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The Modes of Consumption, Distribution, Production & Property


Here goes nothing...

Humans consume to attain survival, safety, comfort and leisure.

Distribution is the movement of goods or services through space or from one person to another, and occurs in five different ways, or modes, which are sharing, gift, theft, trade and planning.

Production is the transformation of stuff by the application of labour and capital, and also comes in five modes; primitivism, agrarianism, corporatism, capitalism and command.

Property is stuff claimed by a person or a group of persons as under their control or their exclusive control, and tends to be thought of in one of four ways; common, usufruct, state and private.



~~~ CONSUMPTION ~~~

Survival is the mere sustainment of one's existence; the continuation of organic function.

Safety is the sense that one will survive, and/or keep what one values (family, friends, stuff) in the near and remote future.

Comfort is a physical and emotional lack of material unease, say through having comfortable furniture, the absence of discomfort due to disease, and so on.

Leisure is the pursuit of what one enjoys without thought for necessity.



~~~ DISTRIBUTION ~~~

Sharing is the non-association of goods with particular persons so that they continually pass from person to person in a society without any thought for which persons own or do not own the goods in question.

Gift is not quite so open. People claim title to things on an exclusive basis and surrender title to each other on an occasional basis (occasional meaning each individual will do so many times but not constantly, not moment-by-moment).

Theft is like gift but reversed, taking rather than giving.

Trade is like gift but by both parties at once simultaneously, neatly closing the social debt loop.

Planning is the mode of distribution whereby a person or group of persons direct the movement of goods and services amongst others generally not including themselves.



~~~ PRODUCTION ~~~

Primitivism is the mode of production whereby production is for one's own or one's peers' benefit, for example hunting, killing, skinning and cooking animals to eat.

Agrarianism is the mode of production that arises with or after (this is unclear from evidence) private property in land, and takes in production for sustainment but also for trade. Peasant freeholders, manorial systems, and communal private holdings (communal for the owners only) are all examples of agrarianism. Without a bit of agrarianism urbanisation - and thereafter civilisation - is impossible.

Corporatism means production is for the benefit of the head of a body. The body is an industry or an economy, and the head is whoever has organised together, whether a town or state government, an association of guilds, or a federation of trade unions. Mercantilism is a form of state-directed corporatism as opposed to the guild-directed and city-directed corporatism of mediaeval trades, and the total corporatism of Fascist Italy and Germany.

Capitalism is a repeating process of finance and entrepreneurship meeting to implement previously untried plans for the allocation of labour and capital, and leads to rapidly increasing productivity and efficiency, and so falling prices of produced goods and services over time.

Command in this instance is the organisation of an industry - say, steel or textiles or software or whatever - by a centralised governing organisation, like Gosplan in the Soviet Union.



~~~ PROPERTY ~~~

Common ownership is in a sense non-ownership. Everybody owns everything, so nobody owns anything. Some people today believe this is a good way to think of land.

Usufruct is attainment and loss of ownership by starting to make use of, and ceasing to make use of a good respectively.

State ownership is pretty obvious. It's ownership by the state until such time as the state surrenders its claim by sale, gift or abandonment.

Private ownership is basically like state ownership except by a non-state actor like an individual, a household/family or a firm.

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