Thread by @EthicalRenewal

Let’s talk about the economy.
You agree: “A logical next step.”
Would you mind if I’m blunt?
“Fire away.”
It’s shit.
“The economy?”
Yes.
“Well, that is blunt.”

1/52
#economy
#society
#talk

You ponder for a moment, then ask, “Is this another of your enemies?”
The economy?
“Yes.”
An enemy to humanity and the biological world?
“Yes.”
I hope, by the time this thread is complete, you’ll tell me.

2/52
#society

We’re talking about the supply-and-demand, producer/consumer, deregulated/lightly-touched, invisibly-handed, limited-resource-distributing, market-based economy that prevails across much of the world.

“And it’s all entirely shit?”
Well, perhaps I need to qualify that.

3/52

This economy of ours has its good sides, at least in its immature phase–when the gaps between rich and poor, between investment and profit, are less pronounced.
You could almost say that in its early form the economy ‘pays its way’. The benefits outweigh the costs.

4/52
#costs

But for the purposes of the 21st Century, for the purposes of the preservation of humanity and the biological world, well, this economy of ours?
I’ll stick to my guns.
It’s rubbish.

5/52
#economy
#society

Let’s take a look at the 9 ways the economy harms us all.
–Growth
The economy, in its current, near-universal form, is built for growth. Growth attracts investment. It offers economies of scale. Executives get rewarded for growth, & owners & shareholders profit from growth.
6/52

Governments, seeing economic growth as a measure of re-electability, fund and facilitate growth.

But here’s a simple truth (which most of us already know): the environment in which the economy is located is finite. There’s only so much of it.

7/52

Our world–the environment–is like a balloon the economy keeps puffing.
The skin of the balloon gets thinner and thinner… until there’s no avoiding the outcome.

Keep puffing & the balloon will burst.

So it's better to stop puffing.
It's better if the balloon doesn’t burst.
8/52

–Infection
But that’s easy to say, isn’t it?
It’s harder to accomplish when our economy behaves like a virus.
With its profoundly simple RNA, the producer/consumer virus replicates itself through the social & physical world & turns every aspect of our lives into products.

9/52

Our relationships, our personal data, our homes, our health… even this thread and the communication it signifies is commodified. My creativity and my thinking have become content in an economic entity which exists primarily for profit.

10/52
#economy
#society
#commodity

The rewards for the creation of new markets, new opportunities, new services, new products or new ‘needs’ are dramatic. Replicate the owner/worker/producer/consumer RNA and profit is assured. That’s one reason the virus is so powerful: it feels like common sense.

11/52
#economy

So our viral economy produces&consumes ever more, with predictable outcomes:
–resource depletion
–habitat destruction
–animal extinction
–the gargantuan production of waste

Our world's in desperate need of a vaccine.
If we don’t find one soon, this virus will harm us all.

12/52

–Irrelevance
Another problem with our economy is what it sees as ‘externalities’ – the stuff it sees as irrelevant to economic functioning. Human fulfilment, community well-being & the environment (other than the bits that can be exploited for profit) are seen in this way.
13/52

Meanwhile jobs, dividends, profits, share prices, exploitable resources, end products, industrial processes, corporate and economic growth and the mechanisms for sustaining these, are valued.

14/52
#economy
#society
#value

Forests destroyed? Communities shattered? Countless lives lost to slavery, whether waged or unwaged?
The economy doesn’t give a f***.

15/52
#society
#economy
#community

So is our economy an enemy to humanity?
The issues of growth, infection and irrelevance alone suggest as much.
But there are other negatives.
I’ll keep going.

16/52
#economy
#enemy
#humanity

– Inequality
Our economy is an Inequality Machine, which manufactures ever-growing disparities of wealth. It’s fuel is self-replenishing: a reinforcing cycle called the ‘Wealth-To-The-Wealthy’ feedback loop.
It works like this.

17/52
#economy
#inequality
#wealth

If you already have wealth, you can:
–Do nothing while your assets increase in value through inflation or scarcity
–Do nothing while gaining rent through your assets
–Lend your wealth and accrue effort-free interest

18/52
#economy
#wealth2thewealthy

If you already have wealth, you can:
–Invest in schemes or businesses where the efforts of others increases your wealth
–Buy up enterprises which generate wealth: factories, mines, farms, businesses of any kind

19/52
#economy
#wealth2thewealthy

If you already have wealth, you can:

–Benefit from government grants or subsidies supporting the industries or agricultures in which you invest

–Feed your wealth into complex financial mechanisms and, without quite understanding what is happening, watch it grow

20/52
#economy

And so your wealth increases.
And what can you do with this increase in wealth earned primarily not through merit or labour but through your initial possession of wealth?
Well, why not push it through the Wealth-To-The-Wealthy feedback cycle all over again?

21/52
#economy
#cash

“But aren’t the poor always with us? The rich, too?”
That’s the wealthy apologists’ excuse for wealth – a fatalism sponsored by the rich… and it’s not true.

22/52
#economy
#rich
#poor
#mythology

With our science and technology, our genius and creativity, no one in the 21st Century needs to be poor. And the wealth of the world’s billionaires alone could eliminate world poverty four times over.

23/52
#economy
#science
#technology

More than that, inequality is harmful for society. It undermines cohesion. It tears a great gaping hole in the side of our culture – and out of that hole pours frustration, hatred and rage.

We’ve seen that, haven’t we – in the last few years?

24/52
#economy
#culture

– The Cognitive Dissonance Disaster

Here are three important truths:

a) It’s immoral to be rich when there are those around you who are poor

b) Humans have a natural sense of fairness

c) Wealth doesn’t make you happy

25/52
#economy
#dissonance
#disaster

Despite these truths, our economic system makes small numbers of people extremely rich while leaving millions miserably poor.
This immediately creates a problem for the rich.

Due to truths a, b and c cognitive dissonance kicks in.

26/52
#economy
#cognitive
#dissonance

To escape the resulting psychological stress, the rich – if they choose to remain rich – have to deny truths a through c. Compulsively they throw themselves into:
– immorality denial
– unfairness denial
– unhappiness denial

27/52
#economy

Why is this a disaster for our society? It’s a disaster because the rich exert themselves tirelessly in rewriting reality for the poor. They purchase or manipulate our media, saturating it with the dissonance-eclipsing idolisation of wealth.

28/52
#economy
#society
#disaster

They become aggressive purveyors of alternatives to truth. So is it any surprise that a constantly manipulated public become easy victims to populism, conspiracy theory and political deceit?

And there’s more.

29/52
#economy
#politics
#deceit

–The Value Inversion Effect
Our economy & its self-justifying myths have put a torch to our morality.
“What morality?” you ask.
Irony, I hope?
But it’s true.
It’s next to impossible to state what our morality should be in a world of 8 billion opinions & 10,000 religions.

30/52

All the same, let’s take that challenge on the chin. Let’s strip down our moral aims to the simplest form they can possibly take if our civilisation is to survive through the 21st Century and beyond.

31/52
#economy
#morality
#ethics

How about this?
–Nurture those around you
–Nurture all humanity
–Nurture and protect the biological world

Is that so hard?

32/52
#economy
#nurture
#protect

But our economy&its evangelists have given us this:
–Selfishness is king
–Greed is queen
–Profit is our God
–The economy's our religion
–Ownership's our temple
–Wealth's our sacrament
–Ruthlessness is admirable
–Acquisition is commendable
–Always want more
–Winner takes all
33/52

What a success story!
We now have a value system that’s the very opposite of what any sustainable civilisation needs!

34/52
#economy
#society
#values

The Inequality Machine, the feedback loops of wealth, the growth problem & the Cognitive Dissonance Disaster all contribute to the economic lensing of wealth: the focussing of profit on a smaller & smaller community of individuals & corporations to the detriment of us all.

35/52

In parallel with this, the Value Inversion Effect tells us it’s not a problem. Nothing to see here. All is well.

But all isn’t well.
Let’s talk about democracy

36/52
#economy
#society
#democracy

– The Democracy Distortion Effect

In a properly functioning democracy the electorate should be the main influence on those to whom they’ve delegated power – their elected representatives.

37/52
#economy
#society
#democracy

The creation of alternative power centres, through the channelling of extreme wealth to small numbers of corporations and individuals, challenges this in two ways:

38/52
#economy
#society
#democracy

–The elected representatives come under the influence of these alternative power centres through funding, lobbying, miscellaneous direct and indirect bribes or rewards, promises of investment and jobs, and pressure from an oligarch-owned media

39/52
#economy
#society

–The voters themselves come under the influence of these alternative power centres via the oligarch-owned media and its relentless and all-pervasive messaging, which is echoed by state broadcasters if such exist

40/52
#economy
#society
#voters
#media

This pincer movement against democracy–the control of the politicians & the manipulation of the electorate–leaves nations rushing headlong, without effective voter restraint, towards the economic chaos & environmental jeopardy implicit in the failings of our economic model.
41/52

– Alienation & Atomisation
And it’s not just democratic power that’s undermined. It’s individual power, too.
The market economy sees humans as reluctant workers and greedy consumers – as selfish economic units whose interactions are solely concerned with personal gain.

42/52

Our oligarch-owned media propagandises this perception. Surrounded by the messaging of apologists for wealth & immersed in a mechanistic economic system, we internalise this vision of ourselves. We lose connection with one another except as competitors for products or jobs.
43/52

Empathy? Community? Kindness?
What are these things?
A sense of unity with other creatures and the biological world?
All of this means nothing to the market economy. It’s an irrelevance.

44/52
#economy
#society
#irrelevant

Our economic system divides us from one another and from our world.
We are alienated, atomised. We are anxious and unhappy. We cease to have value, even to ourselves, except as human capital.
And if we have no capital?
Perhaps we’re not even human.

45/52
#economy
#society

It’s interesting that we speak about the economy as if it were magic. ‘Economic miracles’, ‘economic alchemy’, the ‘Magic Square of Economic Policy’, the market’s ‘invisible hand’…
It is as if the economy is something we should submit to or even worship.

46/52
#economy
#society

But the economy is just an artefact of human manufacture – humans run it, humans organise it, humans made it.
The economy is a kind of machine, a machine which should serve us, not us it.

47/52
#economy
#society
#economics
#machines

President Bill Clinton once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
He got that profoundly wrong.

It’s not, ‘It’s the economy stupid,’ but ‘The economy’s stupid.’

48/52
#economy
#society
#BillClinton
#stupid

Our economy creates unfairness. It undermines democracy. It destabilises social cohesion… and it jeopardises the survival of our species.
That seems pretty stupid to me.
The economy’s stupid – and it won’t become clever unless we engineer cleverness into it.

49/52
#economy

“So how do we do that?” you ask, pragmatic as ever.

Well, you leaven the market economy with cooperativism, with state and community ownership, with ‘Common Good’, ‘Negative Growth’, ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘Donut’ economics.
Then, whatever’s left, you regulate.

50/52
#economy

You regulate morality into the market economy.
You regulate the stupidity out of the market economy.
You regulate ‘putting people before profit’ into the economy.
And then you’re done.

That’s what economic regulation is for.

51/52
#economy
#society
#regulation

Unless we take these measures we’ll never have an economy suited to our 21st Century Age of Intelligence.
All we’ll have is a stupid economy.
An economy likely to bring this century to a calamitous end.

52/52
#economy
#society

To see this thread in article form, please check out citizens' media Dorset Eye:

dorseteye.com/9-ways-the-eco…

#DorsetEye
#analysis
#politics
#society

@threadreaderapp please unroll.