The Problem with Economics

This is a rant on a topic I’m fairly acquainted with and have no formal education in except the various books on economic theory I’ve read over the years purely out of interest. Forgive my many inaccuracies and off topic devolving into philosophy. If you have a differing opinion, see any error in my reasoning or I have my facts wrong. Kindly direct me further to the path of enlightenment, I’m eager to learn and genuinely not above being wrong (if you have a reasonable and sound argument based on facts) . This was inspired in most part by a youtube video of Peter Schiff a businessman, investor and overall self-made millionaire with fairly strong parental influences in economics, strong opinions on the American government and a somewhat tragic rebellious inheritance.

Forgive my ignorance, I know nothing about this man except a brief glance on his wikipedia page and listening to him speak once in public. I maybe gravely mistaken in my many assumptions about him. Yet, it’s not the man that intrigues me, but the idea. More on that later.

First of all, I have to say, hearing him speak is amazing, not just the eloquence and confidence of how he speaks, but how intellectually rich his understanding of things in comparison with most (not all who spoke in the video) is. Perhaps this was intentional? An intentional distortion of a complex topic to elicit some support from people at the grassroots level and to furnish a public image for millions people watching online. These sort of videos are common place in certain circles of youtube and serve to polarize opinions, quite usually for some agenda. A lot of the time it’s simply confirmation bias. I try to stay away from American politics and social issues. I personally face many more pressing concerns in my own society and I can’t be bothered with what happens in the atmosphere and subculture of people thousands of miles away. I simply don’t care. You know what I’m talking about :)

A lot of western ideas and influences, current trends in the social and political atmosphere echo throughout the world. Even here, in little old Nigeria, Africa. I have my interest in American culture and I wouldn’t dare say it hasn’t affected me or even completely changed me. Anyway, this segue is besides the point.

I would link to the video but I’ve since closed the tab and I sincerely doubt anyone would bother to watch with my link. Our generation has the attention span of two seconds on social media. Anyway, the nitty-gritty.

All economic theories, whether capitalist, socialist, communist, imperialist, and add an -ist to anything basically.. lol. Or some concatenation of them, aberration or whatever else. Heck you can go a little further back to monarchies or tyrannical systems, if you’re interested. My point here is to illustrate how difficult the problem of economics really is at a more fundamental level. Let’s dress it down a little so we can see the skeletons on which the burdens of society really exist. It’s an impossible problem to solve. Like all problems that are fundamentally complex and solved by the power of human reasoning and intellectual approximation to model the world and apply, it is inadequate.

The topics you’d need to acquaint yourself for me to get this point across are certain fundamental basics of economics. I’ll skip ’educating’ you and presume to get straight to it, if any of this is lost on you you can pick up a textbook, journal or some reference and form a somewhat educated opinion. If I sound condescending, I’m sorry but I would type far too many theories and basic concepts to make a simple point. Having said this a lot of this is easily understandable… somewhat.

We are born unequal. All men are not loved by the chaos that is reality. Yet, men are social creatures and without one another we would undoubtedly still be in the caves or simply died out. Society is the bread and butter on which the individual is born. The individual has no identity without society. We need each other for basic things, food, reproduction, shelter, survival. Biologically we must exist and we do so best as a collective. Beyond this, reasoning gives birth to a psychological component and so on and so forth. The interdependency created by society is so complex. To be sure, the problem of money(value actually) will persist until we progress sufficiently enough as a specie to advance beyond this. Then I figure, a new crisis will occur. Not of absolute poverty in the third world, or wondering what economic reform would be best. It is of satisfying infinity.

At what point does existence stop holding meaning? The hungry have no need of economic theory. They simply wish to eat. Once that need is satisfied, they want to continue to eat, for the foreseeable future. Then what? The fundamental human drive and often that which drives the subconscious is not rational although guided by an internal logic. Take the capitalist role for example, pretty cool guy right? He simply does what is demanded of him by the consumer. He creates jobs by trying to fill demand and in return he makes a neat profit. Pretty cool right? Except, it’s not. It’s fundamentally exploitative… sort of. By establishing a business ( the vehicle for meeting demanded value) he has private ownership. He ‘owns’ the means of production and feels he is entitled to it’s rights in society since it’s his ‘idea’ and he undertakes total responsibility. Only the capitalist will never tell you about ‘surplus value’, ‘accumulation’ and how this creates a prosperous and productive society but one that is completely horrid to the modern day imagination by essentially dehumanizing people and seeing them only for the labour they provide as a population. Pure capitalism is scary for the little guy because it’s purist in its rational-optimized-resource driven culture. Free enterprise is a lie, a fabrication. Do I sound marxist? lol I promise I’m not. However these are valid critiques and I prefer to side with reason. Like socialism, communism and many of the convoluted attempts at enforcing these supposedly sound theories, by conjoining, cutting up and adapting them to various societies. They’re inadequate.

Inadequate not in the sense there is anything wrong with the theories themselves as ideas or principles. Great were the minds from which these concepts developed and many toiled and laboured(continue to do so) to exact it in many of the forms of which it runs societies today. We can’t fix the problems because we’re running in circles. Approximations of reality are not reality. Therefore we’re only fixing artificial problems and will continue to do so. Instead of fixing the leaking house, we put a bucket because we have no idea how the house is built or why it rains.

This gets even more difficult when you start to see value as a creation of society. Much is ultimately the fabrication of the mind. Collective consciousness gives reality meaning. I imagine that we have advanced far too quickly as a species. lol We’ve come too far our own biology hasn’t kept up. The very evolutionary mechanism by which we were created is broken because society and culture are evolving at an exponential rate. Now, we’re simply caught up in our own success as a specie.

This evolutionary experiment wasn’t supposed to go this well, I don’t think. Now, that it has then what? How do we reconcile inequality? Should we even? If humans are born with unique advantages and disadvantages, shouldn’t equity not equality rule? If it does then how is value measured? There are supposed answers to these questions. Many, many attempts at reconciling chaos. These are problems of economics.