The Dismal Science

This is a picture of the Earth from space:

If you were an alien cruising by the planet in your '64 X2001 T-bird in the late summer of 2008 A.D. this is what you would see. Aside from noticing that the Earth is flat, apparently, you would also see all of the industrialized areas of the planet lit up. If you felt like it, you might decide to make a pit stop and create a few crop circles or abduct a hillbilly.

Now zoom 3 Earth years ahead. You read the Milky Way Journal and the Galactic Economist magazine so you've heard about the financial crisis on Earth. So this time, when you swing by you expect to see a dark planet with pygmies in mud huts. Instead, as you put the top down and roll down the window you see this:

The same thing! How can that be? It seems as if nothing has changed. The reason is because it hasn't.

The only thing that actually changed is the magnetic polarity on computer hard drives in some of the computers on the planet and the voltages being processed in their chips. So now the Dow Jones Industrial Average number is 11,239 ("10101111100111" in binary instead of what it was last time you came by - "11011010110000" - woah!) and the yield on 10 Year Treasuries is listed as 2.18% ("DA" in hexadecimal instead of "18C" like it was before - incredible!) . There are similar differences in the numbers stored in computers across the planet. Aside from that, though, the same buildings stand, the same people are running around, and the same knowledge of science and mathematics exists among the Earthlings.

So you pull the power out of your X2001 and begin to descend into the Earth's atmosphere to take a closer look (or maybe to ride in a basket on a bicycle in front of the moon) and you notice that there are, in fact, noticeable differences. Bubba, whom you abducted 3 years ago for medical experiments, doesn't live in his house anymore and there is a sign out front that says, "Bank Owned." So you think to yourself, "Huh, maybe this time I'll grab Granny from her trailer." When you get there, though, you realize that Granny has moved in with one of her children in Phoenix. You consider going there to pick her up and then decide against it because Phoenix sucks (you remember that from when you went there on March 13, 1997 and checked the place out for an hour). Bewildered, you return to Xenu to tell your friends about the inexplicable changes on Earth.

"Vxyvncu, you're not going to believe this..."

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This parable demonstrates how unnecessary the recent changes in the standard of living have been. Mankind has no less capacity to produce than it did 3 years ago. Now, however, because of changes in debt-to-GDP and asset-to-liability ratios people have lost their homes, standards of living across the world have dropped, and people are not able to live as well as they did before those numbers changed on computer hard drives.

Of course, most people will say that these changes were brought about by money transferring or disappearing altogether. But money is simply an agreed-upon concept that we have created. It is an abstraction that we assign value to so that we can have a standardized medium of exchange. It does not determine or limit what we are capable of doing.

For tens of thousands of years Mankind lived, and produced, without a standardized medium of exchange. People bartered goods and services that they believed were comparable in value. The invention of currency, however, radically altered society and we went from the Stone Age to the Nuclear Age in the blink of an eye. This publication would argue, however, that the usefulness of currency has run its course and shown its limitations and downsides. The time has come to develop a new system for the exchange of goods and services based on entirely different principles.

Og learns to speak

My proposal is that we create a system whereby everyone does all they can to contribute to the collective welfare. Those who are good at inventing flying machines will do just that. Others who are skilled carpenters will continue to build. Without question, some will give more than others and receive no more material benefit in return. Undoubtedly this will require an evolution of Consciousness where Mankind realizes that he and all Life are a part of the Cosmic Soul and that any advantage he gains over others is merely illusory because he is the others.

Perhaps the failure of the current economic system will prompt this change. When things are bad enough, our species may decide at an individual and collective level to do things differently. Fortunately, we have words to guide us:

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

He Imagined

Until then, that'll be $50. I accept PayPal and all major credit cards.