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Written by Bob Guyer
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The planet and everything living on it needs humans to develop an economic system that is aligned with nature and a more complete view of humanity. Since we are fully separate individuals, and non-separate individuals as well, our economic system needs to accommodate both of these seeming opposite facts. Pure self interest versus pure commonality have battled for supremacy in our post industrial revolution economic systems and thinking. Make no mistake, both systems have a philosophical stance and reflect that stance through their design. Therefore establishing a new philosophical framework for a new economic system to inhere in must be part of the equation that creates a sustainable human future.
The capitalist system, based on self-interest, ignores the non-separate aspect of individuality in favor of focusing on the relationship of an individual buyer and seller without regard to the larger world around them outside the bounds of their transaction. Economists are attempting to deal with the exclusion of the extended effects of economic transactions by acknowledging their existence and calling them externalities.
Externalities are economic effects generated by the transaction of a buyer and a seller that fall outside the scope of the transaction. The purchase of a car by an individual from a manufacturer of cars provides direct benefit to the buyer, mobility, and direct benefit to the manufacturer money in excess of the cost of production. The most commonly mentioned externality of this transaction in the political dialog has been jobs, and pollution.
Of these externalities, the fact that one job supports the development of several other related jobs through the multiplier effect seem to have the most direct and compelling connection and seems positive. Air pollution seems like a negative effect external to the scope of the transaction but seems indirect and insignificant in a way but what is it’s cost. This difference in assigned significance of the two types of externalities can be explained in part by the immediacy of impact that a job has versus the less immediate impact that pollution has. However there is another deeper component that effects the valuation of externalities in this case and it is our view of human nature.
The view of human nature, in the US particularly, is tilted toward the isolated individual end of the spectrum and this causes all externalities that are based on the non-individual reality of human nature to be devalued. Correcting this devaluation and creating an economic system that expresses a balanced view 100% individual and 100% non-individual is urgently needed to regain economic equilibrium before a cataclysmic economic correction occurs and corrects the imbalance through a severe and prolonged global crisis.
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Economic System