In this post, I am venturing into a topic that is rooted in religion; the effects of monetary economics on the wellbeing of our planet and the preservation of all life forms that depend on it Let me begin with a disclaimer. I am not economist by any stretch of the imagination. At best, I am idealist when it comes to discussing economy and at worst someone who absolutely has no clue about the working intricacies of modern economics. That being said, I have nothing to lose by expressing my thoughts on the need for exploring a new economical model for a world in crisis due to climate change, migration, and the disparity in wealth that is creating a global concern regarding the survival of life on our planet home.
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"Money - Can't live with it, can't live without it" or so the saying goes.
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What is money? Money has no intrinsic value in itself other than the symbolic value assigned to it. In biblical terms it was referred to as mammon, which basically means the same thing. Money is simply a means to measure the value assigned to something which today is usually the a result of supply and demand. The idea that money isn't worth the paper it is printed on is literally true of all of the world's currency because paper money or coinage is nothing more than a symbolic representation of the value placed on goods and services. In fact, money as a physical artifact of value is becoming increasingly rare, as the transfer of one's monetary wealth throughout most of the industrial world no longer requires the actual physical transfer of currency.
Money is an interesting human invention. It serves a purpose that most take for granted and without giving much consideration to what it actually is. On some level it is treated as being similar to the air we breath. Just as we can't live without the corrosive effects of oxygen which eventually takes a toll on our physical well-being, we seemingly can't live without the corrosive effects of money has on our sense of security and wellbeing. Whereas oxygen is a necessity of our survival, one has to question if there is something other than money by which to base one's sense of security and wellbeing on.
As I have been writing about the need for Christianity to have a Copernican type of revolution; that is, a non-violent reorientation to what is central to a christian's understanding of Jesus and God, so too is a non-violent reorientation to the economic value of life on our planet is needed as the world's monetary-based economics seems to be the largest obstacle in solving a host of problems facing our world today. The unspoken anxiety associated with solving so many of the dangers facing human existence is expressed by the question, "How much will it cost?" Denial is a potent placebo to mitigating the anxiety this question causes.
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The summer of 2023 has been the warmest on record in the United States. This should not surprise us as scientist have been warning us for some time that there is a need to do something about the human causes contributing to the rise in global temperature due to carbon emissions. The most alarming fact about the rise in temperatures this summer is that scientists were surprised by the rapid increase in temperature.
Highly industrialized economies appear reluctant to switch gears swiftly. I can only presume that reluctance to be based on the fear of losing investors and the cost of investments related to transitioning to alternative sources of energy in order to preserve earth's hospitable environment for a host of life forms on this planet, including our own. Capitalism has been an effective means to creating general wealth since the 18th century. It did much to create a burgeoning middle class in the 19th and 20 centuries.
Industrialized nations have all come around to realizing its effectiveness, including communist nations, like China. Nevertheless, by the late 20th century, the middle class was declining and in countries; such as, the United States are seeing increasing disparity in wealth and income, with the vast majority of personal wealth in the possession of the top one percent of the population. Unfettered capitalism is not self correcting, unless by correction one is referring to revolution which is likely to occur if governments do not step in to alleviate the disparity in personal wealth that now exists in industrialized democracies.
Industrial democracies are struggling to find the will to move quickly in order to avert a global disaster that has the potential of being as devastating as a nuclear war and which may, in the short run, lead to such a war as large swaths of the human population are running short of necessities caused by nonsensical internecine warfare between countries which divert time and energy from addressing the urgent need for all nations to come together in order to put the necessary resources toward averting a cataclysmic global climate crisis that is literally on the verge of spinning out of control.
In the short term, industrialized democracies must work with the economic systems they have, which broadly speaking is capitalism. Lawmakers throughout the world must take the lead and enact measures to mandate immediate conversion to carbon free technologies and the production of products that eliminate or greatly reduce the human imprint on global warming with a sense of desperation and with the determination of avoiding a global cataclysm that a worldwide nuclear war would cause. In the meantime, thought must be given on avoiding the likelihood of backtracking on such endeavors once the short range goal of averting a climate catastrophe is accomplished.
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The enticement of unfettered access to money and a return to unfettered capitalism is likely unless there is a shift away from capitalism and monetary wealth as we know it. This would be an unprecedented undertaking that perhaps would realistically occur only should a global catastrophe occur, the magnitude of which would result in placing the human species at risk of extinction. Only then might Homo Sapiens be in a position of rebuilding a stable social environment as the human population begins to grow. It would take generations to get to such a point.
NOW is the time, if not past the time, to make drastic changes that would decreases our dependence not only on fossil fuels but also on unfettered on consumerism; that is inherent in the selfishness of libertarianism and the tribalism of nationalism.
It is past time that internecine and global warfare is taken off the table as a solution to anything. The human and technical resources pumped into increasing sophisticated weaponry should be dedicated to mitigating the human causes of climate change and the development of technologies that eliminates the need for carbon based energy. We know that such technologies are available, but the timeline for their proliferation throughout the world is stymied by capitalistic concerns related to free enterprise and the creation of a new sources of monetary wealth.
I am the first to admit all of this strikes me as an impossibility, given the the political climate of democratic governments being subject to ill-informed populism, the world's economic dependence on capitalism and its dependence on consumerism, and the isolationism of nationalism all of which permits people to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the darkening realities our world is facing as they double down on denialism and work towards entrenching systemic failure in almost every civil institution.
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The preservation of our planet must be the ultimate measure of economic success; that is, the preservation of every form of animal and plant life must be monitored to gauge the effects of human consumption in all the domains pertinent to life on this planet. All nations must come to the table to battle climate change. They must unite their resources in reducing the effects of pollution and carbon emissions in order to preserve the poorest of the poor who for all practical purposes are the canaries in the atmospheric mine we find ourselves living in. If great value is given to the most vulnerable lives by which to measure economic security, there may be a chance to avoid a natural catastrophe that will destroy the world as we know it. If there is an economic value to saving human life on this planet, it must measure how well the needs and care of the most vulnerable amongst are met, in order to preserve and enhance their sense of security and wellbeing.
As long as the illusion of money and the acquisition of the wealth it represents holds sway on the endeavor to preserve our planet, precious time needed to make productive changes will pass us by. Politics is the biggest block to addressing climate change due to the undue influence of wealth on the political will of politicians to make effective laws and provide the adequate funding needed to change things quickly.
The negative effects of accumulating monetary wealth on the will of people and nations to make a concerted effort to address climate change requires a new economic model geared to solving the overriding lethal problems the whole world is currently facing. The supply and demand aspect of classic capitalism is a proven model for measuring economic health in terms of wealth, but where classic capitalism fails is ironically in using supply and demand to create economic wealth rather than facilitate economic health, which as I have attempted to demonstrate is not synonymous. Instead of creating wealth, economies should be geared to creating health; the health of our planet home and wellbeing and security of all living things, as humanly possible. Such a new economic model must transcend all monetary systems; that of capitalism, socialism, and communism.
Take the United States, for example. Universal health care for every citizen is considered prohibitive because of monetary cost and the loss of profit to those invested in the health care industry. Conversion from fossil fuels to clean energy is inhibited by the time and cost of investment it would take to transition to new technologies that would create a comparable profit margin currently enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry. In short, money is a will-killer because, like coal, money is needed to fire the engines of political campaigns that law-makers, especially here in the United States rely on. The need for monetary support to run campaigns has polluted the atmosphere of effective politics at this most critical time. This is not just a problem in the United States but is a political problem throughout the world.
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The question becomes, how do we replace the concept of money?
How do we balance supply and demand based on both human needs and desires, provide incentives to foster creativity, and discourage waste without the use of a monetary system?
Do we wait until the time comes when money has no pragmatic value because demand outstrips supply to the point where there isn't enough money or money isn't worth the paper it is printed to purchase the basic necessities of life; the point where everyone is on their own to forage and fend for themselves?
We have witnessed this is places that have been decimated by war and natural disasters; where the cost of basics like food and water, clothing and shelter are sold and bought at exorbitant prices; to the point of causing people to go without and succumb to the effects of extreme heat, cold, and starvation. In such isolated cases, economically secure nations of the world and their monetary systems have worked together quite well in meeting short-term economic and social concerns of people and countries in need.
If the pandemic taught us anything, it is how fragile a natural disaster such as it has on economic security and the health of millions of people. We should consider it a mere foretaste of what lies ahead as the effects of climate change will be experienced in ways too numerous to list here. More importantly, however, the pandemic also illustrated what happens when there is a concerted effort on the part of nations to find a solution. The one weakness in that endeavor was an unwillingness on the part of some pharmaceuticals to share information globally, which was likely due to both mistrust between nations and the control of any financial benefit such pharmaceuticals were likely to have.
What the world needs is a global economic system that is based on the survival of all; a system that ensures that no living thing on this planet goes without; in particular, that no human being is denied the basic necessities of life, food, clothing, and shelter; that no human being or corporation has unlimited wealth potential whereby to influence the fragile economic equilibrium that is required; that there is a leveraging system that ensures that the essentials of food, clothes, comfortable housing and person security and wellbeing is provided for all; that no nation is capable of enacting wars or enacting policies that endanger the environment because what happens in one part of the world has a direct effect on the whole world.
World-wide health care for all, education for all, personal security for all;
If the use of monetary currency is retained, it should be time stamped with an expirations date. "Use it or lose it" should be stamped across the top of currency along with an expiration date. In such a monetary system, Universal Basic Income must be given to every human being. Monetary wealth must be closely monitored to ensure that no one person, corporation or nation can monopolize the accumulation of wealth. Such an undertaking would requires an extraordinary commitment on the part of every nation, every corporation, and every individual, especially the most wealthy in each category who would be subjected to a titrate approach in order to level the amount of monetary wealth they possess to others in said categories.
The landscape and infrastructure of every nation would be drastically changed. For example, public transportation might be the only transportation allowable, but would be free to all. That auto industry would be carbon free and limited to commercial use only. The hoped for result of such a complex system would be that as the overall environment of the earth improves, the overall quality of everyone's life improves.
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But is continuing a monetary economic system the only choice we have?
If money is a will-killer, what will awaken people to the fact that the value of life should not, at any level, be subjected to a monetary value?
If monetary wealth is a man-made illusion and poverty is a man-made reality, how do we reconcile such a conundrum?
Free credit as an acknowledgment of someone participating in the production of something; in this case, the preservation of the planet is a consideration. Universal Basic Income (UBI); as in, Universal Basic Credit (UBC), which UBI ultimately is can slowly lead us towards monetary independence and a transition to a world-wide monetary-free economy based on preserving our planet home. The value of monetary currency can be transitioned to a one-time set credit rate of exchange which will be purposely low in order create credit leveraging - balancing the disparity between monetary wealth and monetary poverty while preserving and creating incentives for creativity and productivity.
The significance of UBC as a credit system is that it does not require monetary payback. It bestows value as credit or paying forward without requiring paying anything back monetarily. The payback is in the mutual creation of healthy planetary environment and a healthy economic outlook for all. Each individual has value in their being which entitles them to UBC on whatever basis (let's say) the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund determines as equitable world-wide. [Yes - the UN and the IMF are the systems currently in place that should play a role in this transition.]
SURVIVALISM concerns all of us.
The notion of finding a less polluted, less exploited planet such as Mars or the Moon will only retain the current economic imbalance. It will result in an Orwellian or a Huxleyan mindset described in their literary works in which the value of human life and life on the planet will be subject the type of Social Darwinism of the 1920's and 30's in which only a select few will be deemed worthy to start a new world on another planet. Realistically speaking, while the science is there, the evident reality is that the time needed is not there to see it come to fruition. There is no realistic way of transporting the near 8 billion or more people living on this planet to another planet within the next 100 years. It is unlikely that such an endeavor is even being given any thought at all.
While I believe space exploration is necessary to find a deeper understanding of who we are and find new discoveries that may help us preserve life on our planet by learning how to survive on less hospitable terrains; such, as the Moon and Mars, we need a system that can quickly and effectively preserve life on this planet by taking seriously the science of climate change and recognizing its relationship to unfettered consumerism fostered by the world-wide monetary system based on capitalism.
At present, the world is unlikely to transition to a UBC system any time soon. It is too utopian for consideration at the present time, and I am not idealistic enough to believe that it would be given any consideration the economic climate of today. The world needs a much quicker fix to the climate change catastrophe that every nation in the world is dealing with.
It is imperative that the nations of the world and their monetary systems must pool their monetary resources to engage on an endeavor for survival by dealing with of climate change, migration, poverty and the wellbeing of our planet home. Should they do so and should they succeed, only then could and should consideration be given to creating an economic system that avoids the exploitation of life and the planet with the establishment of world-wide economy based on continued planetary survival.
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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