Badim surprised by this last statement, I’m not sure why. Looks at Mary, surprised.
16
Possibly some of the richest two percent of the world’s population have decided to give up on the pretense that “progress” or “development” or “prosperity” can be achieved for all eight billion of the world’s people. For quite a long time, a century or two, this “prosperity for all” goal had been the line taken; that although there was inequality now, if everyone just stuck to the program and did not rock the boat, the rising tide would eventually float even the most high-and-dry among them. But early in the twenty-first century it became clear that the planet was incapable of sustaining everyone alive at Western levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions, bought the governments or disabled them from action against them, and bolted their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time, which really came down to just the remainder of their lives, and perhaps the lives of their children if they were feeling optimistic— beyond that, après moi le déluge.
A rational response to an intractable problem. But not really. There was scientifically supported evidence to show that if the Earth’s available resources were divided up equally among all eight billion humans, everyone would be fine. They would all be at adequacy, and the scientific evidence very robustly supported the contention that people living at adequacy, and confident they would stay there (a crucial point), were healthier and thus happier than rich people. So the upshot of that equal division would be an improvement for all.
Rich people would often snort at this last study, then go off and lose sleep over their bodyguards, tax lawyers, legal risks— children crazy with arrogance, love not at all fungible— over-eating and over-indulgence generally, resulting health problems, ennui and existential angst— in short, an insomniac faceplant into the realization that science was once again right, that money couldn’t buy health or love or happiness. Although it has to be added that a reliable sufficiency of money is indeed necessary to scaffold the possibility of those good things. The happy medium, the Goldilocks zone in terms of personal income, according to sociological analyses, seemed to rest at around 100,000 US dollars a year, or about the same amount of money that most working scientists made, which was a little suspicious in several senses, but there it stood: data.
And one can run the math. The 2,000 Watt Society, started in 1998 in Switzerland, calculated that if all the energy consumed by households were divided by the total number of humans alive, each would have the use of about 2,000 watts of power, meaning about 48 kilowatt-hours per day. The society’s members then tried living on that amount of electricity to see what it was like: they found it was fine. It took paying attention to energy use, but the resulting life was by no means a form of suffering; it was even reported to feel more stylish and meaningful to those who undertook the experiment.
So, is there energy enough for all? Yes. Is there food enough for all? Yes. Is there housing enough for all? There could be, there is no real problem there. Same for clothing. Is there health care enough for all? Not yet, but there could be; it’s a matter of training people and making small technological objects, there is no planetary constraint on that one. Same with education. So all the necessities for a good life are abundant enough that everyone alive could have them. Food, water, shelter, clothing, health care, education.
Is there enough security for all? Security is the feeling that results from being confident that you will have all the things listed above, and your children will have them too. So it is a derivative effect. There can be enough security for all; but only if all have security.
If one percent of the humans alive controlled everyone’s work, and took far more than their share of the benefits of that work, while also blocking the project of equality and sustainability however they could, that project would become more difficult. This would go without saying, except that it needs saying.
To be clear, concluding in brief: there is enough for all. So there should be no more people living in poverty. And there should be no more billionaires. Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which no one can rise. Enough is a good as a feast— or better.
Arranging this situation is left as an exercise for the reader.
17
Today we’re here to inquire who actually enacts the world’s economy— who are the ones who make it all go, so to speak. Possibly these people constitute a minority, as it is often said that most people alive today would actively welcome a change in the system.
Only a stupid person would say that.
Well, and yet I’ve just said it.
Yes.
But to get back to the question in hand, who do we think actually enacts the market as such? By which I mean to say, who theorizes it, who implements it, who administers it, who defends it?
The police. It being the law.
So but can we then assume that those people who make the laws are deeply implicated?
Yes.
But lawmakers are often lawyers themselves, notoriously bereft of ideas. Can we assume they get their ideas about law from others?
Yes.
And who are some of those others?
Think tanks. Academics.
Meaning MBA professors.
All kinds of academics. And very quickly their students.
Economics departments, you mean.
The World Trade Organization. Stock markets. All the laws, and the politicians and bureaucrats administering the laws. And the police and army enforcing them.
And I suppose the CEOs of all the companies.
Banks. Shareholder associations, pension funds, individual shareholders, hedge funds, financial firms.
Might the central banks indeed be central to all this?
Yes.
Anyone else?
Insurance companies, re-insurance companies. Big investors.
And their algorithms, right? So, mathematicians?
The math is primitive.
And yet even primitive math still takes mathematicians, the rest of us being so clueless.
Yes.
Also I suppose simply prices themselves, and interest rates and the like. Which is to say simply the system itself.
You were asking about the people doing it.
Yes, but it’s an actor network. Some of the actors in an actor network aren’t human.
Balderdash.
What, you don’t believe in actor networks?
There are actor networks, but it’s the actors with agency who can choose to do things differently. That’s what you were trying to talk about.
All right, but what about money?
What about it?
To my mind, money acts as if it worked as gravity does— the more of it you gather together, the more gathering power it exerts, as with mass and its gravitational attraction.
Cute.
Ultimately this is a very big and articulated system!
Insightful.
All right then, back to the ones who administer our economic system as such, and teach others how to work it, and by a not-so-coincidental coincidence, benefit from it the most. I wonder how many people that would turn out to be?
About eight million.
You’re sure?
No.
So this would be about one in every thousand persons alive today.
Well done.
Thank you! And the programs they’ve written.