Childish Economics

Today I want to share with you some old news. I'm not going to tell you anything new (do I ever?), but just tell some old stuff about capitalism, but in a way that exposes some of its absurdities. Yes, it's an absurd system and it's even more absurd that so many people still believe this is the best we can do.

_{Image by mintchipdesigns - source:}

Let's first define what I mean when I say "we". "We" is all of us. Everyone on this planet is "we". That's just a function of our cultural evolution; "we" used to mean our tribe, then it became our city or city-state, then it became the nation, and some of us are mentally still stuck in that phase and want to return that place in time, but now it's all of us; the economy isn't tribal or national anymore, and we've come so far that we now get what we need for our every day life from everywhere in the world, and we sell our goods and services everywhere in the world. And there's the internet. "We", in this context of talking about "the economy", is the entirety of the world-population. We are all Earth's children, not just you and I, dear reader ;-)

We've now stumbled upon capitalism's first problem, and it's immediately one of it's biggest problems; nothing in capitalism incorporates "we". In capitalism there's only "me" ,"myself", and "I", and what happens to "we" is decided by some nebulous invisible hand. This is weird to say the least, because if there's one thing that's clearly evident in the life of every single individual, it is that they are all the product of the community they were born into. Every individual is created and shaped by a community of people, even if you'd just want to count the father and the mother; you're, at a bare minimum, the product of a community of two people. Never in human history was it left to chance, market forces or an invisible hand, how the available resources are distributed. Always was there some sort of planning involved, be it by the King or simply through ancient rituals.

The family really is the cornerstone of society because it is the first community of people you're part of, to which you belong. With capitalism this old wisdom is undone, capitalism will have you believe that the individual is the cornerstone of society; to me it's no surprise that families break up sooner and easier in such a society, and I've always found it perplexing that the biggest defenders of traditional values like this are so often the biggest proponents of this highly individualistic socioeconomic reality we call capitalism, or neoliberalism even. Now, to show just how absurd this is, let's turn it around and project capitalism onto the family, and see what happens...

Say you've got two children, you take them out to the city to buy something nice, let's say ice-cream. So, what you do is buy two cones and give them both to one of the children, because that's how wealth is distributed in capitalism, with or without invisible hand. See how absurd that is? Now think about what's going on in the minds of these two kids. Will there be an atmosphere of peace and love, or will there be some resentment, hate and crying going on? Now, you can amend this by going to the kid with both cones, take one of his or her cones and give it to the kid with no cones; you've now redistributed the "wealth". And that's the smart thing to do, isn't it? Well, no, it isn't really; you had to use force to take a cone from the one child. That's capitalism; there are no good solutions when you start with a grossly uneven distribution to begin with. It would have been better if you just gave one cone to each kid to begin with. It's also what we're naturally inclined to do; we teach each other morals and rules that are exactly opposite the morals and rules of the economy we need to survive in as adults. That's why I believe we slowly lose our ideals while growing up, and why leftist ideas of a fairer and more just world are often seen as childish fantasies...

They're fantasies because capitalism just happens to align perfectly with "human nature". How absurd to think that. Look at our (all of us) history and tell me again what "human nature" is. Men used to have many wives; that was human nature. Owning a couple of humans to do all the work for you was normal; that was human nature. A kid raised in a wolf pack becomes a wolf; now that's human nature. Human nature is whatever the community of people imprints upon it's members through culture, economics and politics. So please never again say that capitalism is as it is because we are what we are; we can be whatever we need to be to satisfy the perceived needs of the community we're all part of and which we all help shape. And none of the changes are made by individuals. Einstein is the first to admit that he also stood on the shoulders of the scientists that went before him, without Brown, Newton, Maxwell his theory would never have been born in his mind. The special and general theories of relativity are not his, but a product of humanity. He was also a socialist and I suspect me was, on the spiritual level, a believer in panpsychism; he was well aware of the whole that produced him and to which he could give back.

Every economic system we've ever devised has come and gone, and generally speaking each subsequent system was a slight improvement on the previous one; capitalism is slightly better than feudalism for sure. And when I say "better" I mean that median happiness has gone up; when talking about "the human condition" we become "better" when we manage to reduce as much suffering for as many people as possible and, the other way around, maximize well-being for as much people as possible. If you share that notion of "human progress" you must see that where we are now can never be the end-station. "We" can do much much better, but not by mindlessly hanging on to a system that separates individuals from the community they owe their very existence to, a system that's so absurdly far removed from what we teach all our children; don't fight, share your toys, be honest, don't be selfish and so on. Let's go for a future where we can all live by those basic rules and not reserve it for the children only...

Oh, that little story with the two kids is one I've heard from Richard Wolff on several occasions, most recently in the below linked video. It's about an hour long, but if you're interested in learning about socialism for the 21st century, I recommend you watch it.

_{Richard Wolff explains why the future is friendly (without capitalism)}

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