THE DEATH OF ECONOMICS

This page is intended to provoke debate concerning the role of economics in human decision making. Despite my contentious choice of title(!), I should state from the outset that I am not advocating here that in the future economics will no longer matter at all, as to individuals, businesses and governments on a basic financial level it most certainly will. Also, as somebody who spent seven years studying economics at school and then at university -- and who then spent a couple of years actually teaching economics at a university -- I am also not in any way suggesting that people should not learn about economic principles. Economics is a great disciple. The increasingly emerging problem, however, is that economics is no more than a discipline, and hence ought not to have become so heavily relied upon as an almost total belief system across so wide an area of our small planet. Or as I used to say whilst at university, economics is great providing that you don't start believing in it more than ten per cent of the time.

For anybody brought up in the West -- myself very much included -- it is extremely difficult indeed to even start to fathom a system of decision making and resource allocation that does not place economic principles at its heart. Within the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry placed before us a possible future in which money did not exist and in which economics did not dominate. However, quite how resources came to be allocated was hardly clear (and indeed by the time that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was created, a currency emerged in the form of "gold pressed lattinum"). But I digress. Suffice it to say that the below is as coherent a set of arguments as I can currently make concerning why I believe economics may and perhaps should lose its place as our primary decision making tool when it comes to resource allocation. You can also find a summary of these arguments in my Death of Economics Video.

A BLESSING AND A CURSE

The art, science or social science (please take your pick) of economics was one of the greatest blessings and yet the greatest blights of the 20th century. As capitalism won the battle against communism, both governments and business grew narrow-minded due to their mantra of making decisions all-too-exclusively in the name of economic good. The very positive side of all this was that prosperity ensued. However, the very negative was that economic decisions, borders and regulation trod all-too-heavily over so many of those human values that allowed us to survive long before coin, note and e-banking website.

As individuals all know and as governments and organizations really ought to be aware, human beings are increasingly worrying just as much and perhaps more about the environment, ethical practices, their sense of identity, and their religion, as they are about always getting the best price or behaving with pure economic rationality. The fact that politicians across Europe dare not hold referendums to obtain backing to progress their economically-founded European super-state provides just one powerful example of how many ordinary people are already rebelling against always thinking and behaving in the name of economic good. The Irish prime minister -- who was constitutionally forced to hold such a referendum -- may have gotten away with publically apologising to the rest of Europe for his people making the "wrong economic decision". However, for just how long politicians can go on blaming their electorate for not believing in the Religion of Economics remains to be seen.

THE GREEN TRADE-OFF

A number of trends suggest the Age of Economics to be coming to an end. The first of these is the green trade-off. This refers to the fact that most measures for safeguarding our environment will be bad for the economy. An increasing number of people are also starting to accept this simple, obvious but not very popular hard truth. Like it or not, to try to combat climate change and in the face of resource depletion, for our civilization to live longer with limited resources, we need to consume less and hence to accept that our economy will shrink. Indeed, to suggest as many governments have that we can save the planet and ourselves whilst continuing to seek economic growth is nothing short of delusional. A growing number of people are also starting to get this, even if most politicians still apparently (at least in public) do not.

THE CONSEQUENCE BEHIND THE PRICE

Another reason that economics is on the decline is that at least some people are becoming increasingly concerned about the consequence behind the price. In other words, more and more people are starting to realize that just because they are economically able to do something or buy something, this does not mean that they should due to consequences unseen by them but of a high significance to other parties. Once again the green agenda surfaces. However, considering the consequence behind the price is also starting to drive customers away from clothing produced in sweat-shops, as well as towards fair-trade products and free-range food.

Consideration of the consequence behind the price is also already causing people to question developments such as genetic engineering and the spread of a global technoculture that increasingly threatens not just the natural world but many unique human cultures, religions and other belief systems. Monetary prices are therefore starting to become emotionally charged and contextual -- acceptable to some and offensive for others to even contemplate. To the corporations that own the patents, future GM foods and GM humans may well make economic sense. They may also become a mass reality. However, if this does prove to be the case then decisions to pursue such developments are far more likely to have been taken on the basis of ethical, cultural and religious judgements, rather than on the grounds of their economic price and the whims of the stock market.

CHALLENGES BEYOND ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS

Another factor to think about is that we now face many future challenges beyond economic solutions. For several centuries some of the key challenges faced by humanity -- such as mass industrialization -- could very successfully be addressed via a liberal application of economic logic. However, increasingly this is not the case.

For example, economics will suddenly matter far less if millions of people die in viral pandemic, or if a shortage of fuel means that mass travel becomes effectively impossible for the majority. Both a viral pandemic and an oil shortage or "energy crunch" are indeed highly probable threats within the next decade. Granted, economics may its part in regulating our reactions to survive them. However, in the wake of either calamity most people will be less able to achieve happiness through mass consumption, and are likely to have to widen their philosophy beyond an addiction to the marketplace.

What the above ought to remind us of is the old adage that "money can't buy happiness". Psychologists talk of the problem of "heddonic adaptation", whereby the more we consume, the more we want to consume, and yet the less happy we get from successive consumption. I would argue that the human species how faces a survival threat due to a collective heddonic adaptation wedded to its Age of Economics ways. For most individuals continuing to act and consume as many do today may be in their own best interests. However, for the survival of our species on this ever-drained planet this cannot be the case.

BEYOND SHORT-TERM CAPITALISM

In short, what an understanding of the green trade-off, short-term decision making, considering the consequence behind the price, challenges beyond economic solutions, and global heddonic adaptation all remind us is that economics promotes short-term thinking. Unfortunately, on our overcrowded planet, this is simply not sustainable. For human civilization to survive, we need to start valuing the future as well as the present. We will also need to accept some constraints on our individual freedoms to always do things and to consume resources as we please. This will all only have a chance of happening if a great many people start to think and act collectively due to the spread of an emerging but as yet unnamed belief system that recognises the inevitably of having to at least partially constrain our current levels of individual freedom for the benefit of everyone and everything to come.

Not much more than a century ago, most people never travelled more than a few tens of miles from their place of birth. Regardless of the price of air tickets, the idea that a large proportion of a much larger population can regularly go anywhere on the planet it pleases is clearly not sustainable. That the Age of Economics has delivered individual freedoms and physical riches undreampt of is undeniable. However, the fact that such an age needs at least to start to significantly slow down is also a stark reality that we all need to face. To a large extent, the big issue before us is whether we want the Age of Economics to have its demise triggered through mass cataclysm or via a more ordered and gradual process of consensual change.

Life is a decision making process. Economics deals with this by paying people money that lets us all make our own unconstrained choices. However, whilst such mass-individualism may have brought economic prosperity for a century or more, in future it will not continue to work.

AND THERE'S MORE . . . ?

Within the above I've deliberately tried to think and present the unthinkable. I could quite easily have argued against myself by saying that a continual mass consumption of goods and services will be sustainable as the human race continues to use its ingenuity to evolve out of harm's way, perhaps by seeking new resources beyond Planet Earth. However, we all at least need to start thinking about the alternative. Economics is so imbred into our current belief systems that an age in which economics is not king - in which the economy serves us rather than people serving the economy - may seem unimaginable. However, it is a fantasy that already shows some signs of becoming real.

If you want to engage me in debate on this matter, please do so here on YouTube. You can also find a fascinating article and podcast on "Recreating Capitalism" and "Living Assets Stewardship" by Dawna Jones here.