I have been pondering economics for years. If I had had more facility with calculus, I probably would have pursued my interest further in college. Instead, I decided to study accounting. Eventually, I got as close as I could to figuring out what is going with money – I became an auditor. But I still didn’t really understand how our economic system worked. I think I finally got it. Let me know what you think.
Our capitalist economic system is basically designed to produce profits on investments and interest on loans. Since people are needed to accomplish this, jobs are one of the byproducts of this system. When an investor hands some money to a business, he/she expects to get something back in return. They expect to receive a dividend on their investment and appreciation of the original investment as well. This we call a return on investment. Likewise when a bank makes a loan, it expects to receive interest on the loan as well as repayment of the debt. The main difference between an investment and a loan is that a loan comes with a legal obligation to be repaid while an investment does not. The point is that both investors and debt holders expect a sum of money that is more the original sum invested or loaned.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. Where does the money come from that is above and beyond the initial amounts invested or loaned? Obviously, it must be created because it was not included in the amount invested or loaned. How is it created? Well, by some combination of labor and materials, goods and/or services are produced which must be exchanged for the money needed to pay investors dividends and debt holders interest. In order for this system to work, the process must be continuous. In other words, it must expand, at least enough to create the money that did not exist initially, the money to pay the investors and debt holders. This initial expansion leads to greater expansion as more investments and loans are made.
No surprises yet. But consider this. The system can not pause, it can not stop and it must continue in perpetuity. Otherwise, it collapses. However, we do not live in a world of endless resources. We don’t have an endless supply of labor (and/or machines that take the place of labor) and we don’t have an endless supply of materials (water, minerals, arable land, etc., etc.) Obviously, such a system is not sustainable in perpetuity on a finite earth. But more importantly, the system can not even pause long enough to substantially alter its trajectory. In other words, it is myopic in both function and design. Not only that, but the system has created structures to protect itself from any significant change, any new ideas that require a different way of thinking. In fact, the system is so vast, complicated and interconnected, it is not capable of self-assessment or even self-comprehension. For the same reasons, no one person or group of people could possibly understand it at this point.
What we have then is a blind juggernaut of vast power and proportion that has made itself impervious to significant change. With the assistance of the governments which it sponsors and controls, it has created technologies and entities to ensure its survival. Unfortunately, the interest in its survival is diametrically opposed to the interests of humanity and to life on the planet. The recently revealed growth of the “intelligence” community and its operatives in the “security” industry make clear that its interests are not the same as the People. The wars that the Corporate State wages, the environmental damage it causes and death and injury that it creates serve no one but the tiny elite who own these big banks and corporations.
The path of the Corporate State is rapidly destroying the planet that sustains us. Thus, the extent of our collective emergency can not be overstated. As is becoming increasingly obvious, the only response that is available is a human one, a human connection, the emergence of human community. This is why people are rising up around the world in an unprecedented stand for peace, justice and our inherent right to share in the bounty of mother earth. The human heart connection will not be denied for it transcends the physical world and demonstrates the true nature of our spiritual being. Victory is not ours, but transcendence is. Welcome it, embrace it, for eternal Spirit is who we really are. In the light of Spirit, no darkness will remain.