shackles. The grey jumpsuit and legions of people moving around like bees in a mindless hive is an image that often goes hand in hand with the word communism. What would be left to get when there is no competing in the marketplace? Does this mean one type of car available? One type of cereal, one coffee, one shirt, one cut of jeans, one type of phone? But to that I ask, perhaps the real question should be do we really need 50 different brands of the same sedan? Or bread? Or sheets, computers, deodorant, pasta? On the other hand, an obscene amount of money is spent yearly by incumbent brands like Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s, not to sell you on some revolutionary new product but just to stay in the cultural eye.
If instead of hoarding the innovation and advancements within a walled garden, each company shared it’s intellectual property. Apple makes a super stylish device, Samsung makes an incredible camera, Google makes a super fast processor and BYD makes a battery that lasts a week all able to play together nicely in the one device.
Imagine a world where you have one phone for 10 years. But it does not stay stagnant, every year you swap out the camera for a better one, you double the memory, upgrade the processor every two years. And the true holy grail, you can replace the battery when it honestly starts losing capacity not because the manufacturer needs you to buy a whole new handset to increase their exorbitant bottom line. You only replace the entire thing when absolutely defunked or obsolete.
The reason all the companies play so nicely together? It’s in their interest to be cooperative rather than compete and wall off from each other. There is no “profit”. No shareholders to appease, no investors to pay back and with extra. The workers are paid their full worth, the operational costs are factored into each device, the designers & developers of the next device are fairly compensated for their value. And the real kicker? This would still probably be a good deal less in total than the price with the estimated 60% margin that is currently slapped on the top of the line iPhones & tech products today. Capitalism has done away with making the best possible products, we’ve known this for a while. The focus is on repeat sales, with the lowest possible production costs and as limited (to no) repairability as possible. This drives a cultural mindset that it’s easier to buy a new one rather than bother fixing, practically everything. When was the last time you stitched up a shirt that got a rip in it.
Patents and intellectual copyright is actually an anathema to cooperation and free market competition both. Locking away the designs to a biological wonder cure because it’s too profitable to continue selling a lesser recurring treatment is a visceral example where anti-sharing and market dominance has a tangible human cost. Cooperation would lead to a flourishing of human society, some of the greatest leaps forward in technology and advancement have been when we cooperate at a national level rather than compete in small fractured parties. Unfortunately it’s been the historic norm that these times are usually when we are having larger competition on the world stage trying very very hard to murder each other out of existence.
And then there’s the robots. Autonomous robots will be so impactful on society. More than likely however, autonomous robots will initially be first used to lick the boot of the wealthy by replacing factory workers at every possible turn and then just for good measure lick more boot doing chores and menial tasks around the home that the wealthy deem beneath them and not worth hiring an actual person to do, when they can have a live in slave that just needs charging every night. If we used autonomous robots in a cooperative way, instead of a replacement of human workforce, it could be a huge boon to human society. Working cooperatively alongside us to build, move and construct could lead to unprecedented achievement. Doing a majority of the demanding work in hazardous environments that a machine could operate within without any issue what so ever. Pesky human lungs and their fragility to toxic chemicals.
When viewed through a cooperative lense the world seems like a playground of possibilities. The scope of that possibility seems quite literally endless, the very stars above within reach. How would we put aside the squabbling and petty grievances like greed and power? Not to mention the lines we’ve drawn like scars along the earth to generate the nationalistic us competing against them. Sooner or later we must rise above our childlike fear of the other. If every child, woman and man had their basic needs met, would there be a need for such competition?
Ask yourself, if you had to do some manual and some mental labour for 6 hours on 2 days of the week – but the rest of the 5 days a week was yours – and you never had to worry about being without food, housing, healthcare, clothing, etc. for the rest of your life, would you still choose your current job? Would you still pick the current system, where you could be fired or replaced by a machine and have no way to survive?
Seems like we need more choice is our economic system if you ask me.