It has always puzzled me how we seem to accept our current economic system when it is clearly so fundamentally flawed. It only values…
It has always puzzled me how we seem to accept our current economic system when it is clearly so fundamentally flawed. It only values those things that generate monetary exchange, diminishing the value of non-monetized activity carried out amongst family, friends or community. It externalises the negative impact of any of that monetized activity — such as the environmental or social cost of producing stuff — meaning that the real cost is not reflected in the actual price, and that other people and life on earth have to carry those costs. It has become such an abstract system — another part of the expertocracy — that people feel very little ownership of it. And in crises such as corona, it stops working.
The thing is, it is such a huge system, embedded in all kinds of governance and processes globally, that it feels impossible to change. That is why I think we need to build an alternative economy in parallel to the existing one that better meets our needs as people and planet, and will still function when the next crisis hits — which it will. It should be an economy that reflects true cost, which people have an understanding of and which is connected to our local needs and experiences.
