Collective Wealth

That'll scare or surprise some individuals: "wealth" is predominantly understood as a private thing. Some individuals are wealthy and most are not. Still, most of us understand, if given a few moments thought, that wealth can only be created collectively. This is why it irks me to no end that we've collectively come to understand it to be the privilege of the few to be wealthy...

_{source: Wikimedia Commons}

One person can not create wealth. We all understand that. Even the kids in kindergarten can understand that simple fact of life. And even the most ardent supporters of capitalism understand it, as I'll come back to in a bit. I'll briefly try to explain why this is true, and for that I'll use a very simple definition of "wealth"; it's everything we get to own or use that's not strictly necessary to live a normal and decent life. What's a "normal and decent life" has evolved to mean many different things throughout history, for people in different regions and even for different individuals occupying the same time and region; I'll leave it up to you to decide what it means for you in the here and now.

Only through specialization and collaboration are we able to produce more than each of us needs individually. By dividing the process of production into a number of small, simple tasks can we produce exponentially more than each individual participating in the production process needs; Adam Smith understood this very well, and he called it "The division of labor". But he wasn't the first by far; some four centuries before Smith there was Ibn Khaldoun, an Arab historian and historiographer who's now considered to be the predecessor of modern disciplines of demography and sociology. Ibn Khaldoun was also the first philosopher who recognized that labor is the source of value, long before Smith or Marx. Here's a quote that's also shown in the below linked video:

But what is obtained through the cooperation of a group of human beings satisfies the needs of a number many times greater than themselves. For instance, no one, by himself, can obtain the share of wheat he needs for food but when six or ten persons including a smith and a carpenter to make the tools, and others who are in charge of the oxen, the ploughing of the soil, the harvesting of the ripe grain, and all the other agricultural activities, undertake to obtain their food... that amount will be food for a number of people many times their own. The combined labor produces more than the needs and necessities of the workers.

Described above is the technical division of labor, but the surplus that's produced as such is responsible for the gains made from trade as well; there has to be a surplus first before there's anything left to trade after all:

If the labour of the inhabitants of a town or city is distributed in accordance with the necessities and needs of those inhabitants, a minimum of labour will suffice. The labour available is more than is needed. Consequently, it is spent to provide the condition and customs of luxory and to satisfy the needs of the inhabitants of other cities. They import the things they need from people who have a surplus through exchange or purchase. Thus, the people who have a surplus get a good deal of wealth.

There. This is as true now as it was in the 14th century when Ibn Khaldoun wrote it down, and indeed many of his ideas have been reinvented by the likes of Smith, Ricardo and Marx; all of them understood that all value and all wealth is created through cooperative labor. What is it then, that concentrates almost all wealth in the hands of the few? What is it that places the handful, who do not labour and don't participate in the creation of wealth, above the rest of us? Well, that's simple, really; it's ideology and politics. Economists and politicians would have you believe that capitalism is like a law of nature, that it's set in stone and that it's nu use trying to change anything about it. And what's so sad, in my opinion at least, is that so many of us believe them. Something as simple and straightforward as raising the minimum wage to a living wage is shot down by "economics 101"; we can't do that, as it will cost jobs because employers will want to hire less workers if they have to pay each worker a higher wage. This sounds so damn plausible that most everyone just accepts this. The problem is that it's simply not true; this claim has been refuted by empirical data time and time again.

Or what about the fact, as described by Khaldoun's ideas about trading surpluses, that trade should be reserved only to the things we don't necessarily need to live a normal decent life? Take healthcare for example; the market laws of supply and demand break down when it comes to goods and services we need to stay alive. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained this truth in a few seconds by comparing life saving healthcare and medicine to an iPhone; when it comes to buying an iPhone the consumer has the choice to opt for a cheaper phone, or no phone at all even, but when we ask what someone's willing to pay to stay alive, the answer is "everything", there is no choice. But still we speak about "empowering the consumer" by giving them the "freedom of choice" between different, equally insufficient health insurances. This is just stupid, it defies all logic and human decency, but our blind belief in "economics 101", our ill begotten trust in "free market capitalism" has made us it's slave.

So, whenever someone tries to cut short the discussion about the topics that on their face seem unattainable according to our standard understanding of economics and politics, please keep asking follow-up questions. When someone claims that raising taxes on the obscenely rich is stupid because it would chase the rich away, point to the vast number of countries with significantly higher progressive taxation that manage to "keep" their multi-millionaires and billionaires. If they claim that taxing corporations more, or regulating them more will chase away those corporations, show them the empirical data that refutes that dumb idea. When they claim that allowing too much immigration of low wage workers will lower the wages of existing workers, point out the simple fact that this is only true for the first generation, and only for a very small amount, and that these workers also mean more mouths to feed, more homes to sell or rent out, more restaurants, in short, more economic activity that ultimately can only benefit the economy as a whole. The "simple truths" that are brought up to reject good ideas often aren't truths at all...

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, keep safe, keep healthy!

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