In this writing I have made a number of bold statements and “assertions of truth”. I am not trying to say: “This is THE TRUTH”. I am trying to reveal ignored facts that show a different and far better economic picture than we see currently, and that illuminates unnoticed and unprecedented good news. I am aware that you or I or others can pick around and find fault with one point or many. Even so, facts are facts, and this work is based on looking at facts.
Many people are intimidated by economics. They feel that it is complicated or boring. Economics, when understood properly is neither complicated nor boring. It is what children are engaged in when they learn about planting seeds, caring for animals, weather, and playing music. It is simple and it is understandable by almost everyone. When it gets complicated or boring, it is almost always because finance has been confused with economics.
IF you are willing to look at economics completely independently of finance, you too will see a far different Economic Reality than what you see when you make no such distinction.
DATELINE 2009 U.S.A. There are programs to bail out banks, builders and homeowners, make loans to car companies, create more jobs, cut taxes, raise taxes, rebuild infrastructure, re-regulate financial companies and give taxpayer rebates. AND, NO ONE can say for sure if or when any of it is going to work. We don’t know what will work because we don’t: recognize basic facts; understand basic definitions; know how to appropriately measure and manage economic activity; stand and act from the highest, life-enhancing ideals.
Are we going to repeat the same old and tired routine of fixing and rebuilding financial systems that still again go through cycles of growth, recession, depression, inflation, deflation, bubbles, crashes and frauds, etc.? Are we going to continue with systems that regard caring for the “house” we live in, called earth, a “cost”, that might be too high to pay? Are we going to continue valuing all human financial activity in the same way, whether it be for military, emergency medical care, art, music, prison building and prisoner maintenance, scientific exploration, farming, stock trading or environmental cleanup, they’re all just part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), just different ways of making a living? This is what humans have been doing for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
good for the consumer, but might not be good for the economy”, jobs for everyone, productivity increases, illegal immigration and free trade are some examples.
The Industrial Revolution began the rapid development of machines that can do what human beings can not do: work much faster, work almost non-stop, perform in adverse conditions, concentrate large amounts of power, quickly produce great quantities of an item, and pieces that are identical from one to the next.
Another thing this Revolution is doing is to produce machines to do what human beings can do: math calculations, assemble parts, clean things, move things around, and perform repetitive functions. The purpose of these types of machines is to increase the standard of living and to enable people to spend less time doing it. However, the standard of living is being reduced almost everywhere now and for most people. Also the time that people spend working is not going down in many places, but in fact is rising. Every tool and every machine that does what a human can do is a type of “labor saving device”. Why then are we not laboring less? Why bother inventing these machines if we are not going to labor less?
If full employment is a truly desirable goal, there is an instantaneous way to accomplish it: pass one six word law everywhere: “All tools and machines are outlawed”. Instantaneously every human being will be employed.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented opportunity for human beings and this planet. The technical hard part is complete. The single fact that we are sending people and machines into space for extended periods is proof of that. The stage we are now in is a matter of education and choice, both individually and collectively. The following four principles are fundamental to this new opportunity/paradigm.
Buckminster Fuller taught that because humanity’s know-how has increased at a much faster rate than population, we are finally able to produce enough to provide for all humans at a far higher standard than ever before. My own sense is that the universe has always provided and humans have always had the capability to produce abundance. We now have tools and machines to do a great deal of the work for us. Today, because communication and information is available on a world-around basis, if we look at the information holistically, it is inescapable that we can produce enough for all. However, how we got the capability, is not the most important issue, for this moment. What really matters is that we have it, now.
Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, copyright 1972, defines abundance as: “an ample or overflowing quantity.” We should add: “to meet a particular need.“ Abundance is not just an unlimited supply of any and every particular thing. Abundance as a condition is a state in which results can be produced that are sufficient to fulfill all needs, indefinitely. In this state, there is no waste. Everything is recycled. All aspects of the environment are maintained in the most pristine condition possible.
Looking at the pre-existing condition, before human beings lift a finger, we can see that nature (the universe) is extraordinarily abundant. In “Critical Path”, page 199, Buckminster Fuller states: ”The quantity of physical, cosmic energy wealth as radiation (sunlight) arriving aboard planet Earth each minute is greater than all the energy used annually by all humanity”. Oxygen for breathing has been available without effort for all human history. Plants produce plenty of seeds to expand their numbers and provide nourishment for animals and people. Human beings then observe and arrange the technologies of nature to produce more of certain desired results.
Right around the year 1900, there were a few thousand people who were the richest, most powerful people on the planet: kings, queens and heads of international businesses. Not one of them could: flip a switch to get clean, safe light; speak instantaneously with their top generals and managers in the field; hear and see events happening live in other parts of the world; travel 3, 4, 500 miles in a single day using a vehicle sitting at their residence; fly to a place where they wanted to vacation; process data rapidly; access large amounts of all the information known to man, from their desktop. No one had gone to the Moon and back. Humans were not living in space, on a continuous basis. Now, only 110 years later, humans have harnessed electricity, invented telephones, radio, televisions, automobiles, airplanes, computers and the internet, among many other things. Not only have we invented all of these, we invented mass production, such that these goods and services are available to a growing portion of all humanity.
Applying the rules of scarcity in a condition of abundance actually causes scarcity for many people in the midst of abundance for others. It causes undesirable side effects for everyone, such as pollution of the air, land and seas. There are billions of tons of no longer financially viable, partially processed materials, that we ignorantly call trash, and then incinerate or bury in overflowing landfills. We lose the beauty of the natural terrain. They leach chemicals into groundwater and gases into the air, and thus become pollutants. There is nothing inherently polluting about them. They are simply used in a way that is not supportive of life. Pollution at the core is much more a life-threatening process than a product.
Many other technologies have been developed either to fight wars or to correct the consequences of wars. Some of these technologies are then used for genuinely helpful purposes. The idea that war has some upside is then bandied about. This idea is very seductive. It is also immature, self-serving, short-sighted, vicious and un-loving. It would be far less costly, and more fulfilling, to devote our economic activity toward the success of ALL humanity, from the get-go, rather than great expenditures of materials, energy, time, labor and know-how, being used to destroy first and then fix-up later.
Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, defines economics as: “a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services”. Today a better word than “consumption” is “use”, reflecting the necessity to replace the idea that any product is throw-away-able with the idea that all materials need to be recycled, and used continuously. There are other definitions of economics. In everyday use by we the people, politicians, and economists, almost everyone uses the words finance and economics interchangeably. However, by using this definition and by looking at economics and finance independently, and then comparing them side by side, some quite remarkable facts become apparent.
So, production, distribution and use of goods and services. Contrary to popular belief, none of these take money. Nature has never demanded money for sunshine, oxygen, crude oil, water, trees, food plants or ANYTHING else that humans use in our economy. In fact, the universe, the solar system and the earth itself, and everything on earth, collectively is an economy, THE economy. Nature produces things. Nature distributes things. Nature uses, and then re-uses things, continuously. That’s what’s happening in the universe. We are smack in the middle of, and are a part of, one giant economy. The universe, which is nature, which is the environment, and the economy are synonymous. Universe = Nature=Environment = Economy. Finance and economics are NOT synonymous.
And… no matter how much we reform financial/monetary systems the fact remains that economics and finance are based on opposing principles. The fundamental principle of all barter and medium of exchange systems is: “What I have, I am withholding from you, unless you give me something that I value equally, to what I have”. And we frequently add: “I’d prefer you give me something that I value more, because I want to make a profit”. Finance is a “withholding from” system.
Nature is a “sharing with freely “ system. Nature doesn’t demand money or payment of any kind, and it never has. Nature allows everyone to pick fruits and vegetables, absorb sunlight, have rain fall on them and breathe air. Nature allows airplanes built with U.S. dollars to fly equally well over countries using Yen, Marks & Yuan, and over oceans with no money system at all.
The Universe does require that we observe it’s laws, and these laws don’t change. For example, crops need a certain amount of sunlight, moisture and nutrients to optimize their yield, and airplanes require a specific amount of lift for each ton of cargo. There is constant and recurrent upset in financial matters because it is not fact based. The rules are changed and violated continuously. Among other systems, humans have tried barter, slavery, feudalism, communism, socialism and capitalism. None of them have nor can work long term. They are all out of sync with nature and therefore obsolete.
Monetary systems provide a “medium of exchange” that have become largely detached from the production, distribution & use of goods and services. Making money with money is a blatant example of this detachment. Placing zero monetary value on parenting is another. Is not caring for children providing an extremely valuable service, one that all members of society benefit from, when it is done well? The practice of paying women a different wage than men, and of paying people in China a different wage than people in the United States are obvious examples of detachment. The practice of each country’s money itself having continuously fluctuating values is blatant.
If finance is not economics, then what is it? Finance is a tool. It is a wasteful management tool. We use it to manage an economy, to manage economic activity. And it is used to determine who gets access to goods and services, and how much access that one is to get.
This tool has become the purpose for and the reason why we do things. Money is the primary goal of most of what humans engage in. If it has no monetary value it is not counted as economic activity. We have almost completely lost awareness of the clear distinction between the tool and the thing being worked on. It’s as if you and I went to a fine restaurant. Everything about this establishment was oriented toward us having an exquisite dining experience, the softly covered floors, the comfortable temperature and lighting that made it relaxing. We sat down. The aromas stirred our anticipation. We selected a page of the menu with exquisite pictures. We listened as our waiter described the delicacy, and we started to eat …the menu. The menu is a tool. Money is a tool. When we confuse finance with economics it is the equivalent of eating the menu instead of the meal.
We use money to make it easier to trade unequal things, for example, artwork made by one person for a car made by 1000 people. Money is also used for “winning”. But far and away the most destructive use of money is when it is used for control. Once most everyone is convinced “it takes money to live”, those who control the money control people, on both the societal and the interpersonal level. Some monetary “get rich” teachers and authors explicitly reveal that the “golden rule” of money is: “He who controls the gold, rules”. Is there anyone who hasn’t used money to control their partner, child, sibling or friend?
We have a space age, fact based, super abundant economy being managed, manipulated and suppressed by mule caravan, confidence, opinion, and fear based ad hoc monetary systems.
Humanity produces enough food to feed everyone. This is a purely economic function. Economics allows us to produce abundance. Finance values scarcity. When a thing gets too abundant, we cut the supply, in order to keep the price up. So, we are in the position of having an abundant economy being deliberately suppressed by the financial system. Humanity produces enough food to feed all 6 ½ billion of us. About 20 million of our brothers and sisters starve to death every year. They don’t have money to pay for food so, too bad.
In 2010 in the U.S., there are millions of vacant houses. Some of them are vacant because it is no longer financially viable to live in the cities in which they are located (Detroit, Cleveland). Some of them are vacant because the individual owners didn’t have enough money to pay the mortgage, and they were foreclosed. At the same time the U.S. has millions of vacant houses there are millions of homeless or poorly sheltered people. Any common sense solutions you can come up with?
There is constant conversation and debate about the “cost” of cleaning up the environment or the “cost” of not polluting in the first place. This is absolutely nonsensical when one understands that the environment IS the economy. The very idea that there is a “cost” in having a pristine environment is proof positive that finance has been confused with economics.
caves, trees, iron ore, sand, granite, aloe vera, as well as tractors, factories, phones and massage tables. The economy, the environment, technology, the universe and nature are all virtually one and the same, essentially synonymous, simply different ways of looking at one thing.
The resources of the economy are Materials, Energy, Time, Human labor, and Know-how. The purpose of the economy is to support life. Buckminster Fuller looked at life support from seven aspects: Food, Shelter, Health care, Education, Communication, Transportation and Recreation. The only appropriate measure of the economy is “the sustainable increase in standard and quality of living for ALL human beings”. Economic progress is measured by increases in efficiency and in the capacity to transcend limits, for example: flying enabled us to transcend travel limits. Instead what we currently measure is how much money is made in various separate financial systems and what the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is in these systems. GDP includes making money with money and life taking activities. Can’t we do better than this?
If the sun stopped shining or seeds stopped sprouting, the human economy could not continue. Life itself would end. The reverse is not true. If money suddenly disappeared from the entire world, the economy could go on as before. There is a very revealing example that we can look at. The United States started a war with Iraq in 2003. There was no money to do it so it was not included in the budget. But this is a perfect proof that it doesn’t REALLY take money. It takes resources: Materials like bombs, guns, airplanes, tents and food; Energy like electricity, gasoline and nuclear power for ships; Time to move material and people around in order to accomplish the goal; Labor to develop all the weapons and strategies and carry them out; and Know-how to do all these things better than the enemy in order to win. Wars aren’t un-fought for lack of money, however they are un-fought for lack of resources.
The idea that we can’t “afford” (don’t have the money) to feed everyone or provide shelter or health care is simply untrue when we look in this way, at facts. There are many people and organizations that are genuinely and actively working to bring about a higher standard of living for all people. These efforts will become far more successful when the clear difference between money and economics is recognized. It has been well said that: “We don’t ask for too much in life, but far too little”. Some people have fear of “spreading the wealth”. The opportunity we have before us is to “unleash the wealth”. This opportunity is truly about EVERYONE benefiting.
Credit and debt are based on the idea that one can get a result, a product or service today and pay for it tomorrow. Lets examine this from the Universe’s perspective. Lets say I am a farmer, and I have a field that normally yields 10,000 bushels of corn. It’s springtime. A lot is happening in my family this year, what with my daughter getting married, my parents moving out of state, and helping my brother build a house, not to mention the second well I need to drill.
I walk out to my field. I look to the sky and I say: “Universe, I’m really busy this summer and don’t have time to do everything. Would you give me my normal 10,000 bushels of corn, now? Next year I’ll plant twice as many seeds to repay you”.
Ludicrous, isn’t it? No farmer in his right mind would do it. Why? Because the Universe is a “pre-pay” system. The result comes after the crop is planted, the crude oil is refined, the airplane is built or the road is paved.
It’s also ludicrous that humans finish building a house today, and then pay for it for 30 years. And then the next person to live in it, pays for it again. In terms of the Universe, THE Economy, once a product or service is made available, it is fully “paid” for. Credit is a delusion. Debt is a form of enslavement, pure and simple.
I’m reasonably certain that every human engaged in producing goods and services would like to have his creative ability. Would Mr. Bernanke share it?
The irrational, complex, wasteful and dehumanizing monetary systems that we currently use are not the only tools with which we can manage the economy. Buckminster Fuller recommended that we base our economy on energy use. Arthur C. Clarke predicted we would do it.
undistorted and unhindered by ever-changing money valuations, what Technocracy calls a “price system”.
Computers now allow us to gather, store and process vast amounts of data, and do it extremely rapidly. Communication technology allows us to access and use the data virtually everywhere on earth. These are the final tools that are required to prove the validity of pure economics, inform humanity, and manage and implement the task of providing for the whole human family. When we manage our economy in the most efficient way, we have direct access to goods and services, no money needed.
Perhaps it is time to accept the idea that ALL human beings have equal VALUE. Perhaps it is time to accept the idea that all human beings have equal value in all ways and in every aspect of life. This means that every human being has equal claim to all the resources and the highest quality of life support available on the planet. This is the way that Nature has set up the world. Oxygen for breathing, sunlight for energy, warmth and light, water for refreshment and for cleansing and plants that grow in the same way and produce food for everyone equally is the normal and natural way.
Education is one way that developed societies actually, already demonstrate the equal value of everyone. We strive to give everyone, equally, an education to specific standards. AND, we have found that this is so valuable to society as a whole, that we not only give it we also require that everyone receive a minimum amount of it. More advanced societies make highest education available for no cost. This is the perfect model to duplicate for all the other aspects of life support and sustenance.
Millions among us are intuitively recognizing the value of each and all, and the great benefits that then result for each and all. This is both a call to fully accept and implement the idea, and an acknowledgement that this is what is happening all over the world. The sooner the better.
It is said by some that greed and hunger for power are part of human nature, and that we will never be able to fully work together. That may or may not be accurate and is beside the point. What we have now are economic management systems (money, finance) that encourage greed and have power and control being exercised by a relative few. The systems are designed this way. Slavery was once designed into the system. Today there is no systemic slavery. We, the people of the world will not tolerate it. We are certainly capable of designing better economic management systems, in fact we have to because the financial systems are failing NOW. We may even surprise ourselves with how good we can make it and how wonderfully we can get along with each other. From cave dwelling to space traveling to democracy and human rights, that’s what we’ve been doing, one innovation after another.
It’s time for us to “grow up”, as individuals and as a species.
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The actual problem in this new paradigm is: How do we produce and make available to every human being the highest standard and quality of life support, in the shortest time, in the most efficient manner, while restoring the environment?
Abundance as a condition is a state in which results can be produced that are sufficient to fulfill all needs, indefinitely.
Finance is a “withholding from” system. Nature is a “sharing with freely” system.
If finance is not economics, then what is it? Finance is a tool. It is a wasteful management tool.
At the same time the U.S. has millions of vacant houses there are millions of homeless or poorly sheltered people. Any common sense solutions you can come up with?
Wars aren’t un-fought for lack of money, however they are un-fought for lack of resources.
Credit is a delusion. Debt is a form of enslavement, pure and simple.
“But economists say Mr. Bernanke’s most important accomplishment was to create staggering amounts of money out of thin air.” I’m reasonably certain that every human engaged in producing goods and services would like to have his creative ability. Would Mr. Bernanke share it?