IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID Have you about had it with alarmism? Ever watch Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly or Lou Dobbs? I actually consider it a painful experience to come across their programs. I listen for but the briefest of moments and continue with my clicking. The latest fright is centered in the so-called dismal state of the economy. Seems the price of oil has got a lot of economists in a tizzy. The higher the cost of oil the higher the cost of transportation, an industry instrumental in getting goods to market. If the cost of transportation goes up, so does the cost of those same goods that arrive at market. Whenever I hear people talk about this stuff, I am reminded of one of my favorite Bible verses (lately, one of my favorite verses of all time): "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18) I guess that I happen to be more optimistic than Beck or O'Reilly and the others of their ilk. I can see past the doom and gloom to the promised land of solutions, which I guess is my way of saying that I have a vision. There are always solutions, but (apparently) a lot of people have more fun with ignoring them. It is easy to get the impression that they actually enjoy floundering in negativity. I have said elsewhere that we make our own problems. It applies to our current economic conundrum as well. There is actually a very simple remedy for our economic ills. It is so simple in fact that it will probably never (at least in this lifetime) be applied. When you first hear the solution, you will very likely disagree that it is simple. You might even exclaim that it is anything but simple, not to mention downright impossible to ever implement. I can only say in response that I disagree. It is indeed simple. It is only the nature of the beast that is complex. And that nature is the only thing that will keep it from happening. So what exactly is the solution that I refer to? Get rid of money! Like I said, we create our own problems, and we have created an enormous problem with the abstract bugbear that we call money. Economic systems should be based upon resources, not money. Money is nothing but access to resources. Money is abstract. Resources are real. We invented the idea of money. We did not invent resources. (They existed before our species was even able to talk and thus create ideas. And, furthermore, there are more than enough resources to properly feed, clothe and house everyone on the planet.) If I may borrow a page from Alan Watts, blaming economic woes on money is like a group of construction workers arriving at the jobsite one morning only to be told that there would be no work for them that day because we had somehow run out of inches and feet. "Whadda ya mean we ran out of inches?" one of the angry workmen says to the foreman. "We got wood, hammers and nails. Why can't we finish the house?" "I don't make the rules," the foreman replies. "This comes from the top; and when I say 'top' I'm talkin' like Wall Street. I'm just passin' it along. Don't blame me." Like the lines on the map (and inches and feet), money is an abstraction. We made it up. Like the lines on the map, money is useful. But however invisible money and the lines on the map may be, we have nevertheless found ways to greatly utilize them. We may find our way to any place on the earth with the non-existent lines of latitude and longitude. In the same way, we may access the resources of our planet with the pure abstraction that we call money. But the use of money as a medium of exchange sometimes gets out of hand, so out of hand as to pose a threat to the very real human beings who are forced to rely on it, forced by circumstances that are completely beyond their control. What does it mean when oil rises to one-hundred dollars a barrel? It means that someone somewhere has to work harder in order to access it. And they have to work harder because there are more people who also want it. It is as if the line we have to wait in to get our hands on our barrel of oil is longer, which means that we have to wait longer to get it. And even if we are only waiting, we are still working. The body is metabolizing food; energy is being used. In physics work is defined as a function of energy. If the price of food goes up because the cost of transportation increases, it inevitably translates into the unpleasant reality that we are going to have to work harder to get the extra money to pay for it. But what if there is no extra money available? What if there is none to be found, no matter how hard you work, even if you are willing to work twenty-four-hours a day? The oil itself has not disappeared, nor has the food, but you are not able to get your hands on either because you can't get your hands on the necessary money to pay for it (or if you do get your hands on the money you still can't use it because it has somehow become worthless due to another abstraction called inflation). We could suddenly find ourselves in the absurd situation of the hypothetical construction workers who found that they were unable to finish the house they had been working on because someone somewhere had arrived at the brilliant conclusion that the inches and feet had somehow mysteriously vanished (or had become practically meaningless). Until we become capable of envisioning an economic system based upon something real (like resources and human ingenuity), we will never completely rid ourselves of the absolutely viral whims of pure abstractions, and money can be one of the most insidious of them all. As I said, we are not likely to implement the drastic remedy of completely devaluing money to the point of making it obsolete. We lack the vision. Once again, I defer to Alan Watts (from an essay titled Wealth vs. Money, written in 1968):
All this will involve a curious reversal of the Protestant ethic, which, at least in the United States, is one of the big obstacles to a future of wealth and leisure for all. The Devil, it is said, finds work for idle hands to do, and human energy cannot be trusted unless most of it is absorbed in hard, productive work - so that, on coming home, we are too tired to get into mischief. It is feared that affluence plus leisure will, as in times past, lead to routs and orgies and all the perversities that flow therefrom, and then on to satiation, debilitation, and decay. Indeed, there are reasonable grounds for such fears, and it may well be that our New England consciences, our chronic self-disapproval, will have to be maintained by an altogether new kind of sermonizing designed to inculcate a fully up-to-date sense of guilt. Preachers of the late twentieth century will have to insist that enjoyment of total luxury is a sacred and solemn duty. Penitents will be required to confess such sins as failing to give adequate satisfaction to one's third concubine or lack of attention to some fine detail in serving a banquet to friends - such as forgetting to put enough marijuana in the turkey stuffing. Sure, I am talking with about one half of my tongue in my cheek, but I am trying to make the deadly serious point that, as of today, an economic Utopia is not wishful thinking but, in some substantial degree, the necessary alternative to self-destruction.
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