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%social[w90,jmc]		Towards a viable socialism

	The ideas of socialism have attracted many millions
of people.  Socialism of the revolutionary variety has worked
out very badly and is in the process of being rejected.
Socialism of the democratic variety has had its ups and downs,
and in practice is not perceived as being very different
from capitalism.  It often doesn't keep the enthusiasm
of those who tend to be attracted to revolutionary socialism.

	The subject of this essay is to discuss what modifications
of the socialist idea are required to make it economically
competitive with capitalism.  Unfortunately, the modified
socialism may not attract the enthusiasm of the socialists.
The author is not committed to socialism of any variety
but would like capitalism to have a more worthy competitor.

1. Allow trade businesses.  Here's a rather pure example.

Consider a mail order house that has
no warehouse and doesn't do its own order taking and mailing.
It issues a catalog, orders goods from manufacturers and has
them stored in warehouses owned by other companies.  Orders
from its catalog are sent by customers to an address that
belongs to a different company.  That company fills the orders
by ordering the warehouse to ship the goods.  What function
does the mail order house serve that would allow it a substantial
markup on the goods?

It gambles its money that its ads and catalog can persuade people
to buy the goods.  Neither the manufacturer nor the warehouse
nor the outfit that actually handles the mail orders is taking that
risk.

Consider chicken hotels, an actual business.  A regular chicken
farmer takes the risk that the price of chickens will drop
and he won't get the money back he spent on chicken feed.
Now he can go into the business of running a chicken hotel.
An investor buys the baby chicks and pays for the chicken
feed and sells the chickens.  He pays the farmer for
keeping the chickens.  About ten years ago, the rent
was about a quarter of a cent per chicken per day.

Contrast this with the situation in the Soviet Union
where private wholesale trade is illegal.  A farmer
may bring his produce to a city after meeting his
quota of deliveries to the state, set up a stall and
sell it.  However, no-one may go into business with
a truck, buying produce from the farmers and selling
it to retail sellers in the cities.