Way Out Economics
Is there a way out of the current economic system?
Thoughts on why and how to extract ourselves from this socio-economic system
1. What is the problem?
I see a world that is run in the interests of the richest and most powerful people. The owners of the biggest businesses on the planet control much of our thinking and much of our behaviour.
I see a world that is teetering on the edge of something. Increasing numbers of wars, any one of which could escalate to a nuclear disaster. Declining soil health and climate change potentially creating food precarity and famine. Populist political narratives based on fear which could tip us into mass civil unrest and violence. These are just a few examples. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll give a different list - it’s really hard to know what the biggest or most imminent risk is.
Our conceptual framework, our understanding of what is ‘normal’ and what has ‘value’, of how things work or should work, of ‘common sense’ - all these things are shaped and reinforced by the entertainment industry, social media and, more recently, by AI. Much of what we are fed through these channels is dystopian, giving us a bleak view of what is to come and numbing us to the pain and inhumanity of what appears to be coming down the track. A fair chunk of it is undoubtedly disinformation, but it is hard to know which bits - and anyone who tries to work that out is likely to be led into a myriad of rabbit holes, each of which from the viewpoint of another rabbit hole can be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
Meanwhile, unless you are one of the winners in the current system, much of your life will be spent trying to earn money that you can then spend on the things that the aforementioned information channels tell you are important (as well as the real essentials for life, of course).
At some level, we feel viscerally that the good news story we are told about how lucky we are compared to previous generations seems wrong. Do people today really have so much more choice in terms of the careers they could have, or are they ever more trapped into working overly long hours in meaningless jobs? Do young people really have more opportunity to study, or are they being duped into undertaking largely pointless and expensive qualifications just to get a foot on the ladder? Do we enjoy a higher quality of life thanks to convenience foods, personalised transport and labour-saving devices, or are we being made sick by a combination of poor quality ultra-processed foodstuffs designed to be addictive, and insufficient physical exercise as we sit on our sofas looking at our screens.
2. Why are we stuck?
The thing is, it’s not easy to change all that stuff. Most people don’t want to be working loads of hours and don’t want to feel forced into upgrading their phone yet again. But we now need the apps on our phone to communicate with friends and family, to get around, or even just to make a GP appointment, and they at some point they stop working if we don’t upgrade the phone. And we need the job to pay for the phone, the rent, the convenience foods (because we don’t have time to cook, because of the long hours at work)… And we need that holiday in the sun to recover from the stress of this pressured life, even though we know we know that we should fly less if we want to feel better about our environmental impact.
In this trapped state, the only ways most of us feel able to fight against the system are to cast a protest vote in the next elections, to go on a march with a placard, or to sign a few online petitions. We demand, or at least hope, that the powers that be will do things differently because of the pressure of public opinion.
It doesn’t work like that. Though the generalised problem is ubiquitous, the framings that people put on it vary tremendously, meaning that different groups of people are calling for different actions. The plurality of competing demands means there is no one course of action that any government could make that would instantly align us all behind them.
But more than that, governments themselves are very trapped. Big businesses lobby them and threaten to leave the country if decisions are made that damage their profits, which would remove jobs and tax income from our national economy. No government of any colour wants that.
Then there is the short-term nature of the democratic system. Politicians always have to be focused on the next election a maximum of 4 years away, means that they cannot risk enacting difficult long term policies that would impact negatively in the short term. And lets face it, to make long term changes for the good of the planet and humanity, there will be unpleasant shocks and changes in the short term that will not be popular. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
The big question is, how can we unstick ourselves some other way, if we accept that really the government is fairly powerless to act and that big businesses will never decide to do anything that might damage their profits?
3. How can we unstick ourselves?
Here is an idea. Rather than responding to the current pressures on our lives by constantly ramping up our economic activity (ie working more and buying more stuff) as most of us currently do, how about we all try to find ways to slow down? How about we experiment with stepping off the hamster wheel here and there? How about we quietly disobey the repeated demands on us to buy more and work harder?
If we all do some tiny things, but do those things in a collaborative way, supporting and celebrating each other’s efforts, we could change things.
Does that sound like magical thinking? I don’t think it is. I think the opposite. I think it is only way we can change the system. I think the magical thinking is believing that the political system can deliver the changes we need.
The current economic system that seems so much like a trap is nothing more or less than the sum total of what we all do each day. The decisions we take - about what job to do, what food to buy, how to get around, how long to spend in the shower, where to invest our pension pots, where to go on holiday etc - these are the things that add up to the economic system we have.
If we all stop being quite so compliant with the demands of the current economic system, that will start to shift the dial very slightly. And the more we do it, the easier it will be, and the faster the dial will move.
We have to start with small steps. It’s impossible for us all to sell our homes or give up our jobs and move to the land. Yes, some brave people have managed to extricate themselves and create self-sufficient communities. But thanks to land ownership laws, we could not all do that without a rebellion that would be countered by massive state violence.
But lots of people taking small steps would actually change the economic system more than a very small number of people taking those much bigger steps.
Instead of expecting big business or governments to move first and make big changes, which is frankly not going to happen, we can move first and make tiny changes, but at scale.
This is an idea about self empowerment. It is about looking for the cracks where we can change our behaviours in small ways that will add up over time, and be multiplied as we encourage others to join in. It is about collaboration with our neighbours, friends and families. It is about co-creating a better future from the ground up.
It is about seeing that we have much more in common than we think. Ideological demands for change through protest movements drive us apart. Opposition to the current system through division is part of how the current system continues to control us. We are much more powerful if we start from our shared experience of an economic system that is not serving us, and start to take action ourselves and collaborate with others.
4. Finding the cracks in the system
The big question is, what are the little changes we could each make that would create important impacts over time?
Here are a few ideas:
buying less stuff that comes in plastic - cuts down how much processed food we buy, improves our health, cuts the profits of the big food corporates, reduces plastic waste
taking refillable water bottles and buying fewer other drinks on the go - improves our health, cuts the profits of the big food corporates, reduces waste, reduces water use (30 to 100 litres of water is used to create one litre of cola)
walking and cycling and having as many car-free days as possible - cutting carbon emissions, reducing traffic jams, and keeping us healthier
mending clothes and equipment - saving money, teaching us useful skills, and helping to create a more circular economy with less landfill waste
buying second hand - saving money and helping us create a more circular economy
doing a random act of kindness - creating a more trusting and caring community
sharing and lending between neighbours instead of buying new - creating a more trusting and caring community and helping us create a more circular economy
spending less time on your devices - helping to reduce the digital traffic and associated carbon use from the the data centres, reducing your susceptibility to all the messaging encouraging you to be a good consumer, improving your mental health and giving you back time for more meaningful things in your life
As you start to do these things, you will find you are spending less money. Now you can consider dropping some work hours, to make more time to do things like cooking from scratch, mending things, helping a friend or neighbour…
And as many of the jobs we do are part of the problem, making big businesses richer by helping them to make and sell more and more things that we don’t really need, doing less of them is also a great thing.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be explaining more reasons why I think this is the way to go. I’ll also be releasing a little app where we can each keep track of the little things we are doing, and see our efforts as part of a bigger movement for economic change.
If you’d like a little more background to where these ideas came from, you can get my book, Value Beyond Money, available in paperback, ebook and on Audible. You can contact me via my website.