We don’t want an economy which produces lots of money

Money is one of the hardest things to talk about, because we make it into something concrete, which it isn’t, and hasn’t been for a long time in most countries. Even gold money wasn’t particularly concrete, because gold has no organic relation to a society’s overall production. Currencies like the Japanese Koku, based on grain, were concrete, and in a rural society had a significant relationship to actual economic productivity. In our society, money is an abstraction.

What we want is not an economy which produces a lot of money (whatever that is, since money is an accounting identity): what we want is an economy which produces a lot of good stuff: good products and services.

By good I mean “products which make our lives better.” Food which makes us sick, beyond keeping us alive, is not what we should be seeking to produce, no matter how many people it makes rich, or how convenient it may be. A suburban lifestyle which discourages walking and social ties is not good for us: it contributes to obesity, depression and powerlessness: and that powerlessness leads to inequality. Jobs which we hate, but do so we can buy food which makes us sick and live in communities which isolate us and make us fat and unfit are not what we should be aiming for.

Money is very useful: it provides feedback as to how much demand there is if you live in a functioning market; it provides liquidity so we can trade with people without having to set up barter operations; and it provides an accounting mechanism by which we can turn present effort into future right to consume. But how much money we have, total, as a society, is unimportant. What matters is our actual productive capacity.

Consider someone who works and saves money, then retires. A retiree lives in today’s economy. Their butt gets wiped by people working today, their doctor is working today, their food is produced by people working today. If the economy collapses, all their money is meaningless, and they can only buy what people who are working today want to sell.

Ultimately what matters is how much and what type of goods and services our society is producing. This doesn’t include just food and housing and clothing: it includes philosophy, and art and music and TV and computer games and education. Money’s purpose is to facilitate the creation of all those good things; to help create a society which produces art and food and education which are good for those who consume them. If money stops helping create those things; if money is used to restrict access to good food and housing and education, then money is actually harmful and creating more of it is harmful.

During the 80s and 90s and 00s giving money to rich people through tax cuts increased the rate at which jobs were off-shored. During the post-war period the more money was spent on food production in the US the cheaper food became: but also the fatter and sicker Americans became. The feedback loops was “more fat and sugar and carbs = more sales” so they slathered all of that on.

As I’ve noted before, Money is permission: it is the right of people to tell other people what to do. But giving money to someone, especially giving a lot of money to someone, more than the standard return in an economy says “DO THIS. DO MORE OF IT.” So if the most highly rewarded people in the economy are Wall Street scam artists and people financing building McMansions, well, you’re going to get more of that.

It is right wing ideology that the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. They’re right when it comes to individuals, but dead wrong when it comes to groups. We don’t want people winning by polluting, by producing shitty food, by committing fraud. We do want people winning who are doing basic science, educating children well, helping sick people, and creating products and services which make people healthier and fitter and happier. If we see a large group of people getting more money by doing bad, then we need to shut that down, and fast, because the longer we leave it, the longer we say “whatever, it doesn’t matter”, not only are they doing harm at a faster and faster rate as money and people move into an arena where they earn greater returns; but their money turns into power, allowing them to buy up other people to ensure that they can continue making money doing harm.

Money is permission, money is power and money goes to the highest returns. If the highest returns are doing harm, our society will become toxic faster than you can say “I’m getting trickled on.”

So watch where money is going, and make sure the people getting it are doing good, not harm.

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