It is widely known that the current state of human civilization is unsustainable. Whether it's peak oil, global warming, or population growth, we all recognize that humanity faces some profound challenges in the near future. What is not known is how these problems will be solved. We lack not only the solutions, but also the means to find solutions. Our economic and political systems, which are inherently short-sighted, seem completely incapable of tackling such long-term challenges. Businessmen worry about their next quarterly review, and politicians worry about their next election. In both cases, decisions are being made based on what is in their own short-term self interest. What is missing in the system is planning, a method of making decisions for the common good. Without planning, we will never achieve a sustainable civilization.
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| Karl Marx |
It should be noted that not all planning is central planning. By arguing for a system with more planning, I am in no way proposing another experiment in top-down decision-making like what happened in Russia in 1917. Russian revolutionaries like Lenin, along with their intellectual guides like Marx, believed that the only way to create a just society for all was to have a "dictatorship of the proletariat". This idea had noble intentions, but it resulted in a totalitarian state with complete power. Some still argue that the achievements of the Soviets, for example in rapid industrialization and technological advance, prove the viability of communism. Others will point to the success of modern-day China, the heir apparent of the communist revolution, as evidence of the effectiveness of central planning. But in both cases, any benefits of planning came at a terrible cost. It remains to be seen whether China's prosperity will be sustainable, but even if it is, its political system leaves Chinese citizens with much to be desired.
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| Occupy Wall Street General Assembly, October 2011 |
What we need is a new kind of planning, one that is decentralized and democratic. Another way to describe this concept is bottom-up decision-making, as opposed to top-down. The most well known example of this in recent years is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was a spontaneous serious of protests and encampments that appeared in Fall 2011 across America. The name defined the movement as having an anti-corporate ideology, but Occupy's greater purpose was to create an outlet for frustration and anger against mainstream politics. The reason the protests spread so rapidly is that there is no other outlet for such emotions, no meaningful source of accountability and redress from our current political system. The general assemblies held at Occupy encampments were almost shocking in their radical departure from the normal format of public discussion. There was usually no podium or stage, just a crowd of people on the same level. No one person had control over the flow of the conversation, it was determined simply by what people had to say. They used hand signals to communicate without speaking, and used the "human mic" to amplify whoever was speaking. Occupy was often criticized for not having specific demands, and there is some truth to this. A wide variety of political ideologies were represented in the movement, from old-style leftists to Randian libertarians. While all agreed that the system was corrupt, there was not always agreement on why it was corrupt or how to fix it. The lack of specific demands can also be attributed to the lack of a hierarchical structure. Because Occupy was inherently a leaderless movement, there was no person or group with the authority to declare something as the official demands. But this lack of leadership is also what makes the Occupy movement truly profound. The purpose of Occupy was not simply to argue for a certain set of solutions to our problems. It was to discredit the process of decision-making used in our political system, and to create a new process that can replace it. Their criticism is correct, and their process is promising. If more efforts like Occupy are successful, we have a chance to make the 21st century a golden age of progress. Until then, we will be like hamsters on a treadmill chasing cheese, seeing nothing but what's right in front of us.
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