We need a new economics.
Economics--in the sense of a way of thinking about
exchanges, measuring exchanges, and rewarding exchanges.
Exchanging things is the heart of human interaction.
The simplest human actions can be seen as an exchange. A mother smiles at her
infant, and the infant smiles back. The exchange is rewarding to both. The
reward is priceless--it cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
What has happened in our world is that exchanges have
become more and more tied to money. Unless an exchange can be measured and
symbolized by money, it is worthless. The result is that millions of people are
unable to take part in the most fundamental exchanges: exchanges for food,
housing, and medical care. Such people become, in the words of Charles Dickens,
"surplus population." They are not needed. They should be allowed to
die.
This is not what Jesus preached.
This is not a new problem. There was a surplus
population in the thirteenth century, when the first followers of Francis of
Assisi began to live among the people. Francis's approach was to forbid his
followers to use money. In fact, they were not even to touch money. (Money in
those days was confined to coins, and did not take the paper and electronic
forms that it has in our time.) Francis saw people hoarding coins. With those
coins they could buy land and drive people off that land. The coins represented
power, just as money does today.
The difference between now and the thirteenth century
is that back then the Church had great influence in society. The friars, as
representatives of the Church hierarchy, used their influence to bring about a
re-evaluation of how people looked at money. They focused on use, as opposed to
possession. One ought to possess only what one could use in some meaningful
way. Their re-evaluation had an effect on how people looked at money and
exchange, and made the society more human and compassionate.
An executive today can "earn" $60 million in
a year. What can he or she do with $60 million? One such entrepreneur in the
1980s would go into a restaurant, order everything on the menu, choose one
item, and throw away the rest. Even that, though, would only cost a few
thousand dollars. But $60 million?
Big house, big car. Huge house, huge car. Three huge
houses, three private jets. What for?
It's a game. Show your rivals that you are important.
What you use the money for is irrelevant. The point is to win the game of
showmanship. But that money could be used to provide food and housing for
thousands of people.
We need a moral re-evaluation of what money is for.
"The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," Jesus said.
Money was made for human life, not human life for money.
We are facing a head-wind of ideology, a theory that
explains why it is right and just that one person make $60 million in a year.
The ideology says that unless we allow that, in fact, unless we praise that,
people will quit exchanging things and the economy will fall apart. When we
praise the "earning" of $60 million in a year, everyone is motivated
to produce more, and everyone is better off. A rising tide lifts all boats.
But it doesn't. Many boats sink. A Christian society
is concerned about the people in those boats. We cannot let a nice theory
baptize the sinking of millions of boats and the people in them.
What can we do to change this situation?
I suggest that we do what they did in the thirteenth
century: start focusing on how we use money. We should confine our possession
of money to a reasonable expectation of what our money can be used for. We
should quit using money as a marker for power and prestige.
There is no chance that the people now making $50
million will voluntarily change their thinking. But people make $50 million
because they invent something that 50 million people want--for example,
computer games, or cars with seats that raise and lower, move back and forth,
and are warm in the winter even before people sit in them. The economy depends
on things that people want.
We are those people. The more of us that think about
how we can use what we have, and not on how what we have makes us look
important, the more things will change.
But won't this cause people to buy fewer computer
games and nice cars?
That brings me to the second aspect of what we need:
new ways of measuring exchanges.
The Exchange of
Services and How to Measure Such Exchanges
I have a neighbor who has had a stroke and can no
longer work for her living. I go next door and get her shopping list, go to the
store, and buy what she needs for dinner. I exchange my time and effort for . .
. for what? For her appreciation and
gratitude.
Right now there is no way to measure the value of that
exchange. The exchange is worthless in our economy. We have to figure out some
way to pay me for what I do, and to let her have the resources to pay me.
We need a new kind of money. Let's call it the
"prayer." One prayer can buy fifteen minutes of my shopping time. My
neighbor can reward me by giving me three prayers.
This is not a new unit of measurement. Some years ago
Catholic Charities in my town would give a monthly food basket to people in
exchange for prayer. That was not a meaningless exchange. Even a homebound and
ill person can pray, and thereby avoid the stigma of accepting
"charity."
A prayer is a combination of time and attention. When
I pray, I spend time doing it, and I attend to what I am doing. That is
valuable. That creates an exchange.
Prayer can be exchanged for regular money. You give me
$50 and I give you five prayers.
I don't have to believe in a god in order to pray. I
just have to take time and give my attention to the well-being of my exchange
partner.
We have never been able to figure out how to provide
enough "jobs" to get everybody involved in economic exchange. There
are only so many things we can make, and we are on the verge of destroying our
environment by making so many never-used things. I walk through a department
store and ask myself, "how many of these things will end up in a landfill
without ever being used by any human person?" The landfill gets bigger and
bigger, and the atmosphere gets more and more carbon-saturated. The oceans rise
higher and higher, and the storms get fiercer and fiercer. We need to slow
down, quit trying to measure everything by traditional money, and start basing
exchanges on something that a) allows even the weakest among us to contribute
to exchange, and b) does not increase power and prestige.
A prayer has the advantage that it involves an
exchange between two specific human beings. It cannot be hoarded. It can't be
stored up. It makes us slow down and smell the roses.
Recently I attended a meeting that showed an hour-long
film titled "Transitions." The film suggested ways that people can
use other forms of exchange. One form was quantified, so that a person could go
into a market stall, get a batch of carrots, and "pay" the owner by
exchanging a text message recording the units of payment. No money changed
hands, but the medium of exchange allowed the transaction to take place in an
ordered way. After the film the group of about thirty people broke up into
small groups and envisioned society in 2030. One idea that came up more than
once was the idea of a "time bank." People could exchange their time
for a tangible good. That seems very similar to what I called a
"prayer" exchange.
Some years ago I read a review of a book that proposed
that there be a separate kind of money for high-flying investment games, and
for ordinary day-to-day exchanges. Economists can tell us if and how such a
scheme might work.
We need to find such a scheme. It is unconscionable
that in a world with as much creativity as ours, millions, billions, of people
cannot contribute their time and ability to others.
There should be no such thing as surplus population.
