Private Property and Equality
Have you ever noticed that when you type interesting and your right hand is off, it types Interestomg? Well that happened to me. Anyway, on with my idea. As you probably know, I consider myself a communist. I think most of the problems in this world could be resolved by removing inequality and private property. And I also think that the idea that it "doesn't work" is ridiculous; it's never been correctly tried.
However, that's not the point of my post. The other day I was talking with GiantSquid, and I thought of an interesting system that would ensure equality, while maintaining private property, which a lot of people desire. Now, let me state that I do not endorse this idea. I'm still a communist. I'm just putting this idea out there. It's a bit like socialism, but more extreme. It's a little hard to describe, so I'll try my best.
Ok, so imaging the economic system we have in the US today. I will steadily swap things out until it matches my system. The first thing I'll do is make everyone a salary worker. So you're never paid by the hour. Now that has problems because you would be inclined not to work much, so the government mandates that you work x hours for y job. So now we have a pretty different system because everyone is making the same amount of money, which makes equality, right? Not quite. What about business owners and vendors? They make a different amount depending on who buys their products. So we need to take another step here. My choice in this system is a kind of weird one, and it might be a bit difficult to describe to you. Imaging in this world, when you buy something, you hand over cash / swipe your credit card / whatever, but the store owner doesn't gain anything. You simply give them the money and they "destroy" it. The money goes out of circulation. Therefore business owners and vendors would just make a salary, just like anyone else. People who enjoy that sort of thing would do it. That's what makes sure everyone is equal in this system.
Now, I'm sure you've got a lot of questions and challenges, so let me settle some of the most obvious ones. Obviously the money isn't destroyed, it'd be silly to recreate all those bills. Storefronts would give the money to government collection lines who would recycle the money for giving as salaries. Next, a cynical person might say, How can we trust people to give the money back to the government? Well, how can we trust people to do anything in today's society? We give laws and do justice for those that break them. Why can't we do the same thing with breakers of this law? We can. If things really started getting out of hand, we could encourage more widespread use of credit / debit cards. This way, money would go directly to the government instead of through seller's hands.
I think this system provides private property while keeping equality. I'm not sure what I think of it, but it's certainly better than Capitalism. I need a name for it. Any help? Please; feel free to email me suggestions.