Distribution

Forget, for a moment, any description of the word "economy" you've been taught, and try to describe it yourself. Answer for yourself the question "what is economy?" Think about it for a few moments, and then read on if you're interested in my description, and why our current economy fails at everything an economy's supposed to do.

So what, according to yours truly, is an economy? Well, it's simple really. "Economy" is the answer to a question, and that question is: how do we distribute the products we produce using our labor and the natural resources granted by our living planet. That's it. We could expand on that and also ask why do we produce, and how do we organize production. But that's really all it is. The "why" question has an easy answer: we produce because we need the products to survive, to be able to live, and to make our lifes, if at all possible, more comfortable and safe. The "how" question also has an easy answer, as everything's ultimately produced with human physical and mental labor. Some people have ideas and many people work to realize those ideas.

An economy, and I mean any economy, should be geared towards meeting the demands of as many people as possible, preferably all people. This should be the answer to the "how do we distribute" part of the question. It's the only answer that aligns with the unalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", as described in the United States Declaration of Independence. If everyone has a right to life, everyone's entitled to the stuff they need to live, right? And governments were created to protect those rights. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," it says.

Now, if an economy is anything like I've described - and I like to think it's quite accurate -, ours fails miserably. Our economy does not meet the demand of people. It's not designed to do that. If it was, there would be no homeless people, no hungry people and no sick people without access to healthcare. No, our economy is designed for one thing only, and that's to grow by making private profits through the private ownership of the stuff we all need. The distribution part of our economy is governed by an impersonal mechanism called "markets" through supply and demand. And it's incapable of dealing with so called inelastic demand. Everyone needs shelter, food and medicine. And we'd give anything, pay anything to not die. The demand for medicine, food and housing is infinite, so the pricing mechanism fails, or prices many people out of the market.

It's not a question of there being too little supply. On the contrary, we produce more food than we can eat, and every major city has more empty houses than they have homeless people. It's that we destroy the surplus of food, just to keep prices, and profits, up. And the houses are empty because builders and landlords refuse to lower their prices to meet the demand, again to keep profits up. Our economic model, capitalism, is a disgrace. We have so much, yet we simply refuse to to find a more just, a fairer answer to the "how do we distribute" part of the question the economy is the answer to. Now you might say that it's not the goal of the economy to be fair.

You might rightly point to the famous words in the United States Declaration of Independence and say that it's the government's task to protect those unalienable rights. And you'd have a point. If we don't want to make the economy fair, like transform it into a more socialist version, the government should correct the wrongs of the capitalist economy. And that can be done, by taxing the crap out of the wealth of the richest 1 percent, for example. The problem with many is, that when they read the "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" part of that famous document, they apply it equally to those insanely rich people. That's a problem, because those insanely rich people have significantly more liberty and happiness, and don't have to worry for one nano-second about their access to food or medicine. Not even when we tax them 90 percent for every dollar they own over $1,000,000,000. They would still be billionaires, they would still own more than they could spend in 10 lifetimes, but the couple of hundred million other Americans would finally have a chance to enjoy some liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Ultimately though it's the economy that has to be changed. An economy that necessitates the extreme taxation of a small segment of the population, the taking back of some of the accumulated insane wealth, is wrong to begin with. I'm more than 50 years old, had regular jobs my whole life, and I've been able to buy a house. I own my house, and I believe everyone should be able to have a house, a place to live of their own. But that's fast becoming a luxury many people can't afford anymore. The game of supply, demand and profits is leading to a place where houses and rents are unaffordable for people like me, regular people with regular jobs. Watch the below linked video if you're interested in the many causes for this development. In my opinion there's one root-cause though, which I've tried to explain here.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!