The place for Socialism?

 

Everyone says socialism doesn't work, and for good reason. On the national scale it has thus far proven to be a disaster (I talk about this here). 

However, I believe there's a model of functional socialism that does work that we can look at today: Cruise ships.

Operationally, a cruise ship works as a private, small economy that's totally centralised. Cruise ships work well to the end of it, and I think it could be a good idea, basically, to build a kind of cruise ship on the land. The following model gives the key differences:

1. Low density and economical to build. 

2. The people who live in it also own it. They own shares in the master structure, not just their personal house and land.

3. The residence are also the workers (usually).

4. It has its own currency. Like a casino, you buy and sell eChips via a phone app, which are then used for trade and payment within the development.

5. It's highly unregulated. Minimum wages, local taxes, and even building codes, etc, are set by the collective within the development. It's a private economy - the regulatory hand on the national level is light.

The socialist economy, like a cruise ship, would and should be strictly residential - not commercial. It cooks, cleans, educates and transports, etc, but for the most part it does not make and sell to the commercial economy, which I believe should be strictly free-market. The developments I propose have nothing directly to do with the wider free market. They're more like a collectivised extension of the home.

The effect?

Very cheap housing, life amongst your kind of people, practically no crime, relaxed living and a very low cost of living. 

It also provides a protective barrier for the residence in case of economic problems in the wider (free market) society, which is one of the reasons why it can be a good idea to operate a private currency within the development. 

If built from the ground up it can employ electric driverless technology (instead of traditional cars), which allows us to make unusually beautiful townships where everything is easily accessible, again like a cruise ship. Please expand the included image bellow to visualise this.

Competition: A cruise ship is still subject to the forces of competition. If they're not efficient and don't give the customer what they want, they fail. And this is how it would be for land-based 'cruise ships' as well. They must compete with alternatives and this will keep them in check.

So how about that? A socialist base that ensures prosperity and comfort where it matters the most, and without the plastic commercialism, yet at the right scale so people can always see clearly what's going on to keep their 'machine' in check. 

This I believe is where socialism can find its natural place. Small scale - and private. What about national socialism? Avoid it like the plague.

Extended video here.

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Libertarian note: If our society were made up of private "cells" (as I like to call them), of about 2,000 to 10,000 persons strong, it would create an extremely powerful force to resist government overreach, on the national level. 

On research, for example, the academic groups within the cells would do their homework on government policy, and communicate effectively within their group, naturally having the ear of the local people as they are more than strangers to them. This holds government policy to account. It is far, far harder to propagandise a strong private group over a fragmented mass. And also, it becomes extremely hard for national governments to create intrusive policy that really should be left to private groups. In my opinion, this is an important dynamic that we are sorely missing today in our industrialised socialites.