With global unemployment rates on the rise, the future appears grim for
hundreds of millions of people around the world. The statistics are very
unsettling, and the situation appears to be hopeless. However, the problem is
not that the world is coming to an end because of job shortages. The real
problem is that we continue to approach economic problems from a free-market
institutional perspective, and in doing so we perpetuate our own economic crises.
Large institutions have gradually supplanted natural, sustainable,
community-based ways of living. These large institutions have strategically
installed themselves as the intercultural, inter-societal conduits, or channels
through which our means of survival are exchanged and distributed. We trade
our time for money from large institutions, and then use that money to buy
things back from those same large institutions. Because societies have
surrendered to industry, we have found ourselves trapped in a state of
dependency.
It doesn't take a genius to
realize that profit-dependent organizations must continue to expand, or magically create
new profit ad infinitum in order be a lucrative pursuit for investors/owners. Eating from
the same finite pie of profit, over time, for-profit organizations must find
novel ways to continue profitability. With shrinking consumer bases— owing to consumers
ever-increasing unemployment and limited purchasing power— organizations increase profitability by squeezing
more production/profit out of the same human resources. Beyond this point, in
the never-ending pursuit of profit, human resource expenses
must inevitably be reduced as well; leading to greater unemployment. Small
businesses are no exception to these inevitabilities, because although many may
not be beholden to investors, their free market struggles are the same as
publicly traded companies; shrinking consumer bases, increased price
competition, etc. In sum, the belief in the fantasy of sustainable, infinite
profit is dangerous and self-destructive.
If our
well-being is contingent upon the perpetual expansion, or profit-dependent survival, of organizations that by
their very nature must eventually discard people in order to secure their own futures, we
are most certainly doomed to either unemployment or severely decreased wages.
We cannot expect the current economic trajectory to magically transform. Anyone
with a basic comprehension of systems understands that if you jam the same inputs
into the same function without reconfiguration, the output(s) will not suddenly
change.
Since the correctness of my arguments is abundantly clear to rational minds, the real
question is: What can we do to improve our plight? Let's start by embracing
cooperatives, eating local, and try to avoid feeding the monsters by not patronizing
the wealth-extracting supermarkets and retail chains that decimate diversity, community, and
opportunity. There is no shortage of fertile farmland, we have strong
communities, and very able/skilled people. Therefore, I believe that a sustainable
future is achievable within local, not-profit-dependent communities.
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