It is said that the planned economy is an ideal state, the most perfect state is that there is no gap between the rich and the poor, and the perfect relationship between supply and demand. I'm not an economist or a politician, so I'm not talking about economics and politics in this ideal state, I want to talk about philosophical issues.
First, we assume that human beings have entered an ideal socialist society and implemented a planned economy in an ideal state. Is this society stable? It seems like I'm in a dystopia.
First of all, let's imagine a scenario in which the productivity of society has not reached the ideal state, but has become seriously polarized. Not only has the polarization, but also the polarization is clearly defined. We will call it the upper class and the lower class for the time being. The upper class forces the lower class through violent means. Labor is carried out to achieve the distribution according to the needs of the upper class. This scene is the most dystopian work in Western literature and film, and these works directly or indirectly indicate that this is the final form of socialism. Of course, this is actually the most unlikely form, because such a society is obviously unstable. But I think such distribution on demand is less socialist and more capitalist. Who makes the red regime not very appealing? Well, instead of talking about politics, whether socialism or capitalism, we are talking about the planned economy. The representative works I have seen include the first half of the movie "The Hunger Games" series, "Elysium" and "V for Vendetta", part of the novel "Time Machine", etc. There are too many such works, such The subject matter is also overused. But The Hunger Games 3 Dreams of Freedom takes the idea to a new level, which is beyond the scope of this article.
In the second scenario, we imagine that everyone lives in an environment of worry-free food and clothing, but everyone does not have their own independent consciousness, but is like a hive. Although we can think about some things independently, we do not have our own personality. . This is also an ideal state under a planned economy, and it is a stable state, and it is also very easy to realize that collective interests are higher than individual interests. Although this state is very beautiful, but contemporary people may not like it. There are also many literary works thinking about this kind of scene, but most of them are third-rate works. I think the more classic is Joe Haldeman's "Millennium War". In the novel, after countless wars and sufferings, human beings finally evolved to as above. Although the author imagines several stages of the evolutionary process, the author avoids some difficult questions by sending the protagonist to other planets to fight, such as how did the last batch of independent consciousness disappear? Massacre? These questions are really hard to answer, and this scene seems even more unreliable than the last.
In the last scenario, we still imagine a planned economy where everyone has no worries about food and clothing, but it won't let you do whatever you want. This is understandable because society is not made up of one person. There is a classic saying from the movie "Cloud Atlas": Our life is not only our own, from the womb to the grave, we are only connected to others, every good deed, every evil deed breeds our future. We live in such a society. What supports this society is an almost infinite wisdom and enlightenment, or a program or a think tank, then whether this society can exist stably. This scene should be more reliable and stable. Just like there is no perfect software system, there are still unstable factors in this system. This factor is that some people don't like it, or some people like a freer life and don't want their life to be controlled by something. Hopefully a lot of things can be freely chosen.
The last few sentences may not be easy to understand, so let me give an example around us, such as the old-age insurance system. First of all, let me talk about commercial accident insurance. We can choose to buy it, or we can choose not to buy it. I choose not to take out insurance if I don't think I will be injured in an accident. And now our country is compulsory to buy old-age insurance for many people, of course, this is very good, but once I feel that I will not live to the retirement age or I just want to spend a little more today, regardless of the old age? Unfortunately, under the planned economy, the government thinks you need such pension insurance. Of course this is a simple example, but we can also imagine that this kind of thing can have extremes, things that affect the cornerstones of society. What to do if you find such a thing? Resolutely suppress it? That is, the collective interest is higher than the individual interest? But is there still justice for the minority? Will it cause more unrest?
Movies that describe this scene well are basically classics, such as "The Matrix 3: The Matrix Revolution", "Divergent Awakening", "District 9" and so on.
Will there be a better society in the future? In my opinion, maybe there will be, more likely, we will always try to get close to that ideal society, it seems that we are only one step away, we are constantly changing for this step, but every change has a change price.
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