What are the day-to-day details of a world based on Social Credit?

February 26, 2009 8:06 AM

What are the day-to-day details of a world based on Social Credit? How do companies conduct their business? How are civic services accomplished?

A friend and I are trying to understand the theory and we're getting hung up on a practical conception or application of it. I follow with the concept of Cultural Inheritance, the critique of traditional credit as anti-social, the more results-driven look at production, the confluence of money with democratic power ("voting with money"), income security, and the radical de-centralization of power. But what does it look like? I realize that economic/political models have endless permutations, but is there a standard Social Credit Utopia you could describe to me?

How would, say, a home get sold? What business models would companies follow? How is education conducted? Big civic things, too, like how would a park be built? A newfangled communications infrastructure? Sanitary services? Disaster relief?

posted by cowbellemoo to work & money (5 comments total)

is there a standard Social Credit Utopia you could describe to me?

Not a 100% answer, but there were Social Credit Party governments in Alberta and British Columbia and the party survived until relatively recent times in Western Canada (as an aside the Stephen Harper government in Canada has more than a few ties to the Socreds). I recall reading somewhere that, at one point the Alberta wing of the movement brought the individual responsible for Social Credit theory (I can't remember his name) to Alberta to speak and he ended up basically talking about how it was theory and pretty difficult to really implement.

I believe I am citing Pierre Berton's book "The Great Depression", but if you look up the history of Alberta it is probably the closest thing to a Social Credit government/land that you will find.
posted by Deep Dish at 8:27 AM on February 26

At the risk of being tongue-lashed by the anti-BoingBoing crowd or citing something you might already know, Cory Doctorow's first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is a fictionalized account of a social credit based society.

You can read it for free here.

Personally, I think he's a better essayist and agitator than a fiction writer, but YMMV.
posted by digitalprimate at 8:38 AM on February 26

Also, as I understand it the Western Canadian SoCred parties were more or less just ordinary conservative parties (SoCred in Name Only...) after their initial years. This is what allowed them to turn so seamlessly into being the Reform party, and then the Alliance, and then the Conservatives, and presumably then whatever they decide to rename themselves once people catch on to them this time. </derail>....
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:37 AM on February 26

Also, as I understand it the Western Canadian SoCred parties were more or less just ordinary conservative parties (SoCred in Name Only...) after their initial years

The Socreds in Western Canada started out talking economic reform, but evolved into a party of social conservatives... William Aberhart (aka Bible Bill) tried to implement social credit theory though.
posted by Deep Dish at 12:46 PM on February 26

Bleh. Parsing Canadian politics is worse than reading an economics wiki. :P

But thanks, digitalprimate. I'll see what I can beat out of Mr. Doctorow.
posted by cowbellemoo at 8:33 PM on February 26