The Imaginary Economy — Part
II
• What are the bases
for personal value and worth?
• How would sustainable living impact the economy?
• What models ought we use for future economic
development?
I was angry when I saw the delivery
truck loaded with aluminum cans filled with sodas.
Returning home from a concert at the middle school,
I thought of the music teacher who had to make do with
a bunch of second-rate musical instruments begged and
borrowed from all over the school district just so
her kids could at least have the semblance of an orchestra. How
sad that we live in a society where soda commands more
resources than teaching music to children, I thought.
Our priorities are a statement of who
we are.
How we spend our resources reflects
our values and our concept of worth. I therefore
call our economy “imaginary” because
it is based on choices that frequently have no real
value and are often shaped by habits or glamorized
images instead of by real needs. As a society we
willingly spend to consume or entertain ourselves and
unwillingly spend to meet important human needs. Salaries
in America reflect these priorities.
Soda cans filled with sweetened water, some flavorings
and assorted chemicals symbolize just how much energy,
money and natural resources we are willing to spend
for something of no real (and largely negative) value.
So many people in American society consume with no
consideration of the consequences of their consumption,
and no reflection on how their resources could be better
used. Our economy is so dependent on this type of thoughtless
consumerism that there are serious risks to our economic
stability if we change that way of life.
If the consciousness of American consumers changed
just a little in terms of what we habitually buy and
how we obtain it, our economy would suffer an immense
impact. If people ceased buying sodas many jobs would
be lost from the mining, manufacturing, distribution,
advertising, retail, and waste disposal sectors of
our economy.
Multiplying this impact throughout our consumer economy
to the myriad other unnecessary and potentially harmful
products we willingly spend our hard earned incomes
on, and it is evident that America cannot afford the
upheaval to live in a sustainable economy. We are happy
to live in the imaginary economy of limitless goods,
limitless resources and a limitless earth in which
to dispose of the waste they produce. In the global
economy, if American consumers changed their habits
they would negatively impact the economies of the many
nations who depend on American consumption for jobs
and trade.
The roots of the imaginary economy
and the vigorous consumption that drives it are the
results of psychological factors and economic theories
that equate material wealth and possessions with prosperity,
security, popularity, and a meaningful life. It is
the job of advertising to create the myth of happiness
or life style that equates personal value with what
one has. Indeed, advertising and its governmental counterpart,
politics, must sell Americans a package that ties their
perceived well-being and national identity to a “way
of life” and the accessories that define it.
National economies have basically three models to
choose from as they measure their growth, development
and economic health:
Gross Domestic
Product (GDP):
Traditionally, economists,
policymakers, reporters, and the public rely on the
GDP as a shorthand indicator of progress; but the
GDP is merely a sum of national spending with no
distinctions between transactions that add to well-being
and those that diminish it.
"Among the
economics profession there has been a strong sense
for a long while that gross domestic product (GDP)
is not a good measure. It doesn't measure changes
in well-being, it doesn't measure comparisons of
well-being across countries," [Thus, if political
leaders] "are trying to maximize GDP and GDP
is not a good measure, you are maximizing the wrong
thing and it can be counterproductive."
—Joseph
Stiglitz, Nobel laureate economist
Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
“We have been misguided in
dismissing what people say about how happy they are
and simply assuming that if they are consuming more … they
are better off.” says Richard Easterlin, economics
professor at the University of Southern California.
There are efforts to devise a new economic index
that would measure well-being gauged by things like
satisfaction with personal relationships, employment,
and meaning and purpose in life….
“What
about Gross National Happiness?”
by Nadia Mustafa, TIME magazine Jan 10, 2005
The GPI is an alternative to the gross
domestic product (GDP). The GPI enables policymakers
at the national, state, regional, or local level to
measure how well their citizens are doing both economically
and socially. If policymakers measure what really matters
to people—health
care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators
of well-being—economic policy would naturally
shift towards sustainability. http://www.rprogress.org/index.htm (Redefining
Progress.org)
Gross National Happiness (GNH)
"I feel that there must be
some convergence among nations on the idea of what
the primary objective of development and progress
should be - something Gross National Happiness seeks
to bring about".
—H.M.
Jigme Khesar Wangchuck
King of Bhutan
Economic growth does not necessarily
lead to contentment, and GNH instead focuses on the
four pillars: economic self-reliance, a pristine
environment, the preservation and promotion of Bhutan’s culture, and good governance
in the form of a democracy. Bhutan’s King felt
the responsibility to define development in terms of
happiness of its people, rather than in terms of an
abstract economic measurement such as GNP.
http://www.grossinternationalhappiness.org/index.html
http://www.gnh-movement.org/index.php
The result of participating in an imaginary
economy is personal and national debt caused by spending
beyond our means on items of imaginary worth from soda
to war. The recent sub-prime mortgage debacle is a
painful example of lenders and borrowers staking their
financial resources and their futures on imaginary
value.
Sustainable living is the opposite of the thrill of
buying whatever one desires. On the contrary, it is
a mentality of delicate balance where one thinks of
the material and social consequences of what one uses.
Sustainable living and consequently sustainable economy
come from trying to consider taking and giving back
equally. It is based on the natural rhythm of life
that is sustained by systems that are interdependent
and cyclical. Inhaling and exhaling, consuming needed
nutrients and calories in order to maintain weight,
energy and vitality are the biological counterparts
of economic health. Overindulgence of the body results
in ill health. The psychological counterpart of excessive
appetite is selfishness that breeds dissatisfaction,
fear and greed. These are the debt producers and the
viruses that produce the symptoms of a sick economy.
Ultimately the forces of the imaginary economy may
only change when people change from valuing what they
have more than who they are. When health and quality
of life for oneself and others replaces consumerism
as the primary motive of work and spending, then the
nations whose excessive habits are putting the survival
of the planet at risk will willingly transform themselves
to sustainable models of economic development.
The
Imaginary Economy — Part I
© 2008
Richard V. Sidy