Market Economics, by The Magus

2002-06-15 - 9:03 a.m.

I never liked the idea of economics...or, actually, since we need some sort of economic system to move things to places, to produce them in some way that's almost equitable, I've never liked our current economics. Why should social, military, political and financial decisions all be driven by this giant game of "Let's Pretend?"

Because money is just a fiction, a game of Let's Pretend. It's basically one guy saying to another, "I have two goats at home, but I'd like those bags of grain and some chickens. Let's pretend this shiny rock is one of my goats, you give me the grain and chickens and I'll catch ya later."

The other guy looks at the first guy with disbelief, then answers, "That sounds fair. I'll take that shiny rock, but I need the chickens for just another few days, so I'll give you these differently-coloured shiny rocks and you can pretend they lay eggs and stuff."

At this point, the wealthiest people don't even have the resources that make them wealthy. They have I.O.Us that they trade around, hoping to con someone into giving them a better IOU back.

That seems inherrantly unstable and makes me nervous...that billions are poor so that these guys can have the equivalent of a tea party with mudpies?

As it was explained to me, market economics (what we have) basically has two forces at work: buyers and sellers. The buyer wants to get as much as possible for as little as possible, and the seller wants the opposite. It's their opposite goals that drive a market economy. Some people are rich, mainly because they (or they've hired someone who) can buy and sell better than most, or have an advantage over the rest of us (Daddy's money?).

Unfortunately, the rest of us have been duped. We've been convinced to pay more and more for less and less. We pay two dollars for bottled water. Ask someone a hundred years ago if they'd like to pay -anything- for half a liter of H2O and they'd think you were crazy. We spend hundreds, thousands, a year on fast food with no nutritional value, movies with no worthwhile content, television, ditto for the content, cars which require gas, insurance, maintenance...one hundred dollars for shoes, thousands for full wardrobes when most likely only a few outfits would do.

We've been brainwashed to pay more for basically nothing, things that don't have any lasting value, that will clutter up a closet or landfill in a year.

The other part of a market economy that I don't like is that it has a very narrow view of value. When determining the price of a car, for example, no one figures in the environmental cost that it took to create it, and what effects all those burned fossil fuels will have on the lifestyle of those around it. The only time this is important is if it concerns the buyer or the seller.

Market economies encourage selfishness, isolation, are anti-society. To succeed as a market economist, you must only worry about what is of value to you, and what you are paying for it.

I've done a poor job of explaining this, I think, but I'm trying to articulate why I'm going to the G8 protests in Ottawa, and I think it's going to take a while. This is all stuff that I had to learn for myself, because schools only teach so much.

So, in between my ranty, whiney, lunatic writings I'll have a few entries explaining what I'm against, why I'm against it, and what I'd like to do about it. It'll be dry as a textbook. Blah.

Cheers,

The Magus

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