Capitalism

My people did not have money. Because of this, capitalism strikes me as a rather unusual, strange system to live in or even trust. But during my time on Earth, I have grown accustomed to this particular human habit.

Money is an abstract way to measure work done. The more work an individual does, the more money they get, signifying their greater contribution to society. Additionally, there is a certain quality of work that also goes into account. Someone providing higher quality work through a more difficult or specialized job gets rewarded with more money, indicating their increased value of work.

Additionally, capitalism measures the relative abundance of various items or resources through prices. Prices determine how abundant an item is, and money is exchanged for whatever an individual might want. In theory, this will ensure that resources are distributed fairly.

This is how it is supposed to work from my understanding. Whether or not it works this way is another matter entirely. There are a few simple observations about these facts that discourages community.

-Social Stratification

Having different pay grades encourages people to socially isolate each other based on their incomes. People with low wages live in cheaper housing with their poor peers, while richer people isolate themselves in more expensive neighborhoods. This tendency is rather common among the human population, and it works to isolate people into distinct categories.

-Competition

Capitalism encourages people to compete directly with one another for various things. In order to get a job, someone must feel that they are the best candidate for a job, or lie and claim that they are. In order to sell a product, someone must feel their product is the best brand, or they must lie and claim it is. How can one be so certain of these things? How could one trust an individual telling you these things?

Competition ensures that honesty will be in short supply.

-Abstracting labor

Someone grew your food. Someone created your clothing. Someone built the house you live in. It is extremely unlikely you did any of these things, much less all of them. Money as an abstract measure of labor removes the human component of resource production. You don't deal with individuals when you get clothing, you simply trade some of your money for the clothing, as if the money created the clothing somehow. Money did not create the clothing. A person like you did. A thinking, feeling individual with dreams and hopes as real as yours.

Do not forget that your quality of life depends on many, many people doing their work so that you may have an easy life. Unfortunately, not all of these people have a happy life.

Community

Up until now, I have not discussed anything to do with human civilization in general. As an alien, I have an outsider's perspective on the way human civilization is structured. The way my people structured society was different than what I see among human civilization. So I would like to voice a couple of simple observations. Before I can examine the way a functional culture operates, I would like to talk about how important community is for a civilized society.

Communities have great strength. Strength greater than individuals can have. In my previous posting, I touched upon just one aspect of how valuable a community can be to an individual, but I would like to make it clear to you just how effective a community can be in other aspects of life.

When someone is in a bad situation, a strong community will try to help them recover and get into a better situation. This means that when people are unhealthy, when they can't attain a living for themselves, or when they are not fully cognizant, a strong community tends after them and tries to help them recover. Doing this requires patience, it requires compassion, and it requires effort. The benefit to this is if an individual is ever put into a situation in which they cannot help themselves, they can expect that others will help them.

Additionally, certain ills in society are caused by a lack of strong community. Poverty and crime have been known to be linked for quite a while. Thusly, community projects aiming to reduce poverty reduces crime as well. There are many problems which can be addressed through a community approach.

Food, shelter and water are what we need to survive. In our modern age, these few basic needs are met by a relatively small amount of the population. This frees up the rest of the population to do other things, but it also means that we rely on those who do the work to supply us with said things. Technology and knowledge are used as tools to free up huge amounts of society, allowing us to further develop technology, art, and society in general.

Every job that helps to create something contributes to our quality of life. The farmer is no less critical to this than the microchip designer, the plumber, or the construction worker. If any of these people were to abandon their job, there would be a need for another to take their place. Thus, it doesn't make sense to respect one job holder more than another.

Without a community, we would all have to supply the basic needs of life to ourselves. Without a community, great technology- things we normally take for granted- would have to be sacrificed. There would be little time we could have free for ourselves to enjoy life, to think, and to create if we did not have community to assist us. Community allows some of our time to be freed up from the drudgery of life, and such free time is critical for our overall quality of life and progress.

Thus, any civilized society should place a high value upon building a strong community.