(Sorry to be a downer, but I do think about this sort of thing a lot.)
So while this isn't *precisely* classic communism, it does seem to have some of the same problems. In particular, you're brushing aside *the* central question of economics:
How those numbers get defined and tweaked is a perennial political topic for debate.
Seriously, this is what economics *is*. I have a rather fun audio course on the subject, that starts out by making the point that economics is, at its heart, the science of making choices. How you value jobs is a choice, and it's a *hard* choice, with a lot of system-dynamical challenges of aligning incentives with needs.
Basically, by putting this question into the hands of the government, you enormously enhance the *power* of the government officials who make this decision. In a utopian environment where everyone is working solely for the greater good, sure -- that's fine. In the real world, that's a recipe for corruption, bribery, collusion and strong-arm politics on an epic scale.
Redefining money like this seems likely to de-monetize the economy: you're making money fairly close to useless. It gives folks a lot of incentive to switch to barter instead, and almost guarantees that a black-market physical-gift economy arises.
I honestly think you're going against the grain of human nature here, especially with constraints like the fact that SUCs can't be inherited: that powerfully incentivizes people to gather and hoard *stuff* instead of money -- which makes it even less controllable than current economies. It also means that, for those who are of an alpha frame of mind, amassing power via money is off the table, so more directly controlling *people* is the way to go. Think of all of the monsters who currently are attracted to business being attracted to government instead. (Which is, broadly, what tends to happen in communist systems.)
Basically, I think this works if everyone is nice, good and honest. I'm not aware of a human society where that's ever been true, so I'm kind of skeptical. Systems that work in reality usually have to be built around assumptions that humans are often lazy, often greedy, often power-hungry, and many will be trying to game the system on a constant basis. Many people -- not just the outliers, I mean *many* people -- find it fun to get one-up on The Man, and break the rules. That means a lot of checks and balances are necessary at all levels. And *well-regulated* market economies are themselves checks and balances.
(As I've mentioned before, the key problem we currently have isn't the existence of a market economy, it's the degree to which right-wing regulatory capture has largely destroyed regulations that used to at least largely work. You often refer to "late-stage capitalism". Far as I can tell, it's more the case that we've reverted to *early*-stage robber baron capitalism, and forgotten that a modicum of socialism is necessary in order for things to work properly.)
Mind, I do think you have some interesting ideas here, not least the notion of mandatory negative interest. The problem is that the way you've structured the system essentially forbids large-scale private enterprise (since you don't allow for contracts, which means you have basically forbidden monetary property), which means that *investment* in is largely impossible. (Because without contracts, fraud becomes trivial, so people can't really trust each other to do what they promise.) That's a pity, because the negative interest rate would strongly drive people towards mutualized investment, and investment can be a powerful social good if well-regulated...
no subject
So while this isn't *precisely* classic communism, it does seem to have some of the same problems. In particular, you're brushing aside *the* central question of economics:
Seriously, this is what economics *is*. I have a rather fun audio course on the subject, that starts out by making the point that economics is, at its heart, the science of making choices. How you value jobs is a choice, and it's a *hard* choice, with a lot of system-dynamical challenges of aligning incentives with needs.
Basically, by putting this question into the hands of the government, you enormously enhance the *power* of the government officials who make this decision. In a utopian environment where everyone is working solely for the greater good, sure -- that's fine. In the real world, that's a recipe for corruption, bribery, collusion and strong-arm politics on an epic scale.
Redefining money like this seems likely to de-monetize the economy: you're making money fairly close to useless. It gives folks a lot of incentive to switch to barter instead, and almost guarantees that a black-market physical-gift economy arises.
I honestly think you're going against the grain of human nature here, especially with constraints like the fact that SUCs can't be inherited: that powerfully incentivizes people to gather and hoard *stuff* instead of money -- which makes it even less controllable than current economies. It also means that, for those who are of an alpha frame of mind, amassing power via money is off the table, so more directly controlling *people* is the way to go. Think of all of the monsters who currently are attracted to business being attracted to government instead. (Which is, broadly, what tends to happen in communist systems.)
Basically, I think this works if everyone is nice, good and honest. I'm not aware of a human society where that's ever been true, so I'm kind of skeptical. Systems that work in reality usually have to be built around assumptions that humans are often lazy, often greedy, often power-hungry, and many will be trying to game the system on a constant basis. Many people -- not just the outliers, I mean *many* people -- find it fun to get one-up on The Man, and break the rules. That means a lot of checks and balances are necessary at all levels. And *well-regulated* market economies are themselves checks and balances.
(As I've mentioned before, the key problem we currently have isn't the existence of a market economy, it's the degree to which right-wing regulatory capture has largely destroyed regulations that used to at least largely work. You often refer to "late-stage capitalism". Far as I can tell, it's more the case that we've reverted to *early*-stage robber baron capitalism, and forgotten that a modicum of socialism is necessary in order for things to work properly.)
Mind, I do think you have some interesting ideas here, not least the notion of mandatory negative interest. The problem is that the way you've structured the system essentially forbids large-scale private enterprise (since you don't allow for contracts, which means you have basically forbidden monetary property), which means that *investment* in is largely impossible. (Because without contracts, fraud becomes trivial, so people can't really trust each other to do what they promise.) That's a pity, because the negative interest rate would strongly drive people towards mutualized investment, and investment can be a powerful social good if well-regulated...