Jarold, no, it is not called socialism. See my first post in this threat. Socialism is based on public ownership of means of production AND the price regulation. If income is just redistribute via basic income, it does not have an effect of the ownership of means of production and definitely it does not have an effect for price regulation. On the contrary, because increasing median purchasing power of people will increase the power of free market economy, because free market economy is based on the supply and consumer demand. This is polar opposite to that of socialism and free market economy does work the better the higher is the median purchasing power of the people.
Therefore only thing what distinguishes socialism from ricardian capitalism, that in ricardian capitalism Rockefeller owns the means of production and controls the prices, but in socialism state owns the means of production and controls the prices. For individual consumer they both are the same, because democracy is lacking in both systems. And indeed without keynesian redistribution of wealth and antitrust laws, Rockefeller would indeed have the monopoly of production. The new economic system that Jed is referring is called Keynesian redistribution. That was widely practiced in 1960's, that was the golden age of keynesian redistribution. However, I would think that we need to modify keynesian redistribution in various ways. I personally would like to call the new keynesian economy as Star Trek economy, where there is no scarcity of basic needs ― globally! ―Jouni Sent from my iPad On Oct 9, 2012, at 11:14 PM, Jarold McWilliams <oldja...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > This economic system has already been developed. It is called socialism, or > what some people would call communism. When there is no more need for human > labor, it is obvious that governments are going to have to allocate > resources. Capitalism obviously won't work. >
