Economics: Our Common Enemy
The Failure of Modern Economics
When I was a young boy, I stole a lemon meringue pie that my mother had made and hid it behind a couch.
I ate probably two thirds of it before the ants found it and I realized there was no way to dispose of the evidence without getting caught. I tried to negotiate my way out of it but was ordered to my room to reflect on my greed.
Far from that, I realized there were limits to how much of my own desires could be unilaterally taken without a substantial amount more planning.
I share this because I was instilled from a very young age with an irrational conviction that if I wanted it, I could just take it.
Needless to say, this resulted in a wide range of incidents wherein my self-interest conflicted with somebody else’s, as you will soon see. I became more and more analytic and devious in my efforts to do exactly as I pleased – no matter the consequences.
One might say I was a billionaire in the making. Had I been born a fox, this quality might have been defined as “sly”, but to my mother, I was just a bad kid. She did everything in her power to thwart this early rapacious inclinations, but to no avail.
I sharpened my skills like a cat sharpens her claws for more efficient killing.
I’m writing this book because the time for discussion is over. This planet – all of ours’ home – is descending into a state of chaos from which a very different world is going to emerge. The billionaire families who have controlled the narrative of our evolution as a species are about to see their asses Darwin’ed off the food chain as natural selection ensures survival of the fittest.
Which, contrary to media-driven indoctrination, billionaires are not.
Billionaires are expressions of humanity who have a few key characteristics in common;
They embrace the idea of elitism, and believe they are entitled to all they have accumulated because they worked hard to get it;
They consider themselves naturally superior to the “average” human being;
They project the idea that capitalism, and their resulting wealth, is good for all of us.
They consider their self-worth to be measured only by their net worth.
They think the circumstances of their birth are their own right to be exploited at the expense of everyone else.
But I’m not writing this book for them. They are the defective DNA in the human gene pool that needs to be deprecated so that we can realize the ascension of truly superior and valuable human traits, such as compassion, respect, and cooperation.
I’m assuming that’s you.
I’m writing this book to you. Those of you who are so fed up with the lunacy of politics, media and entertainment informing our values as a society, with no real mechanism for change; just the illusion of democracy with a tightly controlled choice between two sides of the same coin.
The relentless echo chamber reverberating an “us vs them” message over and over again, pushing extreme conflict rhetoric to the top of every search while moderate and rational voices are obscured and rendered silent.
The intent appears to be a concerted effort to divide us all, so that we clamour for a greater degree of government control. Pit us against one another so we don’t come together as a force to identify the pernicious effect of the billionaires hoovering up all that is valuable. Pay us nothing and make us work long and hard for diminishing rewards, while they build yachts and now space ships.
This is an invitation. We are in the earliest stages of a peaceful revolution that is going to disempower the billionaire/business/media/government/banking power structure that has financed and cheered wars against one another for centuries.
We need you. We need each other. There is no “them”. There is only us. If you can’t get past that fundamental premise in your head this book probably isn’t going to be for you.
I’m looking for the people out there who would normally prefer to just go about their lives without any need for telling anyone else how to live, or how to be.
That used to be me. Before I realized I’m the equivalent of a third class passenger on the Titanic bearing down at top speed on a sea of icebergs. If I do nothing, my premature demise is certain. So this book is my antidote for the apathy and indifference that has governed my actions throughout my life to this point.
Let the stupid people tear each other limb from limb, I thought.
But I arrived at the understanding the each human being is just a temporary convergence of energy and matter, neither of which can be destroyed, but only transformed.
So it seems to me that there is no choice but to return in some form or another…perhaps a different configuration of light and energy.
But if I was to return as another human being – or rather, the energy and matter that constituted me was recycled into another human – then it is within my eternal interest to fight the ignorance that is making our future world a hostile and barely inhabitable hell.
Let us fight to destroy these power structures in a non-violent collective abstinence from supporting the identified globalized business entities. Let us make use of the very weapon that has been used against us for hundreds of years; the slithery unctuous language they call “economics”.
Let us unite in an all-inclusive, non-violent global movement to unseat the status quo. Let us commit to a value system where cooperation is enshrined in law over competition.
Let “social” be the leading value, and not “capital”. Let cooperation be the foremost objective, not competition.
Let us realize the full potential of humanity by voluntarily stopping overpopulation, over-self-enrichment, and obsession with elitism. Let us all become avatars of justice seeking equitable enjoyment and preservation of the world’s resources for subsequent generations.
Let us hand over that which we have worked on to tomorrow in a more robust condition than it was when we arrived.
Let us reign in the twisted ambition of the billionaires choking our atmosphere so they can be first to space. Let us proclaim the illusion of life on Mars to
Dustbin of infantile fantasies.
We are here now, and this Earth is the only planet we will ever occupy. You can travel further in your mind and imagination than you ever could in a physical envelope travelling at the speed of light for millions of years.
This is where we are going, you and I, together. Toward a future where we collectively pass our lives in a rehabilitative mode, restoring ecology and bringing our numbers down to reflect a proportional representation across the planet’s biosphere. Let us voluntarily cease being the metastasizing cancer on the planet that we currently are.
The time for talk is over. Its time for collective action. Read on and see if you don’t perceive a place for you in this most just of causes.
I have a plan here for this transformation. I have a plan for you, if you are truly interested in achieving permanent and lasting change to the state of the world now.
I have a plan for you, if you’re open to it.
For you are the Real Economist.
*************
If Economics is the social science by which we govern our allocation of resources with the objective of maximizing productivity and quality of life for all, then it has failed. Completely, unequivocally.
The fundamental flaw in the entire premise of economics is the pursuit of perpetual growth. Perpetual growth as a species dependent on the sustained health of its host organism – Earth – is not only impossible; its pursuit renders us a relative cancer on the organism. For that is precisely what cancer is: unbridled growth and replication of cancerous cells that destroy or displace healthy cells.
Earth, being the superior life form that she is, is not without an immune system.
As the disease called mankind ravages her skin, Earth responds with defences that are going to have an ameliorative effect.
Weather is like the white blood cells in Earth’s immunology. With weather, Earth renders some places on the surface uninhabitable due to temperature extremes. Other infection sites can be submerged in water, which, above a certain ratio of water to dry land, is not conducive to sustained life by humans.
Another strategy by Earth might be to implant some of the cancerous cells with instructions to protect the host’s healthy cells, and to attack its own cancerous cells, which is what we are going to do.
We might call this practice “medicine” in the human context. But in the context of saving the Earth from our own excesses, we call it “economics”.
So if you are to join the increasing good cancer cells in restoring the health of our host and source of sustenance, you need to ignore the economics of the cancerous elite, and embrace Real Economics.
Think of this book as a manual for restoring the health of the planet by modulating our own mutated genes. The mutants are the billionaires, and everyone whose values – equivalent to their ethical DNA instructions – drive them to pursuing the billionaire’s mindset.
We are the new avatars of Earth. We are the Real Economists.
***********
So if economics has failed us, we need to consider the current situation humanity finds itself in, and juxtapose now to the historical first applications of economics.
Right now, we are depleting non-renewable resources relentlessly, and in such huge excess, that we are choking on its production’s toxic waste. We fail to modulate our population, or our consumption.
We fail to measure the resources of our planet, or measure out their extraction, and we proceed as if we will either miraculously find a way to synthesize or replace all that is needed, or else miraculously migrate to some newer version of our planet that will provide a seamless continuation of our economy.
The failure of economics ultimately will be the failure of the human race. And ironically, it is precisely because economics has evolved to emanate from the sole perspective of human beings that human beings has caused the cascading collapse of multiple ecosystems.
Economics, in its current configuration and practice, has become the system by which we delude ourselves that we are capable of self-determination and responsible global stewardship.
One of the key premises of this treatise is that Economics has evolved to serve the interests of elite financial interests primarily, and those of the mass population only secondarily, if at all.
The principle outcome of that misconfiguration is that the system of economics works against the interest of the entire global ecosystem, all humans included.
This has occurred as a result of an absence of top-to-bottom conception of what “The Economy” actually is and what the framework of economics should be. The result is an ever-escalating advent of ecological, social and economic challenges that threaten the continued evolution of humanity.
The extent to which we can lay the blame for the deteriorating condition of Earth at the feet of economics is subject to debate, yet it is impossible to deny that any perfectly functioning ecosystem must run on the basis of coherent and accurate economic planning. The extent to which the science of economics differs from the art of government might also be incorporated into such a discussion, for with the assiduous implementation of sound economic thinking, the ensuing outcome cannot then be blamed on economics.
However, we can not allow ourselves, in pursuit of the resolution to Earth’s pressing issues, descend into a philosophical debate. Or rather, we can have that debate, but we can’t at this juncture afford to let it overshadow or impede the implementation of solutions herein proposed.
So let us proceed under the acknowledgement that the structure of economic thinking has thus far evolved without talking into account several key features of physics and mathematics, and without a proper reconstitution including these fundamentals, no remedy is possible.
How Economics has Failed
In many respects, the failure of economics in properly informing the evolutionary path of humanity and Earth is self-evident in the catalogue of problems plaguing the natural environment and mand-made social systems. In the table below, we summarize those problems and correlate them with economic sub-problems.
[INSERT THE TABLE]
In retrospect, these problems might not have arisen had we had the benefit of hindsight to understand how their unfettered infection of our global ecosystem migh impart such negative outcomes in the future.
The Real Economist seeks to mitigate those outcomes by now proposing to re-categorize and reconfigure economics from an open-ended, reactive system of thought and self-governance to one that has a logically defined architecture based on knlowlege we now possess as a result of these negative outcomes.
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If economics as a science was properly configured and deployed in its service to humanity, we would not have:
Recurring financial crises;
Food shortages in some nations while others enjoy abundance;
Severe quality of life disparity;
Resource depletion issues;
Intensifying weather extremes;
Ecosystems collapsing;
Accelerated species extinctions;
Unstable currencies;
Rampant government debt;
Fabrication of capital and credit;
The tiniest minority of humanity controlling 90% of its natural resources.
Wars
A correctly configured economic science must serve all beings (not only the human variety), and promote food security, shelter, hygiene, and opportunity for all citizens. This is not the case now, and increasingly, there is evidence of collusion among government and financial entities acting contrary to the broader public interest.
In this book, the central position is that economics as a science has been hijacked by globalized corporate interests and subordinated to serve those interests to the detriment of the interests of the rest of humanity.
To suggest that the interests of these two groups are not aligned is the epitome of understatement. The minority elite, commonly referenced as the “1 %”, have demonstrated throughout history, that their sole occupation generation after generation is to agglomerate more and more wealth, at any cost.
The hijacking has occurred at the level of the post secondary institution, where economics is taught. The financial endowments of the top universities in the world are uniformly corporate donations and donations from those who have enriched themselves through the application of economics as taught by such universities. Thus, the available curriculum of economic study in the top institutions is influenced profoundly and finally by the 1% of the population whose interests it is now configured to serve.
The hijacking continues in the media industry, where the top financial media publications are controlled by a small group of media conglomerates whose boards of directors, and largest shareholders, are equally represented by banks, funds and other industrialists. Thus, the popular perception of economic events and thought is informed exclusively by the economics of the 1%, supporting the public’s general perception that the largest of the world’s problems relevant to resources, ecological degradation, and massive living standard disparity that these problems exist despite sound economic stewardship. The reality is that these problems are a direct result of the dominant application by government and industry of deformed economic theory as molded by the interests of the 1%.
Thus, it is a monumental task just to begin the discussion of a broad revision of the science of economics, because such a revision is in direct conflict with the objectives and requirements of the economics of the 1%.
The rapaciousness of the 1 per cent however, is aided and abetted by the twin sentiments of apathy and complacency on the part of much of the remaining 99%. Historically, this has been made possible where, in wealthy countries, citizens who enjoy a standard of living roughly categorized as “middle class”, there is little incentive to change the status quo, and while less aggressive and greedy citizens don’t necessarily approve of the greed and methods of the elite class, they are unwilling to pursue such change beyond the voting booth.
The complacency has resulted in the acute concentration of wealth now held by the one percent, and its continuation threatens to cause a premature and catastrophic collapse of key ecosystems. In the macro-time sense, this is an unfortunate abbreviation of the potential of humanity.
The failure of economics in rendering achievement of humanity’s maximum potential is the failure, at this point, of humanity itself. Human values have evolved in such a way that we prize material wealth above all else, including the health of our ecology. This is a perverse development, because without a sustaining and balanced natural ecology, human existence is threatened.
This distortion of values is largely attributable to the science of economics, which has driven the value of material wealth as tantamount into the psyches of markets, corporations, governments, and ultimately, citizens.
It is characterized by an inability to assess ourselves objectively and holistically – the impacts on future viability and sustainability of our behaviours and choices on resources in the macro-temporal scale i.e. the maximum possible lifespan of humanity on earth with a uniformly acceptable standard of living for all.
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Foundation of Economics
Economics’ was founded during the period in human history when the ability to measure the inventory of natural resources available to us from earth’s natural processes over an approximate lifespan of humanity on earth did not exist.
It is the reason it has evolved to this point without correctly serving the needs of humanity in the past, and now represents a major threat both to capitalism and democracy.
Economics has evolved under several erroneous assumptions, and from those primary defective assumptions, the entire science is built on fallacy. Therefore economics as a science is completely defective and of no use to humanity, and worse, it is now the system by which we abbreviate our time on earth.
The fallacies include: a) that resources are infinite; b) the environment is indestructible and perpetual; c) that the earth can accommodate as many people as are born, and; d) that the only desirable state of economy is one that is always growing.
The impossibility of these assumptions being factual is proven from a thousand different approaches of other sciences: geology proves that all non-renewable natural resources are finite; atmospheric chemistry, oceanic biology and related sciences demonstrate the fragility of natural systems; mathematics proves irrefutably that there is a limit to the amount of people the earth can support; and one need conduct no further investigation beyond a cursory contemplation of the inherent contradiction within the idea of “perpetual economic growth”.
But within these fallacies and errors of assumption are compounded fallacies and errors. For example, the term “non-renewable resources”, typically applied to minerals and hydrocarbons, is itself fallacious. Everything is renewable, given appropriate time, energy and matter. The fact that oil is created by the compression and heating of decomposing organic substances over millennia does not make it “non-renewable”. It is merely that the process of renewability is very long relative to the lifespan of a human being.
Tradition is Problematic
We are governed by certain traditions – economic, political, cultural and personal – that suggest we are limited in our ability to modify and regulate our behaviour collectively. The Real Economist rejects outright these implied limitations. If this were the case, then we would be no different from every species of animal over which we lord dominion. In most cases, it is tradition that must specifically be evaluated against the sustainability required of our behaviour collectively going forward.
As an example, consider the livelihood of the fisherman. On Canada’s East Coast, the collapse of the cod fishery was due to the insistence of the population in that part of the world on pursuing their traditional livelihood of fishing. “My grandfather was a fisherman, my father was a fisherman, and goddammit I’m a fisherman too.” This in spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence preceding the collapse that such a collapse was inevitable.
We can neither accept, as a species, the limitation of animal instinct-driven competitive urges, nor flounder uselessly among traditions which are harmful to us in the macro-temporal sense.
The implementation of economic theory in government policies since Adam Smith first penned The Wealth of Nations has grown from an afterthought to a core policy input for any government.
Despite that, the state of humanity and its relationship with the earth is best characterized as one of parasite and host. In the current trajectory of planetary health, however, the parasites are abandoning the notion of symbiosis for that of rampant consumption.
Even now, as rainforest is cleared for sugar plantations in Brazil and Palm Oil in Indonesia, the policy of governments that permit such ultimately self-destructive ablation of key ecosystems is not only justified by economics: the decisions to strip and plant are driven by economics.
Economics has failed to meter the consumption of natural resources or the destruction of key ecosystems throughout its history, and continues to drive them. Worse, economics fails to measure and assess such destruction against the costs of the economic gains realized from such activity.
It’s as if the defective configuration of economics is unapparent to all economists, governments, and a large majority of the earth’s citizens.
The evolution of economic thought has been marked by what now appears as a glaring omission from the original concept. While the efficient use of resources, division of labor, supply and demand theory, and money and credit are all undeniably crucial components to the composition of economic thinking and structures, these all must be reconciled against the limitations of human economy, which have heretofore failed to be considered.
Thus, we are confronted with diminishing resources relative to population demand. We see resources transformed through industrial processes and labor where demand is conspicuously absent, engendering price competition that precludes the possibility of holistic product cycle accounting.
The absence of such consideration can be, in part, identified as one of the leading causes for the failure of modern economics.
Among such considerations which, I believe, must be included in the deliberations of economists in order for such a deliberations to achieve a higher degree of success in predicting future outcomes and trends, are considerations relative to the lifespan of humanity as a species on earth as it exists, optimum population density of humans on earth relative to other species, and baseline quality of life standards for all.
We now possess the depth of scientific measurement whereby we should focus our attention on answering these most fundamental questions.
*******************OLDER**************************
The Failure of Modern Economics
Economics is the science whereby the measurement of human activity relative to resources is undertaken and described to facilitate future forecasting and government policy development. The implicit objective of economics is maximum productivity, maximum employment, etc.
But economics in this configuration is wholly inadequate, in that its objectives are incompatible with the requirements of the human race at this point in evolution.
It has failed us, as the various economic disasters of the last century have demonstrated. Economic policy is reactive instead anticipatory, which puts humanity on a back foot when it comes to resource allocation, and subsequently, wealth distribution. Whereas the living standards of the average human being can be demonstrated statistically to be better than 50 years ago as a percentage of population, that, like so many other statistically reinforced “facts” is misleading.
When the extreme wealth of the upper one percent of the population are weighted against the extreme poverty of the lower quartile equally, the statistic is grossly distortionary. A more reasonable approach would be to weight the amount of excess wealth possessed by the top one percent proportionally to the dearth of wealth among the lower quartile.
For the purposes of this discussion, we define modern economics as the Standard Economic Model (SEM), which is characterized by the following features:
Continuous economic growth is the top priority of the SEM;
The SEM seeks to exploit natural resources at the maximum rate possible with the lowest possible capital and operating expenditure, regardless of ecological impact;
The SEM primary unit of measurement is monetary.
The temporal standard that informs performance and efficiency is quarters and years.
Among the lessons of the 20th century that the current state of economics prevents us from embracing is the key fact that security is directly correlated to economic circumstances. Poor nations have low levels of domestic security, and therefore, limited organic growth potential. Wealthy nations, on the other hand, consume an outsized portion of the global resource supply in with completely unregulated abandon. Future generations of both wealthy and poor nations are negatively impacted by the unlimited consumption of non-renewable resources coupled with ecological destruction.
One of the primary deficiencies of modern theoretical economics is that it has failed to harmonize the quality of life. Instead, it has promoted waste and excess by the wealthy, while collapsing localized economies that are the source of subsistence levels of living for poor nations.
Overall, the trend in wealth disparity, where a disproportionately small percentage of the global population consumer and control the creates majority of the world’s wealth, continues to widen.
Globalization is a one way street, for most nations.
As the fall of Hosnei Mubarek in Egypt demonstrated, the U.S. and its allies’ policy of supporting non-democratic authoritarian regimes for reasons of political expediency and regional security has a habit of hobbling the nations whose leadership is so supported. During the last 50 years, the economic imbalances enforced by such misguided policy have engulfed the majority of the developing world.
The ability of the United States and its G7 allies to operate and manipulate governments, nations and increasingly, markets invisibly is diminishing, thanks to the ease and speed of information transportation afforded by modern technology. The direct result is WikiLeaks, and while that organization is only the first an imperfectly executed iteration of an emerging system, the demand for transparency by all global citizens shall ensure future versions will appear with better management.
The idea that information is power is accurate. Technology enables the open sharing of all types of information, and severely complicates the secrecy with which it can be withheld. The result will be a more uniform availability of opportunity for those with the mental alacrity and force of will to capture them.
This new landscape requires a re-definition of economics, and a re-deployment of new concepts with the objective of re-assessing whats left of the global resource pool in terms of renewable and non-renewable resources, and creating better regulatory frameworks to ensure their equitable distribution and protection.
Presently, there is a world-wide race to acquire ownership and control of the world’s remaining deposits of minerals and energy, water and timber, agricultural land areas and prime real estate. We are entering the period where all the items of value in the world can be accounted for on a balance sheet, and we will be increasingly able to forecast terminal resource depletions, currently embodied in deficient and inaccurate concepts like “peak oil”.
—–June 14, 2012 —addendum:
There is much evidence to support the idea that economics, as a branch of science, has failed in its service to humanity. Collapsing ecosystems, oceanic salinity, melting ice caps, species extinction, greenhouse gas emissions, financial system instability, rampant debt crises – all point to humanity out of control. The argument as to whether or not global warming is real is incredibly irrelevant in view of these conditions. Its not a question of “if” humanity is causing global warming. It’s a question of “can we stop our massive self-destruction before the cataclysmic collapse in population occurs that is the direction in which we are headed with a growing momentum that is truly frightening”?
But it is neither the fault of the science itself, nor its application that is to blame. Rather, it is a combination of the misconception at the highest level of the essence of economics, combined with its subjugation to the pursuit of perpetual economic growth – an impossibility that renders any application of economic theory defective.
So we have two missions ahead of us, as human beings. First, we must revise our very definition and perception of economics, both practical and theoretical. Secondly, we must unite behind the data that what we shall henceforth refer to as Real Economics, to reconfigure our various global governments so that those who are in control of the resources and governments of our nations are not under the control of business interests who are blindly self-interested, at the expense of humanity and the earth.
The problem before us is eminently profound and profoundly simple.
If we continue to conduct ourselves as we have since the industrial revolution, then the decline of humanity as the dominant and most populous species that has already started will accelerate, and the timeline until the extinction of human beings will arrive within the next few generations.
The period of abundance that has characterized life for those of us in the upper third of the global population will come to an end, and the result is going to be a return to warfares local, regional and global. Its no joke. Its happening right now. The unrest and poverty sweeping through Europe is only going to grow. Whatever temporary solutions that the incumbent or new governments arrive at, barring the adoption of voluntary behavioural choice modifications, is limited to the fabrication of more currency, credit and debt, and so can only be temporary.
If we can revolutionize the approach toward self-government, towards resource management, and to environmental priority, then there is no reason that humanity cannot continue to evolve for many centuries to come.
Its do or die. And the time is now.
This book is a call to revolution. An appeal to you directly, the reader, to embrace the truths inherent in these pages, and make modifications to your behaviours and expectations, your desires and your habits. To voluntarily adopt the code of conduct of The Real Economist. For The Real Economist is the ultimate citizen of the planet.
Ahead I’m going to develop the timeline and inflection points along it where acts of industry and government have compromised the potential and evolution of economics as a valid science, and where it has been conscripted to rapacious self-interest by corporations, whose status as legal entities with limited liability is a key deficiency in the evolution of humanity.
Then we’re going to examine the praxeology, or human choices and behaviours and what triggers and motivates them, across key categories of human conduct. We will conclude, at the end of each such categorical evaluation, with a list of actions that can be undertaken by individuals, small companies, and multi-national corporations to comply with what will be our resulting Code of Conduct for Real Economists.
Regarding economics as an academic or scientific application to humanity’s progress from a historical perspective, it would appear that economics has been deployed as the science whereby choices and actions are justified, rather than rationally elected as the best possible courses of action.
Infrastructure projects, housing developments, commercial skyscrapers, factory construction; all these major human projects are approved on the basis of an economic analysis that only justifies the expense from an economic standpoint. If it makes money, it goes forward.
Key among the factors that have guaranteed the inability of economics to serve the interests of humanity and the earth is the prioritization of profit above all else.
The odds of this new way of economic thinking becoming the guiding platform for governments, corporations and individuals are slim, but not impossible.
It begins with the individual. It begins with you.
Economics, the Enemy
And why we need to revise the entire premise.
When I was a young boy, I stole a lemon meringue pie that my mother had made and hid it behind a couch.
I ate probably two thirds of it before the ants found it and I realized there was no way to dispose of the evidence without getting caught. I tried to negotiate my way out of it but was ordered to my room to reflect on my greed.
Far from that, I realized there were limits to how much of my own desires could be unilaterally taken without a substantial amount more planning.
I share this because I was instilled from a very young age with an irrational conviction that if I wanted it, I could just take it.
Needless to say, this resulted in a wide range of incidents wherein my self-interest conflicted with somebody else’s, as you will soon see. I became more and more analytic and devious in my efforts to do exactly as I pleased – no matter the consequences.
One might say I was a billionaire in the making. Had I been born a fox, this quality might have been defined as “sly”, but to my mother, I was just a bad kid. She did everything in her power to thwart this early rapacious inclinations, but to no avail.
I sharpened my skills like a cat sharpens her claws for more efficient killing.
I’m writing this book because the time for discussion is over. This planet – all of ours’ home – is descending into a state of chaos from which a very different world is going to emerge. The billionaire families who have controlled the narrative of our evolution as a species are about to see their asses Darwin’ed off the food chain as natural selection ensures survival of the fittest.
Which, contrary to media-driven indoctrination, billionaires are not.
Billionaires are expressions of humanity who have a few key characteristics in common;
They embrace the idea of elitism, and believe they are entitled to all they have accumulated because they worked hard to get it;
They consider themselves naturally superior to the “average” human being;
They project the idea that capitalism, and their resulting wealth, is good for all of us.
They consider their self-worth to be measured only by their net worth.
They think the circumstances of their birth are their own right to be exploited at the expense of everyone else.
But I’m not writing this book for them. They are the defective DNA in the human gene pool that needs to be deprecated so that we can realize the ascension of truly superior and valuable human traits, such as compassion, respect, and cooperation.
I’m assuming that’s you.
I’m writing this book to you. Those of you who are so fed up with the lunacy of politics, media and entertainment informing our values as a society, with no real mechanism for change; just the illusion of democracy with a tightly controlled choice between two sides of the same coin.
The relentless echo chamber reverberating an “us vs them” message over and over again, pushing extreme conflict rhetoric to the top of every search while moderate and rational voices are obscured and rendered silent.
The intent appears to be a concerted effort to divide us all, so that we clamour for a greater degree of government control. Pit us against one another so we don’t come together as a force to identify the pernicious effect of the billionaires hoovering up all that is valuable. Pay us nothing and make us work long and hard for diminishing rewards, while they build yachts and now space ships.
This is an invitation. We are in the earliest stages of a peaceful revolution that is going to disempower the billionaire/business/media/government/banking power structure that has financed and cheered wars against one another for centuries.
We need you. We need each other. There is no “them”. There is only us. If you can’t get past that fundamental premise in your head this book probably isn’t going to be for you.
I’m looking for the people out there who would normally prefer to just go about their lives without any need for telling anyone else how to live, or how to be.
That used to be me. Before I realized I’m the equivalent of a third class passenger on the Titanic bearing down at top speed on a sea of icebergs. If I do nothing, my premature demise is certain. So this book is my antidote for the apathy and indifference that has governed my actions throughout my life to this point.
Let the stupid people tear each other limb from limb, I thought.
But I arrived at the understanding the each human being is just a temporary convergence of energy and matter, neither of which can be destroyed, but only transformed.
So it seems to me that there is no choice but to return in some form or another…perhaps a different configuration of light and energy.
But if I was to return as another human being – or rather, the energy and matter that constituted me was recycled into another human – then it is within my eternal interest to fight the ignorance that is making our future world a hostile and barely inhabitable hell.
Let us fight to destroy these power structures in a non-violent collective abstinence from supporting the identified globalized business entities. Let us make use of the very weapon that has been used against us for hundreds of years; the slithery unctuous language they call “economics”.
Let us unite in an all-inclusive, non-violent global movement to unseat the status quo. Let us commit to a value system where cooperation is enshrined in law over competition.
Let “social” be the leading value, and not “capital”. Let cooperation be the foremost objective, not competition.
Let us realize the full potential of humanity by voluntarily stopping overpopulation, over-self-enrichment, and obsession with elitism. Let us all become avatars of justice seeking equitable enjoyment and preservation of the world’s resources for subsequent generations.
Let us hand over that which we have worked on to tomorrow in a more robust condition than it was when we arrived.
Let us reign in the twisted ambition of the billionaires choking our atmosphere so they can be first to space. Let us proclaim the illusion of life on Mars to
Dustbin of infantile fantasies.
We are here now, and this Earth is the only planet we will ever occupy. You can travel further in your mind and imagination than you ever could in a physical envelope travelling at the speed of light for millions of years.
This is where we are going, you and I, together. Toward a future where we collectively pass our lives in a rehabilitative mode, restoring ecology and bringing our numbers down to reflect a proportional representation across the planet’s biosphere. Let us voluntarily cease being the metastasizing cancer on the planet that we currently are.
The time for talk is over. Its time for collective action. Read on and see if you don’t perceive a place for you in this most just of causes.
I have a plan here for this transformation. I have a plan for you, if you are truly interested in achieving permanent and lasting change to the state of the world now.
I have a plan for you, if you’re open to it.
For you are the Real Economist.
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If Economics is the social science by which we govern our allocation of resources with the objective of maximizing productivity and quality of life for all, then it has failed. Completely, unequivocally.
The fundamental flaw in the entire premise of economics is the pursuit of perpetual growth. Perpetual growth as a species dependent on the sustained health of its host organism – Earth – is not only impossible; its pursuit renders us a relative cancer on the organism. For that is precisely what cancer is: unbridled growth and replication of cancerous cells that destroy or displace healthy cells.
Earth, being the superior life form that she is, is not without an immune system.
As the disease called mankind ravages her skin, Earth responds with defences that are going to have an ameliorative effect.
Weather is like the white blood cells in Earth’s immunology. With weather, Earth renders some places on the surface uninhabitable due to temperature extremes. Other infection sites can be submerged in water, which, above a certain ratio of water to dry land, is not conducive to sustained life by humans.
Another strategy by Earth might be to implant some of the cancerous cells with instructions to protect the host’s healthy cells, and to attack its own cancerous cells, which is what we are going to do.
We might call this practice “medicine” in the human context. But in the context of saving the Earth from our own excesses, we call it “economics”.
So if you are to join the increasing good cancer cells in restoring the health of our host and source of sustenance, you need to ignore the economics of the cancerous elite, and embrace Real Economics.
Think of this book as a manual for restoring the health of the planet by modulating our own mutated genes. The mutants are the billionaires, and everyone whose values – equivalent to their ethical DNA instructions – drive them to pursuing the billionaire’s mindset.
We are the new avatars of Earth. We are the Real Economists.
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So if economics has failed us, we need to consider the current situation humanity finds itself in, and juxtapose now to the historical first applications of economics.
Right now, we are depleting non-renewable resources relentlessly, and in such huge excess, that we are choking on its production’s toxic waste. We fail to modulate our population, or our consumption.
We fail to measure the resources of our planet, or measure out their extraction, and we proceed as if we will either miraculously find a way to synthesize or replace all that is needed, or else miraculously migrate to some newer version of our planet that will provide a seamless continuation of our economy.
The failure of economics ultimately will be the failure of the human race. And ironically, it is precisely because economics has evolved to emanate from the sole perspective of human beings that human beings has caused the cascading collapse of multiple ecosystems.
Economics, in its current configuration and practice, has become the system by which we delude ourselves that we are capable of self-determination and responsible global stewardship.
One of the key premises of this treatise is that Economics has evolved to serve the interests of elite financial interests primarily, and those of the mass population only secondarily, if at all.
The principle outcome of that misconfiguration is that the system of economics works against the interest of the entire global ecosystem, all humans included.
This has occurred as a result of an absence of top-to-bottom conception of what “The Economy” actually is and what the framework of economics should be. The result is an ever-escalating advent of ecological, social and economic challenges that threaten the continued evolution of humanity.
The extent to which we can lay the blame for the deteriorating condition of Earth at the feet of economics is subject to debate, yet it is impossible to deny that any perfectly functioning ecosystem must run on the basis of coherent and accurate economic planning. The extent to which the science of economics differs from the art of government might also be incorporated into such a discussion, for with the assiduous implementation of sound economic thinking, the ensuing outcome cannot then be blamed on economics.
However, we can not allow ourselves, in pursuit of the resolution to Earth’s pressing issues, descend into a philosophical debate. Or rather, we can have that debate, but we can’t at this juncture afford to let it overshadow or impede the implementation of solutions herein proposed.
So let us proceed under the acknowledgement that the structure of economic thinking has thus far evolved without talking into account several key features of physics and mathematics, and without a proper reconstitution including these fundamentals, no remedy is possible.
How Economics has Failed
In many respects, the failure of economics in properly informing the evolutionary path of humanity and Earth is self-evident in the catalogue of problems plaguing the natural environment and mand-made social systems. In the table below, we summarize those problems and correlate them with economic sub-problems.
[INSERT THE TABLE]
In retrospect, these problems might not have arisen had we had the benefit of hindsight to understand how their unfettered infection of our global ecosystem migh impart such negative outcomes in the future.
The Real Economist seeks to mitigate those outcomes by now proposing to re-categorize and reconfigure economics from an open-ended, reactive system of thought and self-governance to one that has a logically defined architecture based on knlowlege we now possess as a result of these negative outcomes.
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If economics as a science was properly configured and deployed in its service to humanity, we would not have:
Recurring financial crises;
Food shortages in some nations while others enjoy abundance;
Severe quality of life disparity;
Resource depletion issues;
Intensifying weather extremes;
Ecosystems collapsing;
Accelerated species extinctions;
Unstable currencies;
Rampant government debt;
Fabrication of capital and credit;
The tiniest minority of humanity controlling 90% of its natural resources.
Wars
A correctly configured economic science must serve all beings (not only the human variety), and promote food security, shelter, hygiene, and opportunity for all citizens. This is not the case now, and increasingly, there is evidence of collusion among government and financial entities acting contrary to the broader public interest.
In this book, the central position is that economics as a science has been hijacked by globalized corporate interests and subordinated to serve those interests to the detriment of the interests of the rest of humanity.
To suggest that the interests of these two groups are not aligned is the epitome of understatement. The minority elite, commonly referenced as the “1 %”, have demonstrated throughout history, that their sole occupation generation after generation is to agglomerate more and more wealth, at any cost.
The hijacking has occurred at the level of the post secondary institution, where economics is taught. The financial endowments of the top universities in the world are uniformly corporate donations and donations from those who have enriched themselves through the application of economics as taught by such universities. Thus, the available curriculum of economic study in the top institutions is influenced profoundly and finally by the 1% of the population whose interests it is now configured to serve.
The hijacking continues in the media industry, where the top financial media publications are controlled by a small group of media conglomerates whose boards of directors, and largest shareholders, are equally represented by banks, funds and other industrialists. Thus, the popular perception of economic events and thought is informed exclusively by the economics of the 1%, supporting the public’s general perception that the largest of the world’s problems relevant to resources, ecological degradation, and massive living standard disparity that these problems exist despite sound economic stewardship. The reality is that these problems are a direct result of the dominant application by government and industry of deformed economic theory as molded by the interests of the 1%.
Thus, it is a monumental task just to begin the discussion of a broad revision of the science of economics, because such a revision is in direct conflict with the objectives and requirements of the economics of the 1%.
The rapaciousness of the 1 per cent however, is aided and abetted by the twin sentiments of apathy and complacency on the part of much of the remaining 99%. Historically, this has been made possible where, in wealthy countries, citizens who enjoy a standard of living roughly categorized as “middle class”, there is little incentive to change the status quo, and while less aggressive and greedy citizens don’t necessarily approve of the greed and methods of the elite class, they are unwilling to pursue such change beyond the voting booth.
The complacency has resulted in the acute concentration of wealth now held by the one percent, and its continuation threatens to cause a premature and catastrophic collapse of key ecosystems. In the macro-time sense, this is an unfortunate abbreviation of the potential of humanity.
The failure of economics in rendering achievement of humanity’s maximum potential is the failure, at this point, of humanity itself. Human values have evolved in such a way that we prize material wealth above all else, including the health of our ecology. This is a perverse development, because without a sustaining and balanced natural ecology, human existence is threatened.
This distortion of values is largely attributable to the science of economics, which has driven the value of material wealth as tantamount into the psyches of markets, corporations, governments, and ultimately, citizens.
It is characterized by an inability to assess ourselves objectively and holistically – the impacts on future viability and sustainability of our behaviours and choices on resources in the macro-temporal scale i.e. the maximum possible lifespan of humanity on earth with a uniformly acceptable standard of living for all.
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Foundation of Economics
Economics’ was founded during the period in human history when the ability to measure the inventory of natural resources available to us from earth’s natural processes over an approximate lifespan of humanity on earth did not exist.
It is the reason it has evolved to this point without correctly serving the needs of humanity in the past, and now represents a major threat both to capitalism and democracy.
Economics has evolved under several erroneous assumptions, and from those primary defective assumptions, the entire science is built on fallacy. Therefore economics as a science is completely defective and of no use to humanity, and worse, it is now the system by which we abbreviate our time on earth.
The fallacies include: a) that resources are infinite; b) the environment is indestructible and perpetual; c) that the earth can accommodate as many people as are born, and; d) that the only desirable state of economy is one that is always growing.
The impossibility of these assumptions being factual is proven from a thousand different approaches of other sciences: geology proves that all non-renewable natural resources are finite; atmospheric chemistry, oceanic biology and related sciences demonstrate the fragility of natural systems; mathematics proves irrefutably that there is a limit to the amount of people the earth can support; and one need conduct no further investigation beyond a cursory contemplation of the inherent contradiction within the idea of “perpetual economic growth”.
But within these fallacies and errors of assumption are compounded fallacies and errors. For example, the term “non-renewable resources”, typically applied to minerals and hydrocarbons, is itself fallacious. Everything is renewable, given appropriate time, energy and matter. The fact that oil is created by the compression and heating of decomposing organic substances over millennia does not make it “non-renewable”. It is merely that the process of renewability is very long relative to the lifespan of a human being.
Tradition is Problematic
We are governed by certain traditions – economic, political, cultural and personal – that suggest we are limited in our ability to modify and regulate our behaviour collectively. The Real Economist rejects outright these implied limitations. If this were the case, then we would be no different from every species of animal over which we lord dominion. In most cases, it is tradition that must specifically be evaluated against the sustainability required of our behaviour collectively going forward.
As an example, consider the livelihood of the fisherman. On Canada’s East Coast, the collapse of the cod fishery was due to the insistence of the population in that part of the world on pursuing their traditional livelihood of fishing. “My grandfather was a fisherman, my father was a fisherman, and goddammit I’m a fisherman too.” This in spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence preceding the collapse that such a collapse was inevitable.
We can neither accept, as a species, the limitation of animal instinct-driven competitive urges, nor flounder uselessly among traditions which are harmful to us in the macro-temporal sense.
The implementation of economic theory in government policies since Adam Smith first penned The Wealth of Nations has grown from an afterthought to a core policy input for any government.
Despite that, the state of humanity and its relationship with the earth is best characterized as one of parasite and host. In the current trajectory of planetary health, however, the parasites are abandoning the notion of symbiosis for that of rampant consumption.
Even now, as rainforest is cleared for sugar plantations in Brazil and Palm Oil in Indonesia, the policy of governments that permit such ultimately self-destructive ablation of key ecosystems is not only justified by economics: the decisions to strip and plant are driven by economics.
Economics has failed to meter the consumption of natural resources or the destruction of key ecosystems throughout its history, and continues to drive them. Worse, economics fails to measure and assess such destruction against the costs of the economic gains realized from such activity.
It’s as if the defective configuration of economics is unapparent to all economists, governments, and a large majority of the earth’s citizens.
The evolution of economic thought has been marked by what now appears as a glaring omission from the original concept. While the efficient use of resources, division of labor, supply and demand theory, and money and credit are all undeniably crucial components to the composition of economic thinking and structures, these all must be reconciled against the limitations of human economy, which have heretofore failed to be considered.
Thus, we are confronted with diminishing resources relative to population demand. We see resources transformed through industrial processes and labor where demand is conspicuously absent, engendering price competition that precludes the possibility of holistic product cycle accounting.
The absence of such consideration can be, in part, identified as one of the leading causes for the failure of modern economics.
Among such considerations which, I believe, must be included in the deliberations of economists in order for such a deliberations to achieve a higher degree of success in predicting future outcomes and trends, are considerations relative to the lifespan of humanity as a species on earth as it exists, optimum population density of humans on earth relative to other species, and baseline quality of life standards for all.
We now possess the depth of scientific measurement whereby we should focus our attention on answering these most fundamental questions.
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The Failure of Modern Economics
Economics is the science whereby the measurement of human activity relative to resources is undertaken and described to facilitate future forecasting and government policy development. The implicit objective of economics is maximum productivity, maximum employment, etc.
But economics in this configuration is wholly inadequate, in that its objectives are incompatible with the requirements of the human race at this point in evolution.
It has failed us, as the various economic disasters of the last century have demonstrated. Economic policy is reactive instead anticipatory, which puts humanity on a back foot when it comes to resource allocation, and subsequently, wealth distribution. Whereas the living standards of the average human being can be demonstrated statistically to be better than 50 years ago as a percentage of population, that, like so many other statistically reinforced “facts” is misleading.
When the extreme wealth of the upper one percent of the population are weighted against the extreme poverty of the lower quartile equally, the statistic is grossly distortionary. A more reasonable approach would be to weight the amount of excess wealth possessed by the top one percent proportionally to the dearth of wealth among the lower quartile.
For the purposes of this discussion, we define modern economics as the Standard Economic Model (SEM), which is characterized by the following features:
Continuous economic growth is the top priority of the SEM;
The SEM seeks to exploit natural resources at the maximum rate possible with the lowest possible capital and operating expenditure, regardless of ecological impact;
The SEM primary unit of measurement is monetary.
The temporal standard that informs performance and efficiency is quarters and years.
Among the lessons of the 20th century that the current state of economics prevents us from embracing is the key fact that security is directly correlated to economic circumstances. Poor nations have low levels of domestic security, and therefore, limited organic growth potential. Wealthy nations, on the other hand, consume an outsized portion of the global resource supply in with completely unregulated abandon. Future generations of both wealthy and poor nations are negatively impacted by the unlimited consumption of non-renewable resources coupled with ecological destruction.
One of the primary deficiencies of modern theoretical economics is that it has failed to harmonize the quality of life. Instead, it has promoted waste and excess by the wealthy, while collapsing localized economies that are the source of subsistence levels of living for poor nations.
Overall, the trend in wealth disparity, where a disproportionately small percentage of the global population consumer and control the creates majority of the world’s wealth, continues to widen.
Globalization is a one way street, for most nations.
As the fall of Hosnei Mubarek in Egypt demonstrated, the U.S. and its allies’ policy of supporting non-democratic authoritarian regimes for reasons of political expediency and regional security has a habit of hobbling the nations whose leadership is so supported. During the last 50 years, the economic imbalances enforced by such misguided policy have engulfed the majority of the developing world.
The ability of the United States and its G7 allies to operate and manipulate governments, nations and increasingly, markets invisibly is diminishing, thanks to the ease and speed of information transportation afforded by modern technology. The direct result is WikiLeaks, and while that organization is only the first an imperfectly executed iteration of an emerging system, the demand for transparency by all global citizens shall ensure future versions will appear with better management.
The idea that information is power is accurate. Technology enables the open sharing of all types of information, and severely complicates the secrecy with which it can be withheld. The result will be a more uniform availability of opportunity for those with the mental alacrity and force of will to capture them.
This new landscape requires a re-definition of economics, and a re-deployment of new concepts with the objective of re-assessing whats left of the global resource pool in terms of renewable and non-renewable resources, and creating better regulatory frameworks to ensure their equitable distribution and protection.
Presently, there is a world-wide race to acquire ownership and control of the world’s remaining deposits of minerals and energy, water and timber, agricultural land areas and prime real estate. We are entering the period where all the items of value in the world can be accounted for on a balance sheet, and we will be increasingly able to forecast terminal resource depletions, currently embodied in deficient and inaccurate concepts like “peak oil”.
—–June 14, 2012 —addendum:
There is much evidence to support the idea that economics, as a branch of science, has failed in its service to humanity. Collapsing ecosystems, oceanic salinity, melting ice caps, species extinction, greenhouse gas emissions, financial system instability, rampant debt crises – all point to humanity out of control. The argument as to whether or not global warming is real is incredibly irrelevant in view of these conditions. Its not a question of “if” humanity is causing global warming. It’s a question of “can we stop our massive self-destruction before the cataclysmic collapse in population occurs that is the direction in which we are headed with a growing momentum that is truly frightening”?
But it is neither the fault of the science itself, nor its application that is to blame. Rather, it is a combination of the misconception at the highest level of the essence of economics, combined with its subjugation to the pursuit of perpetual economic growth – an impossibility that renders any application of economic theory defective.
So we have two missions ahead of us, as human beings. First, we must revise our very definition and perception of economics, both practical and theoretical. Secondly, we must unite behind the data that what we shall henceforth refer to as Real Economics, to reconfigure our various global governments so that those who are in control of the resources and governments of our nations are not under the control of business interests who are blindly self-interested, at the expense of humanity and the earth.
The problem before us is eminently profound and profoundly simple.
If we continue to conduct ourselves as we have since the industrial revolution, then the decline of humanity as the dominant and most populous species that has already started will accelerate, and the timeline until the extinction of human beings will arrive within the next few generations.
The period of abundance that has characterized life for those of us in the upper third of the global population will come to an end, and the result is going to be a return to warfares local, regional and global. Its no joke. Its happening right now. The unrest and poverty sweeping through Europe is only going to grow. Whatever temporary solutions that the incumbent or new governments arrive at, barring the adoption of voluntary behavioural choice modifications, is limited to the fabrication of more currency, credit and debt, and so can only be temporary.
If we can revolutionize the approach toward self-government, towards resource management, and to environmental priority, then there is no reason that humanity cannot continue to evolve for many centuries to come.
Its do or die. And the time is now.
This book is a call to revolution. An appeal to you directly, the reader, to embrace the truths inherent in these pages, and make modifications to your behaviours and expectations, your desires and your habits. To voluntarily adopt the code of conduct of The Real Economist. For The Real Economist is the ultimate citizen of the planet.
Ahead I’m going to develop the timeline and inflection points along it where acts of industry and government have compromised the potential and evolution of economics as a valid science, and where it has been conscripted to rapacious self-interest by corporations, whose status as legal entities with limited liability is a key deficiency in the evolution of humanity.
Then we’re going to examine the praxeology, or human choices and behaviours and what triggers and motivates them, across key categories of human conduct. We will conclude, at the end of each such categorical evaluation, with a list of actions that can be undertaken by individuals, small companies, and multi-national corporations to comply with what will be our resulting Code of Conduct for Real Economists.
Regarding economics as an academic or scientific application to humanity’s progress from a historical perspective, it would appear that economics has been deployed as the science whereby choices and actions are justified, rather than rationally elected as the best possible courses of action.
Infrastructure projects, housing developments, commercial skyscrapers, factory construction; all these major human projects are approved on the basis of an economic analysis that only justifies the expense from an economic standpoint. If it makes money, it goes forward.
Key among the factors that have guaranteed the inability of economics to serve the interests of humanity and the earth is the prioritization of profit above all else.
The odds of this new way of economic thinking becoming the guiding platform for governments, corporations and individuals are slim, but not impossible.
It begins with the individual. It begins with you.
