Imagine There’s No Countries, What will Take Their Place?

Our children becoming adults are entering an uninviting world filled with intergenerational warfare. They are finding a wall of debt and a jungle of entitlement that they are now expected to maneuver through as they find their way in the world. They now clamor for relief and dream of a day when they will have their turn at creating a government that works for them perhaps at the expense of those that came before them. This intergenerational struggle is a mask for that struggle we all must now endure between corporatism and nationalism.

“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”

John Lennon’s words of a dreamer hoping for a world in which man’s better nature overpowers his lesser one are but those of a hopeful dream unfettered by the realities of mankind. I used to dream this way as a school boy. Glancing at the chalkboard occasionally only to memorize the math tables in case by chance I might be called upon to recite them by my teacher, I would then stare off into the clouds outside my classroom window and think of such peaceful things.

And it is becoming easier for the children now becoming adults to dream this way, for their chances at success in the material world are becoming less and less a reality of the dreams they aspired to fulfilling. The dreams of a world yet to fulfill the promises of enlightenment seems a better goal to these young dreamers than the drudgery of cleaning up after the dreams turned nightmares of their baby boomer parents.

Yet, dream as we all must, the reality is that neither Lennon’s nor Lenin’s dreams of a world to come have any basis for they do not measure what man’s lesser nature is capable of achieving in practice. Our now adult children will aspire to dismantling the government entitlements that we built for ourselves at their expense and they will have their chance to meet their own aspirations. Yet what will take the place of our generation’s dreams that they dismantle?

We will not move toward a utopian world without borders that they dream about, but instead our future is hurdling toward a nationalistic dystopia where nationalism is replaced by corporatism, where national armies are usurped by corporate militaries, where geographic borders are porous, only signaling which populations will pay for the non-viable workers in their regions yet containing none of the more glorious privileges of citizenship.

Dreamers must allow themselves to dream the uglier side of life, driven by the lesser nature of mankind, and then they must put those dreams, nay nightmares, forward for the rest of humanity to witness. It is only in the sacrifice of a dreamer sharing his vulnerability that the rest of us have a moment to adjust our paths, if only to thwart those dreams before they become realties.

A Social Contract Exists Between Business and the Government of the People

While classical corporatism has other meanings, the context of corporatism to which I refer is really neo-corporatism, the power shifting that occurs between owners, managers and labor for economic sharing. it’s this whole shift of power from individuals to the state to the corporations that defines our modern day and controls our every pattern of life. I continue to question the flaws of corporatism in that it does not meet the goals of man’s orignal intent.

Corporations came into existence because kings wanted them for their own aggrandizement and because other aggressive men saw this as an entrance to sharing power with kings. Corporations were not intended by their original form to be the answer for full employment. Yet through the centuries this orignal intent has been replaced by an unwritten social contract of employment for the good of the community.

As society evolved, craftsmen found that work other than that on the farm could sustain them and their apprentices and thus businesses were formed, again with no social contract other than that which could be gained by the mutual benefit of seller and buyer.

But within man is the natural state of altruism. It is in our DNA. We cannot walk by others in squalor without a tinge to help. This tendency then manifests itself in government for government is merely the mirror of our sense of self. So governments evolve a structure of social safety nets to help the less fortunate among us. With such artificial constructs, how then do we provide for the needy except through various abnormal means such as taxation and such impositions on businesses as the minimum wage?

Now through advances in innovation and productivity, businesses have provided more and more for the common good and thus the level of squalor that we can conceive of allowing within our community continues to lessen. We expect that the least among us should be provided for through higher and higher standards. Such standards as these could not possibly be provided for if man were to be turned away from society to exist on his own living on only that which he could carve out of the wilderness.

And even if he could, there is no wilderness for men to exist within, for our modern capitalism has divvied all lands to provide the capital for modern business to thrive and for government to use as a means for the common safety net of its citizens. Therefore, the modern construct of corporatism that our nations have agreed will be the means to provide for the common good no longer provides an escape or alternative for the rugged individual.

We must therefore agree that a social contract exists whereby the capture of land and capital by government and business must also provide for those less fortunate and must provide for the employment of all to exist and to contribute to the community. This social contract that has haphazardly evolved is broken and must be fixed by an equally evolving paradigm of the right of all men to full employment.