Large trade agreements like TTIP, CETA etc. are being negotiated and put into force outside our normal attention span. They do things we really don’t want, mainly give control over our lives to banks, who want to see cashflow happen everywhere. Music, food, any and all activities have to involve trade, and that trade has to be concentrated so that cashflows are predictable. The banks, who handle these cashflows can then sit back and live easy lives, no matter how restricted and boring and inescapable the state of citizens is.
You can look at the up side : There will be large overlaps in experiences between world citizens, so they will identify more and feel more kindred, which will make war less likely. Or you can say that a lot of waste in the economy will not happen because of inefficient small companies who are replaced by efficient mega companies taking over with endless Wallstreet credit (everywhere, from taxi’s to second hand goods). Humanity as a monoculture or a carefully managed heterogenous culture (like you can choose between Pepsi and Cola, Democrats and Republicans). How easy and peacefull a life.
But there is a snag, at least, for now. That is that this system depletes resources at an alarming rate, a rate that can not be sustained. Not only oil,coal, gas, but also water, wood, even sand. You can’t build highrises in every city, or build roads to every town, give cars to everyone. It’s good for business, but not for humanities survival. Trade agreements and banks do not care. They reason : If the planet can no longer sustain it we will find out when it happens. Until then, let’s push for more power.
The real life consequence of the limits to what an economy that does not recognize limits can devour is that there has to be a selection between people. There is always a selection : Beautifull people are given more breaks, get partners easier and promoted faster. Even though this would imply that they also get more kids with better lives, it is often poor people that get kids with miserable lives. However, the economy likes people that sell more stuff, that cause you to buy stuf. It likes celebrities, but also just nice people that can infect us with a sense of needyness so we will purchase something they also have.
One can divide society in economic sense in two groups : Those that sell and those that don’t. The ones that sell get opportunities, the ones that don’t don’t. If you are a bum you won’t get a break, because you will make whatever you do look bad. If you are a beautifull woman you get lots of breaks, and you can be iJustine and sell whatever you touch, hold as you show your natural beauty.
But this harsh truth is even harsher : People are not in short supply. If resources had to be divided evenly then all would be average and nobody would stand out and drive people to new purchases, new behaviour. So the economy wants two groups, one with a lot, more than they need, and another one, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ as they are commonly called. This is not a fantasy, years ago Citigroup already published a plutonomy report, about the two groups and what the rich could look forward to.
To be clear, this is only a result from a system that does not tend its resources. It wil fish a lake empty, it will clear cut a forrest, it will destroy and not stop because it does not care for things that are not there. It wants to trade. To handle the world without responsibility. Economic thinking put the traders in charge, and they are trading our futures and lives away for a piece of the action.
Humans in this system are challenged to fight for a role, to become either the executioner or the executed. This is a false dillema, because the third way is to be outside the system, but of course the minions of this system will put a price on everything, until nothing is free, nothing exists prior or outside the pressure applied by economics. A life in this economic system is almost an accident, like a role of the dice. So a person is born, is talented, can use his/her intellect to further the breath and power of the economic system, or not, and die. If the person is without talent then it is to be poor, to have dangerous unhealthy jobs and diet, to die early from bad habits in bad neigbourhoods, from crime, drugs, and nobody will have the time to care.
The idea “But a working economy benefits all” clearly is untrue, and with that the idea we all need to ad our share to it’s succes. It is not a benign machine, it is not a vehicle for world justice and wealth, because resources have to be selectively given to the most attractive groups, and not to any other. These groups are also taught to find that natural, and it is in a way. But the core issue of scarcity of resources is not adressed, never will be.
For the poor, the weak, the sick there is one option : Organize, to become a force that makes it so that what is needed is provided, so that the system becomes not a depleting machine but a generating, one that adds resources instead of destoying them without replacement. And the poor and weak that organize have to understand they can not run to the other side, as usually happens. Usually you get a poor person that rises to some prominence, then gets to choose : go for the money or be destroyed. This is how many movements become impotent, as their leaders become saboteurs.
The global economy is not a place for all humans to unite in harmony, even if it may claim to be, it is just a machine designed by people that want to secure their lives. It is an incredible complicated way to do so and it forces them to neglect the damaging effects or suffer a lifestyle change. The future will never be better with this kind of powerstructure, and the solution is to divide and localize authority as far as possible, and to introduce renewables and use them to build up and restore resources where they have been depleted using automated systems. This I call the Roboeconomy, andit is time to adopt it as the way to extend humanities life expectency.