The “desert island” scenario – An interesting way to look at things
What happens when the surviving passengers from a sinking ship reach dry land on a desert island. So there are survivors with various capabilities and skills. You have a doctor, a mathematician, a millionaire, the boss of the corporation, a carpenter, a warehouse man, a waitress, chef and so on.
So after swimming ashore, does the millionaire, reach for the nearest hammock and say, “I don’t need to work, I am a millionaire”? Does the doctor join him and say, “there is no one sick yet, I need not work”? Does the waitress run around serving everyone, while the carpenter gets on with building a shelter?
Probably not, at that stage in time the value hierarchy would reverse. For, what good is a millionaire on a desert island? Whereas a carpenter could produce, maybe even life saving possibilities, by the use of his or her skills, in designing and constructing a shelter. So, should the carpenter head for the hammock and say. If you pay me well I might build you a house?
No of course not. They all would have to dig in and decide on the allocation of work to be done by each, if they are to survive. New skills would need to be learned and decisions made by each of the group, could be crucial for their survival. So there is nothing stopping people from creating their own institutions, their own conventions, in how they work, their own value systems.
To actually state this obvious fact is to remind oneself of how far society has been locked into the ridged structure that forms the present status quo. Do we think millionaires, will do anything to benefit ordinary people, when most of their millions (trillions) are made from exploiting them?
That is why we have/had unions, cooperatives, collectives, coalitions, or whatever we wish to call collective action. As those at the top get more bloated on the wealth of the land, those below them are getting hungry and angry. But we can’t fight this system by the systems own rules. We would never win. What we need is a system, or the tools to change a system that will encompass as Michael Albert would say,”values that we hold dear.” Capitalism has nowhere to go apart from devouring us, then itself. We can’t afford to wait and watch that happen.
We need to get off this sinking ship and start to use the tools that will bring value to our lives, not to continue with the tools of capitalism that are dragging us like a dead weight to the bottom.
Farage fuck sake.