"I *did* enjoy hearing Chomsky answer this question at a NAFTA talk in ABQ 15 years
ago with the simple statement "Socially Responsible
Investing is a contradiction in terms". There was a loud titter among
the roughly 50% students and a deafening silence among the other 50%
Yuppie/Academic/Retireds."
What exactly is the claim?
I've been contemplating that question myself. Here's my closest thing
to answers:
That property is theft?
I wouldn't have said so at that time, but in some extreme, I believe
this to be true. Or is always true by some increments. At some
point, private property becomes hoarding. Those whose rhetoric is
against the 1%'s or promote graduated income tax, etc. are saying that
*at some point*, accumulation of private property is wrong/disallowed by
the collective. As a private property owner (of many kinds) I have the
habit of imagining that *my* level isn't hoarding and *my* ownership
doesn't undermine the quality of anyone else's life, *even* if I judge
that to be the case in others. That doesn't make it true... just my
habit and apprehension!
That all investments ought to be public investments?
If there is no private hoards of wealth, then there is no other mode of
investment than "public". This of course, begs other issues such as
WHO is the collective? What is it's scope? A family, a clan, a tribe,
a region, a culture, a nation, a "world"?
Or is it a weaker claim that, say, people or organizations should not be
able to float along living off `earnings' from interest?
I have heard a lot of rhetoric to this effect of late. "Unearned
Income". I'm not a deep scholar of Socialism or Communism, but I think
all of this has been explored and documented.
I have developed gedankenexperiments for my own edification and I *do*
think there is a fundamental concept of private investment. If, for
example, I invest my time in building a really good lever, then when I
*use* that lever, I can do twice or ten times the work of anyone else...
I now *own* an investment that gives me leverage, literally and
figuratively. In principle I can loan it out for others to use, or use
my arcane knowledge to make more and trade them to others for things
*they* have acquired through skill or luck or might? For some, this
game falls down with people like Trump and his new Cabinet of
multi-millionaires, for others, it falls down much earlier.
My mythology about the Australian Indigenous (formerly know as
Aboriginal) peoples is that they have always chosen to "own" only what
they could carry in their hands, or in their "dilly bag". But most of us
don't want to live in the primitive conditions they chose, accepted, or
found themselves in. Most of us want one or two (or more) cars we can
drive across the continent at the drop of a hat, a house big enough for
4 or 5 refugee families, a pile of consumer electronics and other items
that are as much fetish objects as they are actually the "tools" we
claim them to be!
I think the more interesting question is the question of "the
commons". In our new economy based significantly on non-physical
assets, on intellectual property, how do we manage a "commons" to the
benefit of all, not just the *already wealthy and powerful*?. Most of my
own "intellectual property" is nothing more than secret sauce, tricks of
the trade that I have one or another angle on (or not), but if I *did*
own some trademarks, patents, copyrights of value, I would be a bit
conflicted. *I* sure hate it when other's IP claims limit my own
ability to do interesting work. I have even spent time in the devils
camp helping clients defend their IP. Fortunately it felt a little like
Robin Hood since they were defending against the likes of Google and
Disney. But if I asked the collective (clan, tribe) to enforce my
*ownership* of the design of the lever I invented (discovered) to
prevent anyone else in the group to use my design without compensating
me to my satisfaction, I somehow think that is not good for anyone
(except vaguely me?).
I think it is good if candidates just come right out with that as part of
their platform. Likewise, salary caps for doctors, lawyers, and so on. It
would take decades for it to gain much support, I think -- people have too much
investment in American Dream type fantasies -- but it is worth proposing.
Along with neoConservatives and neoLiberals, are you suggesting it is
time to coin neoSocialists or neoCommunists?
My extreme view is that *anarchy* is the natural state but that with
enough careful thought and practice an idealized *community* is
possible. The latter would be an effective full up communistic society
(and would need "government" as much as *anarchy* needs government, it
would be self-organizing based on principles not unlike the golden rule
or the ten commandments) but then that IS very utopian and inside every
utopia is a dystopia (recursively) hiding a utopia... etc.
- Steve
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