Economic concepts for the
21st century
Some practical and conceptual
tools towards changing economics
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(There is some repetition, as concept pages overlap)
Some Problems:
- Growth as a dangerous Pyramid
Scheme. What is 'Growth'? When and how can it stop, without
resulting in decay? Production has traditionally been a process of
Natural resources-made into- Product -made into - Waste, and has
been more adaptable for large-scale products than for supply of
services. Now this consumption goal is being challenged. An
economic systems that relies on Growth Unending is the biggest
Pyramid Scheme ever, and it must end, like all Pyramid schemes, in
disastrous collapse. Growth should only go as far as it is needed
to meet people's real needs - and after that, improve quality of
life without increasing consumption.
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- The fallacy of the marketplace as
the ideal regulator of supply and demand today is that demand is
wealth-driven. Most of the needs of the world call out for jobs
that need to be done and products supplied, but the crucial
question is how to pay for them
-
- Resources Costs of major world
industries - war, the arms trade and drugs.
-
- Wealth derived from non-useful
activities such as international financial dealings, land
speculation, futures, and stock-exchange speculation today are a
major source of national financial problems and disastrous
economic cycles.
Some concepts for thinking out of the
present rut - and see the other concept pages
- Common Wealth. This has a real
meaning to be kept alive. It is not just a phrase.
- Consuming is not a good word.
Humans should be Users rather than
Destroyers of the world's resources.
- Future Cost to be factored in
with Capital and Labor as a major component of product cost
- Human Rationalism rather than
Economic Rationalism
- Independence of nations. Political independence means little if a region has no control
over its economic management. Nation States began with the
function of reducing the lawlessness and rapacity of robber
barons; today the barons are international, and nation states now
have a function to protect people from their lawlessness and
greed. Use of property, conditions of employment, local sustenance
and prevention of poverty can all be taken out of local control by
cross-national organisations oriented only to profit.
- Index of Gross Unnecessary
Suffering and Index of Quality of
Life to be published for each country along with GDP and
GNP
- Jobs
that are needed. q.v. The perspective of 'what are the
jobs needing to be done' is much more fruitful than trying to
'create jobs' regardless of anything except employers' profits or
government subsidies.
- Jobs. Tuesday
work for the dole. q.v.
The dole is taken to represent pay for one day's work, which can
be almost anything that is useful. This cannot threaten wages for
full-time workers. On one day a week, nobody is to be idle. Nobody
is bludging because they are earning the dole, and continuing work
experience. There is a great deal of useful employment that could
operate on this principle without taking away any full-time
workers jobs. A Freedom to Work Day.
- Circulating Money is needed.
Money was invented to be a means of exchange of goods and
services, but today it siphons off into sinks - overseas and to
the 'already haves' - so that it is no longer circulating through
the whole community, round and round.
- The purpose of economic activity
should be firstly to meet real needs, a profit-system is
only a way to do this.
- Prevention of destructive
take-overs. Plotting takeovers gives something for
power-hungry executives to do, and reduces their competition, but
there needs to be protection against this for healthy companies.
This is particularly important when takeovers from overseas
destroy the local competition in this way.
- Public Enterprise as well as
Private Enterprise. That is, structures within profit-making
public-owned organisations that give the advantages of private
enterprise, except that the profits go to revenue, not to private
shareholders.
- Regional Currency circulates only
within a country or region, unlinkable with the national currency
that is used for banking, finance and international trade.
Regional currency can only keep circulating to pay for goods and
services - it can be banked only for security. It cannot drain out
of the region or country or be trapped in the sink of
millionaires' profits or even interest-bearing private saving.
That means that there need be no paradox of need combined with
unemployment. Jobs that are needed can be paid for, because the
wages will be returning into circulation to pay for local goods
and services, and the income from these that is received in
regional currency will be then passed on again, round and
round.
- Shares and Loans: Self-terminating
Government Shares and Loans that terminate when the
dividends and interest paid add up to x times what was originally
paid for them, regardless of prices in transactions since (x =
what would be fair, allowing for rewards for taking risks in
investment).
- The SUSTAINABLE HOUSEHOLD is as
important as the Marketplace in thinking about Economics. Spinks
and others have written on this. It will be even more important in
the future, as waste becomes recognised as a major problem leading
to shortages of resources.
- Useful Taxes Some ideas can be
implemented about socially useful taxation.
- Waste-prevention today is as
important as Product Production for a country's continued
prosperity and positive trade balance, and hence an important
source of employment. At present 50% of production is either
wasted or barely utilised. Work - redefinitions are needed for
Work, Drudgery, Earning and Being Paid which include an invidious
category of 'unproductive employment' in which people get paid for
useless or antisocial activities.
