After the big economic crash in 2008, many have realized that our economy is a quite fragile and easily breakable thing, especially for those in middle and lower classes.
Additionally, people around world, with the exception of Iceland , did “remarkable” things — they bailed out the banks that were, as they said, too big to fail. And, just the following year, they saw the same banks paying large bonuses for their managers.
Isn’t this strange? Banks have the right to take your home if you do not pay just one installment and they have legal instruments at their disposal, but on the other hand they are allowed to not pay back the money they were granted from the people through taxes so that they could save themselves.
For ordinary people, it seems that financial trends constantly show that voodoo magic has a better success rate than our economy.
Where does the issue lie? Is it just wrong policies, is it people, or is it something else?
The issue is more fundamental. The basic concepts on which we’ve based our economy are just plain wrong. Why I am saying this? And how can I be confident that what I am saying is true, even though I am not using any advanced mathematics and complex vocabulary?
Because, behind almost every man-made concept, there is very simple logic.
The current economy is based on the concept of infinite growth. In an economic sense, that means that one country must continuously increase its gross domestic product. That would be fine if we could have access all the infinite resources of the universe, but we do not — we live on a finite planet.
Even if we had access to the entire Milky Way galaxy, for instance, as Federico Pistono explains in his book “Robots Will Steal Your Job” *2, with exponential growth in energy demand we would, energy-wise, exhaust the entire galaxy of 100 billion stars in just 2500 years.
Now, how did economists overcome this paradox?
They introduced the magic word — inflation. This means that over time the price of one product will rise, and as purchasing power is tied to the work or services provided, the purchasing power of the money you have already earned will decrease with time.
Let’s put all that aside, and let me ask you question.
Imagine that we had an agreement, in which we decided we would build two houses, one for me and one for you. First you will work on my house until my house is done, and while you are working on my house, I will give you vouchers; every voucher means that for every day of your work, I will guarantee a day of my work. And, after a year of hard work, my house is eventually completed. Now it is time for me to work on your house. But because of inflation, the price of the work has increased, so now the vouchers I gave you are not worth same value. Halfway through the second year you have already used all the vouchers I gave you and you have ended up with your house only half done.
Would you accept that deal? Would you work for me under these conditions?
Most people would say no, but yet we all agree to work under those same or worse conditions in our daily life.
How is that fair?
If you are one of those who would like to reply with the “Life is not fair” remark please don’t, I don’t buy it.
We are the ones who live on this planet and it is ours to create rules, the rules that will govern our lives, not just for a small number of privileged people but for everyone.
Have you ever heard anyone getting PhD for inventing perpetuum mobile?
Over the years, the economy, despite having a paradox at its foundation, has become a science with huge number of branches. And people, same as for perpetuum mobile, have perfected many different solutions, some simple but other very complex. They have earned PhD titles and many high honors and still their science, which runs the world, does not work, at least not for those who are not on the top.
If a thief learns his skills to perfection, would you give him a PhD or maybe a Nobel Prize for his achievements, or would you maybe take another approach and send him into the jail?
All the thieves locked up in all jails in the world in the last century have not stolen the amount of money that vanished in last market collapse. *2 In some form or another that money ended up in the pockets of a few wealthy people and still not one of them went to jail. How is that possible?
Pension funds, house mortgages, savings ... for which people worked very long hours, for years, all diminished. People ended up on the street, and instead of blaming those who rigged the game, we blamed the people who became homeless.
If I asked you to lend me $1000 or just $100, and if I honestly told you I will never give you that money back, you would probably refuse my request. But again, people are willing to give much larger sums to “trust” funds with the same end result.
Money is just a construct, an idea, nothing more.
Although many people think that our civilisation would completely collapse and that it cannot run without money that is not true. What is important for you is clean air, water, food and shelter - not money. We cannot breath, drink, or eat money; why the worry then whether it exists or not?
No, I am not an anarchist, and I am not preaching about destroying money, but I am saying that it has to disappear eventually. Soon enough we will realize that it is an outdated concept; it is just a matter of time. With all the recent technological advances we will eventually realize that there is a better way, or all the resources will just end up in the hands of a few and everyone else will starve to death.
We humans have only one real currency and that is time. Time is our only asset; everything else is just an illusion. Even that asset is very limited for each of us. Even if we could live for ten thousand years, that is nothing in comparison with the age of universe, and yet again we live for a much shorter time, and during that short life we are troubled by many things.
Our economy is an economy of time. When we trade, we do not trade with money, we trade with our time, and we vouch with our promises. Every closed transaction is a promise fulfilled and every reduced transition is a promise betrayed. Everything relies on trust. When trust is broken, things, sooner or later, start falling apart.
In a fair economy, with all the advances in automation in technology we have nowadays, one should expect to always get more value for money earned, not less. Why can't other industries follow the same principle as the IT industry: if you have $1000 and you want to buy a PC or mobile phone, if you wait two years, for the same amount of money you will get double the computing power. What is so special about food, housing, and many other fields that prices are surging when demand is going up?
We have built houses for thousands of years, and by now we should know how to do it very cheaply. Why are housing prices skyrocketing then?
Nothing is different, really — nothing. It is just artificially created in order to sustain the silly game we play. All that, in order to keep us in the loop in which the structure of the pyramid will be preserved, while burying our heads in the work — which we do not need to do, so that we will not think about things that really matter.
Maybe a fair economy is something that gets a better side of every one of us — a system that will help us realize that our lives are not just about what can we do for our personal pleasure, but also what can we do for other people and all other living creatures on this planet.
Whatever we decide, it is on us, as there will be no one else to help us. Not God, messiah or aliens ... and if you believe in these, then you have to consider that maybe they do not want to help us, as they are just testing us. Are we responsible enough to continue as species or not. If we cannot overcome our problems maybe we do not deserve to be alive ...
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