By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Don't try fixing the old system; get a new one instead
We need a new economy model and system and not a revamped, and overhauled old one.
This has nothing to do with capitalist system vs. socialist system or market economy vs. planned economy, or any such like. All systems are equally bankrupt.
It has everything to do, however, with the fact that our current capitalist market economy, based on ever more growth that began sometime during the Industrial Revolution, I should think, but which really properly got going in the late 19th and then the 20th century, followed by the current throw-away economy, is totally broken and cannot be fixed. Nor, in all honesty, should an attempt even be made to fix the old system. The patient should not be resuscitated and should be allowed to die quietly without any further effort.
The capitalist economic model of growth, more growth and still yet ever more growth, is broken and let's face the fact, it was never fit for the purpose in the first place.
Therefore it is more than high time to abandon the boom-bust boom-bust economic experiment for a new system, a system of a constant economy.
Now, with the aftermath of the credit crunch and the recession still in full swing in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere, is a good chance and opportunity to make the transition to a different kind of economy.
In his book “The Constant Economy” published by Atlantic Books in 2010 Zac Goldsmith, MP, the Conservative Member of Richmond, explains and puts forward what such a new and different economic system should look like and how it should work.
A “constant economy” is neither the boom and bust system of capitalism, which is rather bust, nor the planned and controlled state capitalist economy of socialism/communism, which did not work either. It is one that is good for the Planet and for mankind as a whole.
The present capitalist economic system is bad for the Earth and bad for Her children for it is also, primarily, an economy that is founded on and grounded in exploitation of the Planet and people and on creating ever more waste.
There is just no way that we can continue that way and a full 180degree turn is required.
There are economic models of the past, models that served everyone well until greed took hold entirely, that can be merged and married into the constant economy idea.
Our current economic model relies on the exploitation of people and of the Planet and that in more than just one aspect. In the pursuit of ever more profit businesses and states have, literally, walked over dead bodies and have partaken in the wholesale destruction of habitats and have polluted our air, our water, our soil and everything else.
Alone for those very reasons we must change (the model) and create a new economy. But it is also a fact thet the model per se, and not just the (free) market capitalist system but also the state capitalist system of so-called planned economy, is broken and we should not even attempt to fix it. The patient is in a persistent vegetative state and there is no chance of recovery. Let's pull the plug.
The new economic system and model to be developed must be one of a constant economy; one where Planet and mankind are in the forefront of considerations and not how much profit can be made by exploiting Nature and man.
It must also be one where goods are – once again – produced in such a way that they can be repaired and thus last, and can be made to last, for a long time, as it used to be, and not where when they break they are thrown away and every product is designed to last only a year to three.
While the factored in obsolescence is what keeps the broken economy sort of going and, at times, growing, the forced having to buy new all the time is a most wasteful way of working. Wasteful as to resources and wasteful as to discarded products, as waste.
Let's build an entirely new economic system and model, on new foundations. The old one is simply broken and past it.
© 2011
