Our media are strongly biased in favor of industry. We don’t notice that the language used for things we are expected to be interested in covers more than we usually bargain for. If we move into a house, the butcher doesn’t come ringing to make arrangements for next years meat budget. If we ‘govern’ our homes and manage our household purse we only have to deal with advertisements and of course a biased media. We can make choices that keep us healthy and maximizes our happyness and we don’t expect ruthless commecial interest to bother us. In our governments that is the norm, it -almost seems the be the raison d’être of government.
Of course every household is already in the grip of several big business conglomerates, to start with the banking system. The fear people have of the big thing called buying or selling a house plus the ability of banks to create money when an asset is given as collateral has suckered most home owners into owning a home with a mortgage. Taxes are based on that mortgage (the ‘value’ of the home), so local and national governments have a stake in high house prices, and everyone has to work to earn money to buy their mortgage. How it happened that houses used to cost a fraction of what they cost today? One is tempted to say it was the work of government. We think it is to broad a term, we want to split ‘government’ up.
There are numerous examples of how our impulse to be human, for instance our impulse to care for something, leads to economic gain through carefull framing of the economically profitable thing in terms of our impulse to care. If we don’t care we are taught to care. For instance about our economy. Like a tamagotchi we are regularly updated on its condition. Because nobody has control this makes us all feel powerless, and then we are told banker this and that will nourish our economy, kick start it like a patient in cardiac arrest. Heroic. What did it mean? Of course NOTHING. But the virtual mythical being ‘the economy’ is often referred to, we need to heed its existence, while the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer.
We earlier explained what the economy is, it is a process of maximizing the utilization of fossil fuels, a process in which humans are less and less usefull. Certainly not all humans. Accepting this is more like the definition of a problem we will here try to offer a solution. The solution consist of calling things by their name, not buching them together so that a fair discussion becomes impossible. Government and its policy needs to be recognized to serve two main goals, 1. the Demoment, the health and wellbeing of the people. 2. The Economent, meaning the maximization of cashflow.
Many people think there is only the Demoment. They think all decisions are made to improve the lives and health of the people. More jobs mean more happy healthy people, more modern products means the same. Laws to control the markets protect us from dangerous situations. The economy will grow and that is good for everyone. Many expect government to be a Demoment, even if at times it doesn’t behave as such. It is supposed to be its ultimate goal.
But if our government only cared for the health and wellbeing of us, it would move singularly aggressively towards a clean energy society. It would crush any producer of poisons that kill birds, bees, people. It would prevent long logistics chains if they mean people lose their jobs, pollution rises and knowledge (and the joy of knowing a craft) is lost. It would not let poeple go hungry as tons of food is thrown away, as loss giving activities are subsidized. It would follow a roadmap to the most happy, local oriented society with maximum ownership, minimal debt, maximal life in every corner..
We see this is not the case. We see our government for some reason slowly moves our society into a prettyfied up workcamp with the managing rich, the working consumers and the working convicts. The US has this pattern clearly, with commercial jails forming a significant part of its economy. The principles at work are economic. Economics is about maximizing the utilization of fossil fuels, for banks it is about maximizing cashflow (which increases with the utilization of fossil fuels). It seeks to put a price on everything so trade in it generates cashflow, desire to purchase a prized asset creats loans, and every move anyone makes puts more power in the hands of the banks. These in turn teach us the economy should grow, debt should be repayed, house prices should rise etc. etc. Cashflow is the deciding criterium. Not human happyness or welbeing. Right now our governments are overwhelmingly Economents.
The problem with Economents is that their purpose is 1. not to support human lives 2. Not to respect limitations of our ecosystem. Economics tells people to compete, it expects companies, corporations to do that. Why? Becuase it is inefficient, it forces companies to go into debt, it creates individuals that all need exactly the same stuff, and share very little. When there is a resource that can be exploited to generate cash flow, it is exploited with the use of fossil fuels, until it is depleted and gone. Time to move on. Recently the activity of shale gas drilling, not even profitable, boomed because it allowed banks to extend credit, increasing cashflow while devestating landscapes and polluting ground and surface water. That’s the definition of a boom, a device created by banks to generate cashflow through inflation of valuations, made to come through through bank loans.
Instead of bunching Demoment and Economent into one term, ‘Government’, misleading people about the purpose of suggested policies as producing biased indicators, we should Be very clear about which politician serves which part of government. That way we can find solutions to problems without automatically using economic principles, which cause many problems. By separating Demoment from Economent we can also allow other methods of managing assets and resource to serve the goals of Demoment. If something needs to happen like building a road, one can go for the ecnomically designed solution, expensive big companies that lobby for work and are integrated with departments, or maybe use a more spontaneous and locally originating cooperative that may not even want to get payed for building a local road.