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Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy". We are modern day slaves of "

Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy". We are modern day slaves of "the economy". Many old people were left to die in the COVID-19 because of "the economy". The climate is going worse and the environment is being destroyed because of "the economy". But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return.

DragonStrength 1y ago
There’s certainly a line of thinking that economics is the profession of telling the capital class what they want to hear such as austerity [1]. We can’t let capital fail because… well, ask that guy! [1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707...
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Flym1aovbkjk81.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fl...
  - DragonStrength 1y ago
    Or more: what ideology says I and my heirs deserve to continue to be wealthy and in control? Funny how we’re in a Social Darwinist moment as wealth inequality rises again. But I’m sure people couldn’t possibly be working backwards to justify their position. Certainly the wealthy, who fund research, wouldn’t twist a science as pure as economics like they did the soft science biology.
    - lanfeust6 1y ago
      Meanwhile extreme poverty levels have been steadily diminishing and quality-of-life broadly improving. But you're concerned with some people having more money. That is to say, equality of outcome. No safety net would ever be enough for communist ideologues, because results and well-being don't matter. Only ideology, and punishment. There's a reason would-be socialist states have back-tracked from central control of economy and allowed competition (Lenin did this so quickly in spite of his zeal it would make your head spin). They kept the authoritarianism though. Once those tendrils get in, they're tough to get out. Only a few countries shed that in the 20th century, one of them being South Korea; places that embraced Liberalism, because they had the good fortune to have leaders with sense. Liberty qua Liberalism is good, and the checks-and-balances are meant to evolve over time. The alternatives are abject failures, and you'll propose nothing that hasn't been one.
      - DragonStrength 1y ago
        What does that have to do with whether or not economists are serving a useful role day-to-day? For instance, most economists now agree most economists were wrong about the way to respond to 2008, and the austerity measures actually caused more pain for most people. Seems like exactly the sort of recent failure which should make us question their current advice. Especially if the current advice benefits the folks paying their salary. Regardless, I stand by my derogatory comments about social Darwinists.
        lanfeust6 1y ago
        Because yours was just a thinly veiled comment on Capitalism, dressed up as one about Economists. > the austerity measures actually caused more pain for most people You're thinking of the Great Depression, not the Great Recession. Have you looked up just how much the U.S. government spent in that time? The bailouts, etc? This was not austerity.
        DragonStrength 1y ago
        My criticism is most definitely of economics as a field and is a common topic among economists today as they reckon with their failures post-2008. Economists do not all agree on everything. I am most definitely thinking of the Great Recession which I lived through. I encourage you to research the low growth era that followed and what economists think now. You won't have to go far back because five years ago when the pandemic started there was a lot of writing about the failings of that era. In fact, the consensus seems to be we over-corrected this time, but still better than what we did in 2008. But yes, we made the investors who created the mess whole while making the American citizens eat the costs. It's a bit baffling to have something so widely written about dismissed so confidently by someone who doesn't seem to understand what we are even discussing.
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BSOhealth 1y ago
Probably not "incredibly stupid" But, "the economy" is generally just a descriptor for what people need/want, and what they're willing to do for it. A phrase like "slaves of the economy", with the implication that someone should be entitled to escape that condition, is about as ridiculous as thinking you are a "slave to nutrients" or a "slave to oxygen" or any other physical constraint. You can't escape it; you have to eat--what are you willing to do to get food? However, what I think you're probably more upset about, and what you probably should instead be phrasing it as, is economic manipulation. That is something that can legitimately be unjust. Power and information are some tools to manipulate or benefit from economic conditions to a greater extent than others, and therefore have more boats or leisure time or political positions (or food or N95 masks or jobs etc etc)
- leereeves 1y ago
  When someone complains about "the economy", they aren't complaining about the abstract idea of an economy, they're complaining about a particular economy (usually the one they live in). One could literally be a "slave to this economy" in a slave-based economy, or figuratively in an economy where other people own the land (for example) and force them to work.
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - spwa4 1y ago
    But that makes these claims of "slavery" even more absurd. Would you have to do more or less living as a subsistence farmer? Would you have better or worse quality of life? That's an easy one: no way in hell, it'd be SO much worse. Our society can only exist with extreme specialization. Hell, if we take into account that the land available couldn't even remotely support the people living on it (~2km2 per person per year), so there'd be a famine under those conditions and you'll what's being suggested as "alternative" is effectively extreme suffering followed by death for 95%+ of the population, maybe 99%+.
    - 1y ago
engineer_22 1y ago
Are you American?
- Buttons840 1y ago
  Are you saying focus on "the economy" is uniquely American? I do think some interesting arguments could be made to that end; I don't know enough about other countries to say.
  - lysace 1y ago
    I think it's more about a common lack of understanding that there is a world outside of America that actually matters, economically speaking and that the "economy" is actually a global system.
    - engineer_22 1y ago
      Nope just a question
  - engineer_22 1y ago
    It's literally a question
lysace 1y ago
> but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy" We all live in a global trading economy. This has been the case for thousands of years. We don't have a global dictatorship. This is good. Also, this is a thing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank?tab=chart&c...
ajross 1y ago
> But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Stuff. You like stuff, I like stuff. If you had more stuff of one kind you could do different stuff, good stuff, even. And the people out there doing good stuff could do even more if they had more stuff to do it with. Everywhere you look, people like stuff. People with more stuff are happier on average, every time it's measured. People with serious stuff deficits end up being the ones to start wars, even. "The Economy" is just the stuff. There's no magic here. You're imagining a villain, but it's all just stuff.
- roywiggins 1y ago
  It's stuff, but most importantly, food and shelter. It's the thing that builds places to live and claws calories out of the ground. When the economy grinds to a halt people start to go hungry. (People do go hungry anyway. We often do kind of a bad job feeding everyone, considering the enormous technological and logistical resources available now, but that's a historical anomaly)
- rflrob 1y ago
  To tag on, the economy gives us more than just physical "stuff" (though that's one of the easiest things to measure). Do you enjoy travel? How about clean water, yoga classes, or therapy? What about the ability to post a message to complete strangers over the internet? As much as we could, in theory, do all of those things without having an economy to support it, money is a shockingly good way to give you whatever it is that you value. Yes, some people have more money than they know what to do with (and, I would argue, than is good for them or us), but I've seen no reasonable suggestions that as many of us can have what we want without a reasonably open market economy. I don't think we're at a local optimum in the fine details of the rules for that economy, but I don't think moving to a whole different part of the possibility space is likely to be better than where we are now.
spacebanana7 1y ago
Political power is a function of economic strength. This is as true for individual politicians as nation states. Victorian Britain has the biggest navy in the world because it could afford the biggest. Tony Blair has the most political discretion of any modern PM largely because the economy was so strong during his tenure.
- hollerith 1y ago
  Another reason it had the biggest navy is that it didn't need to spend much on an army to prevent invasions because it has no land border with any other power.
dismalaf 1y ago
> Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy" "The economy" is a sum of all human activity. Not the other way around. We don't work for "the economy". "The economy" is the result of what we do. Trying to understand what we do, why we do it and how to make life better for everyone seems like a pretty good goal IMO.
testing22321 1y ago
I’ve spent decades thinking the same, and decided I don’t want to be a part of it. I work as little as possible and spend my time exploring the world, hiking, camping, eating cheap street food. Even driving my own vehicles around the world I spend less than $20k a year, so I don’t need to work much. I just don’t participate in the things I don’t want to - no phone, no tv, no new clothes, used car. I Enjoy time, not money & things.
- kilroy123 1y ago
  Hear, hear. I've worked for software companies for 18 years. In that time, I've taken 4-5 years off on sabbaticals to travel the world. Life is too short to _not_ do that, in my opinion.
- slibhb 1y ago
  > Even driving my own vehicles around the world I spend less than $20k a year 20k is higher than 90% of the global population.
  - testing22321 1y ago
    Absolutely, I’m well aware that what I’m doing is only a choice for people in the developed world. Of course if I were content with walks in the park, I’m sure $10k/year would be enough.
  - znpy 1y ago
    More people should know, think and reason about this. As soon as you reach about 34-35 k$/year you’re in the top 1%, globally. Most people thinking “the top one percent” are the problem don’t realise they are part of the one percent (and thus part of the problem)
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  So you participate, just with less hours, that's part of the economy
- pbh101 1y ago
  Cool, that’s your choice. But it also exists within the economy. Nobody demands you to play a particular part in a democratic market-based economy, but you exercising your ability to buy cars, hiking gear, airfare, tents, and cheap street food and your choices are all just as much part of the economy as the choices others are making.
roywiggins 1y ago
I would say that the main thing is that crop failures no longer reliably produce famines (outside of war zones anyway). You know how some countries are, well, poorer than others? That's what economic measures are measuring, among other things.
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skippyboxedhero 1y ago
The real gap is "the economy" vs "living standards". For example, quality adjustments for inflation stats are so bad as to make comparison over long periods meaningless (a few years ago, the ONS had to retract decades of inflation data due to poor quality adjustments...and this was for components where quality adjustments are quantifiable). One of the reasons why is because you can clearly see that life today in most rich economies has plummeted in quality. Technology has spilled over from the US but if you take away those gains, there is very little underlying improvement. Skills are collapsing, governments/companies struggle to provide basic services, disability is skyrocketing, it is a complete mess (and this is often linked to "the economy", look at Canada, look at the UK, set on paths of permanent decline for short-term political gain).
- Avicebron 1y ago
  This probably exists or maybe it's impossible to measure. But is there a widely adopted quality of life index? Or "fulfillment index"? Like if someone is commuting an hour working full time in a LCOL area and can't afford a house, that would be scored lower than if someone is working remotely for a huge salary from a various resorts around the world, which would be a higher score.
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    You don't need an index. Are the people in your country happy or not? Are they having children? Are they participating in civic society? Crime? Signs of social unrest? There is an issue with people being systemically negative but it is very obvious which countries are thriving at a high-level from aggregate behaviour. The problem is that some societies (unsurprisingly the ones that have a problem in this area) do not want confront this. So you have countries where the economy is collapsing, it is obvious to everyone...and they are getting economic policies from corporate lobbyists...to fix "the economy". I think this is getting at the spirit of the OP's point, most people who talk about "the economy" just have a very short-term, very self-interested take.
    - pbh101 1y ago
kmckiern 1y ago
> I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Reductions in extreme poverty, increases life expectancy, improved access to education and healthcare.
huijzer 1y ago
> But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Travel, entertainment, and healthcare for example.
dist-epoch 1y ago
"The economy" gave you freedom from being a hunter-gatherer.
skrebbel 1y ago
Because generally, in broad strokes, a good economy causes good everything else. If it's easy for people to get a decent job, then people lead happier lives, fewer homeless, lower crime etc. If goods are accessible and affordable, everybody goes yay. Diseases get treated, lower suicide, etc. Obviously when you zoom in it's not black and white at all, eg the US has incredible GDP but also lots of abject poverty. But even in some imaginary proto-USA where the inequality is 10x worse, if the economy shrinks, fixing that is going to be harder than when it expands. I agree with your objection that it's ridiculous to do "everything" for the economy. But wanting the economy to be healthy should be a thing everybody can get behind, from far left to center to far right, even if they violently disagree about how to take it from there. So a paper called "the economist" worrying about the economy sounds pretty sane to me.
kubb 1y ago
When common people talk about the economy doing well, they mean that it's easy to make a good living. You can get a job, a house, a car and food. Maybe you can even have leisure and a bit of luxury. When economists refer to the economy doing well, they talk about a bunch of indices being in a range they consider good. These indices are constructed in a way that is supposed to make them correlated with desirable outcomes on a large scale, but what's considered desirable is ideological and the indices themselves are often useless. When capitalists talk about the economy doing well, they mean that they're getting richer at a satisfactory rate. People are buying their products, and can afford to pay a lot for them. Their assets are appreciating. You probably guessed that these aren't the same things, but they're being conflated.
- astrange 1y ago
  The indexes usually aren't "constructed", PALFP is literally just calling people and asking them if they have a job and are between 18 and 65. There is some construction going on; seasonal adjustment is useful for the same reason you shouldn't assume the unemployment rate goes up every weekend.
  - kubb 1y ago
    GDP, CPI, PPI, PMI, CCI... Not to mention that considering full employment as the desirable state assumes a certain ideology (work is good, low unemployment pushes wages up which is good, etc.).
looping__lui 1y ago
Do you know how to grow vegetables, how to produce antibiotics, how to diagnose and treat diabetes, how to operate a farm, how to build up and run an electrical power grid, how to build a fridge, a TV, a car or a motorcycle? No? The “economy” allows you to trade something that YOU are capable of into an imaginary representation of currency which you can trade in return for things you need but are incapable of doing yourself. And it does that so well and so effectively, that mankind has achieved a quality of life unseen in human history. Children don’t randomly starve to death during a winter, your mom doesn’t just randomly die from an infection any more and we have a pretty chilled live compared to our ancestors 10 thousand years ago I believe. Yeah, I don’t know what the economy has given me in return either.
- dottjt 1y ago
  I guess the issue regarding the OP is that there needs to be some kind of balance. It's great that we have all these things, but it's at the cost of ever-increasing productivity and time. Perhaps in the modern age this trade off no longer seems fair, at least at current proportions.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    There is a balanace, the size of entertainment markets, like video games, shows that
    - dottjt 1y ago
      I would describe that more as a distraction or a cope in response to something, not as a balance. With balance you wouldn't need excessive entertainment to begin with. It'd be like saying we have cigarettes to deal with stress or mental health professions to deal with excessive expectations of society. They don't address the cause in the first place.
      - Braxton1980 1y ago
        What is the balance referring to then, what is the stress
flappyeagle 1y ago
The economy gave you your entire existence. You’re not subsistence farming, raising your own sheep, spinning your own yarn. You’re not bartering potatoes for a dowry. Seriously man get over yourself
- fleek 1y ago
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  - astrange 1y ago
    Many people do say they live paycheck to paycheck in surveys, this is true. But in the same surveys they say they have three months expenses in savings accounts. So it's pretty unclear what they think they mean by this.
    - fleek 1y ago
      They really mean "I can't save enough money to meaningfully change my lifestyle or advance my status in an amount of time I feel is reasonable." Basically they are lamenting that the American dream is dead, or a lie, and that they will always be working and never live the lifestyles portrayed by their favorite influencers. There is some truth to the idea that many people will never own as much property or live as lavishly as their parents did however.
  - HDThoreaun 1y ago
    the history of mankind is basically nothing but suffering. We are living in without a doubt the best time to ever be alive. The economy is the reason why we arent all killing each other
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alganet 1y ago
That's it, you should be an economist. It's about the people. Now complete the ritual. Take their place and bring peace and prosperity to your new empire.
phillryu 1y ago
I think this is a pretty common and growing sentiment that I've felt too. One thing that has grounded me is learning and reminding myself that capitalism has driven extreme poverty across the world to the lowest share in known human history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#:~:text=Extreme%20poverty%20is%20the%20most,%2C%20shelter%2C%20education%20and%20information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#:~:text=Extrem... I'm not sure if this on its own is enough to make up for the negatives, but it did personally restore some perspective that there is some real good to it alongside the bad. So I've personally shifted from more doomer sentiments on peak capitalism to feeling a little more hopeful. (That despite the dysfunctions of it there could still be a functional good foundation worth keeping and iterating on rather than the only solution being throwing the baby out with the bathwater.)
- samiv 1y ago
  Let's fix that right there. Capitalism is a concept, a tool to organize production in a society. It doesn't do anything by itself. And the capitalist didn't do any of those things. It was the social democracy that demanded and made capitalists around the world to share the benefits of the system to the rest of the society. For example in the Victorian era Britain the working class people were dirt poor working 16h a way 7 days a week. The capitalists didn't give anything willingly the working people had to demand these things via unions, labor movements and social democracy.
  - phillryu 1y ago
    Trying to understand what you're saying, especially with 'let's fix that right there'. Is it basically the idea that the good we've gotten out of it (like driving down extreme poverty) has required 'social democracy' as another concept or force, to bend capitalism towards something better? And that a more useful perspective is zooming out from just capitalism by itself to include that? I do feel like I still have a pretty limited understanding of how all of this fits together, so I appreciate you trying to teach me something here.
  - jokethrowaway 1y ago
    The fundamental precondition for all these changes is that capitalism massively increased the overall wealth of Britain. The market did the rest: higher wages, lower prices, new inventions improving life for everyone, increased living standards. Workers negotiating and fighting for better condition, and joining forces with other workers have nothing to do with social democracy, it's a normal market mechanism to regulate the supply and demand of workers. Where social democracy enters is with the political activism and the relative legislation, limiting working hours and banning child labor.
homefree 1y ago
> “But I can’t see what it is “the economy” has given us in return.” More wealth for more people faster than anything else in human history? Add in all the things that come along with that like reduced infant mortality, improved longevity, less violence, etc. Compare that to what anti-economy marxists deliver: a lot of ideology followed by death of millions. Markets are really good at solving problems and organizing resources efficiently - they’re not perfect and exist within political natsec concerns, can have bad incentives that lead to tragedy of the commons types of outcomes, but those can and often are mitigated when it’s in the interest of the parties to do so.
- astrange 1y ago
  Marxists definitely aren't officially anti-economy, the original idea was that communism was supposed to give you more stuff. Many of the people who call themselves that misunderstand it though and indeed are just opposed to having to produce anything.
- antifa 1y ago
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conover 1y ago
Uh, it’s given you a lot in return. It abstracts away a lot of the human condition for a lot of people. Personally, I don’t want to go back to growing food to feed myself and bartering. Most people are aligned with that point of view. Edit: In fact, it works so well, you can ask what it does for you.
intended 1y ago
The “zeroth” rule of economics. Wants are infinite, resources are limited. Everything is the economy, its just how its set up, and how it can be taken advantage of, is the problem.
Braxton1980 1y ago
>But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Food, housing, etc
marcodiego 1y ago
In Brazil the entity "the economy" is called "os mercados" meaning "the markets". It is handled by the press as a personality who has humor, wishes, preferences and power. It is actually somewhat funny or curious when you read things like "the markets didn't liked what was said and shares fell". Of course, it is clear that politics has impact on investors but, other than being able to vote, there should be no other way to influence politics in a democracy.
nout 1y ago
The economy is us. The economy is how we express our needs and "haves" at scale. In smaller settings - family, friends - you can often just communicate the needs/haves directly, but anything beyond that needs some efficient tool. Now the current system how we do banking, money, who decides, etc... that's indeed broken at the very foundation. On the flip side I can wholeheartedly recommend the Margaritaville episode of South Park! Such a beautiful satire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaritaville_(South_Park) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaritaville_(South_Park)
supportengineer 1y ago
You want health care right? How else would you get that without employment?
- alganet 1y ago
  That's it, you solved it. It's all about healthcare. Now, complete the ritual. Take their place and bring health and care to your new empire.
HEmanZ 1y ago
The economy is the abstraction for all aspects of getting people the goods and services they want and need. Literally everything you don’t produce on your own. How did you access this website if you have never received anything from the economy? “But I can’t see what is what the economy has given us in return” is such an absurd statement that the only generous interpretation is that you really didn’t think through it before posting. People rightly care a lot about the economy because they care a lot about the goods and services that they consume but don’t produce themselves. We don’t sacrifice everything to the economy, no country in the world does, but it holds extremely high priority.
colonCapitalDee 1y ago
It's given you a place to live, and groceries, and plane tickets, and magazines, and allergy medication. Modern consumers have been desensitized by abundance to the point where they are detached from physical reality. The economy is real, and damage to the economy has real consequences. Growth of per-capita GDP almost always leads to increased living standards, and shrinking per-capita almost always leads to decreased living standards. What are "decreased living standards"? It's more paying more for the conveniences of modern life like plane tickets, or restaurants, or homes with useful appliances. At the macro scale, it's having less money available for medical research and welfare. It's rising prices, without a corresponding raise in income, resulting in less to go around.
smj-edison 1y ago
I think of "the economy" as a set of emergent principles that come from many people trading goods and services. For example, the USSR had a black market, which was an economy. No matter how much regulation was put into place, an economy (though hobbled) still emerged. Economists study this emergent behavior and use economic principles to accomplish their goals (whether that's to improve the well-being of people, or to increase a company's size, they're both applying these studied principles).
- robocat 1y ago
  Our human systems are too complex for us to comprehend. So everybody's internal models of the world are often radically/tragically incorrect. And our words are necessarily poor at defining an abstract conceptual system that defies our comprehension. The definition of emergent as apples to an economy is hard to grok. And hard to communicate, even when the two communicators have a common mental model (sometimes education, sometimes acquired via social media or propoganda). You can see politicians on the receiving end of systemic forces - where it seems like the politician doesn't comprehend what is happening because their model is wrong. We then create stories about their incentives - layering unintended misdirection on top of our collective ignorance.
  - smj-edison 1y ago
    > We then create stories about their incentives Reminds me of Heinlein's razor, lol: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." On the topic of communicating complex systems, Dynamic Land[1] is explicitly working on explaining systems through interactive visualizations (among other things), you might find it interesting! It's still in the research phase, but I love that it engages as many senses as possible to help build intuition. [1] https://dynamicland.org https://dynamicland.org
    - robocat 1y ago
      dynamicland is interesting. The website looks great - definitely some motivated graphic designers (although I had a few usability issues using mobile Safari). That said, I would definitely love to visit the labs to have a play with some of the stuff they have been developing demonstrated in https://dynamicland.org/publications/ https://dynamicland.org/publications/ (Note: can't click/tap pretty tabs on right - the headings on the page are the links to click/tap)
lvl155 1y ago
I’d go one step further and say why are economists so fixated on growth and specifically production? We don’t need to constantly grow the economy.
- 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
  Growth is necessary unless you have a balanced budget. Otherwise debt will crush you.
znpy 1y ago
Some years ago (during covid? Can’t remember) i read that very often if you replace “the economy” with “rich people yatch money” many headlines suddenly make sense. And that struck with me because very often it does make way more sense that way (eg: forced RTO).
tootie 1y ago
I think it's a misnomer that The Economy is a thing we created and it flows out of the government and federal reserve or whatever. Nomad hunter gatherers of the steppe are still beholden to the laws of supply and demand the same as a real estate developer or software engineer. There are just different inputs and outputs. You can opt out of conspicuous consumption or rampant consumerism, but everything that is scarce will obey the laws of economics. Money is convenient abstraction, but food, shelter, safety, dignity, health, peace are all scarce. All are in high demand and in variable supply. Capitalism as a means of allocating scarce resources falls thoroughly into the bucket "the worst form of resource allocation except for all the other ones". If you weren't worried about GDP, inflation or the stock market, you'd be worried about something much worse. Surely we can do better if we mature as a society, but that happens very gradually.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
What has the economy given us? Among other things, computers and network cables, so you could complain about the economy to the whole world, instead of just to your neighbors.
throw0101b 1y ago
> Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy". Things like CPI are important because they underpin things like wage increases in contracts as well as government pensions. It's probably one of the most analyzed numbers that is released. And while there's always measurement error, getting things accurately—especially trends—determines planning for things like factory expansions, production runs, supply chain contracts months out. These will determine staffing and employment needs—the livelihoods of many, many people. "The economy" means employed people who have to pay rent/mortgages, groceries, etc.
UtopiaPunk 1y ago
"If genocide is good for the economy, then I am for it. If genocide is bad for the economy, then I'm against it." https://youtu.be/UOJ0zY14EbI?si=NRLz9TnH8mNfMv5m https://youtu.be/UOJ0zY14EbI?si=NRLz9TnH8mNfMv5m
kaycey2022 1y ago
Because the economy is the only thing about us that matters. It is the only thing that distinguishes us from the animals we rule over. Everything we do is in it's service (or disservice). Everything you have is because of it, and everything that is denied to you is also because of it. We aren't just modern day slaves, but biologically enslaved to it. Nothing about this is modern. It has existed every since people decided to live together and create society. To escape slavery and become absolutely "free" you need to escape society.
disambiguation 1y ago
The "economy" is just a word for how a group of people decide to allocate labor and resources. How to do this fairly and effectively is a subject of debate - whether its free markets, central planning, pillaging, piracy, or anarchy, I don't think there's any version of it where you aren't doing some kind of "work" to make sure your needs are met at the end of the day. Of course the overly complicated and abstract nature of today's economy would make anyone question if the (alleged) "value created" still corresponds to "real value", and if all this complicated stuff isn't more trouble than it's worth. Growing more food and building more houses is value that everyone understands. Keeping the bond yield curve from inverting.. not so much. Still there's no immediate alternative and no obvious fix, so we have to work with what we got.
auxbuss 1y ago
Robert Saunders, Reader in Modern British History at Queen Mary’s London, wrote an interesting thread about “the economy”. https://bsky.app/profile/robertsaunders.bsky.social/post/3lajb4m3d4c2s https://bsky.app/profile/robertsaunders.bsky.social/post/3la... He starts out by noting that the economy as an idea is very recent invention. And yet it tops the list of voters concerns. "If you had told Mr Gladstone that "the economy has grown this year", he would not have understood what those words meant." (William Gladstone was the British Prime Minister, on and off, between 1868 and 1894. He is considered to be one of the great British PMs.) "Gladstone was the most financially literate statesman of the 19th Century. But the idea of something called "the economy", which could "grow" or "shrink", did not exist." "It (THE economy) first appeared in a major manifesto in 1950 and didn't get its own section until 1955. That's also when terms like "economic growth" appeared in Parliament." “What we now call "economics" was usually termed "political economy”. "Economy" was not a technocratic exercise, but a moral and political arena." "… it subordinated a moral and political judgment (what is "good economy?") to a blunter question: how do we make "the" economy bigger? In reality, economic choices were still moral and political. But they were cast as technocratic questions about "competence" and know-how." "(and) … it turned "the economy" into a "thing", to be weighed against other, different "things": such as "the environment" or "saving lives". And it encouraged a tendency to make "growth" the goal, without asking what was growing, why and to whose benefit." I recommend reading the whole thread if you are interested to learn how we got here. And looking forward? "Recognising that our concepts are historically specific - that they have been different in the past and might be different in the future - helps us to imagine other ways of talking and thinking in the present. In an age of so many economic challenges, we surely need more of that."
xtiansimon 1y ago
Well, diverse situations summarized by the word “economy”, right? In general a good economy has opportunities, and stability. A bad economy is filled with many pitfalls, perverse outcomes, and human suffering. What’s interesting is how the effects of a bad economy divide between people who are devastated and those who weather the storm and maybe even profit—smaller and smaller groups, which is an inversion of what we want from a good economy. All common sense, no? I think you’d have a peculiar life if these things dont effect you.
- d3ms 1y ago
  The economy we have now transcends rationality. It no longer exists to serve a function like distributing goods or developing the productive forces. Instead, its particular manifestation now is treated as dogma - eternal and unchanging. We pray for shallow declines and sharp growth like peasant farmers pray for rain. Meanwhile, we, the common people, pay for holy wars against ideological enemies. Long ago we gave up on innovation in favor of rent-seeking and parasitism, like the high priests of old. The economy, namely free market capitalism, has become the new state religion in the west.
d3ms 1y ago
What you are noticing is the irrational worship of free markets by the middle and upper classes. The mantra, repeated ad nauseam by the entire American/European establishment, is that somehow private industry and free markets are inherently morally good. The Economy, or at least this particular expression of it, has replaced religion. Its high priests, like in antiquity, dictate the fates in their white marble temples.

DragonStrength 1y ago

There’s certainly a line of thinking that economics is the profession of telling the capital class what they want to hear such as austerity [1]. We can’t let capital fail because… well, ask that guy! [1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707...

lanfeust6 1y ago
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Flym1aovbkjk81.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fl...
- DragonStrength 1y ago
  Or more: what ideology says I and my heirs deserve to continue to be wealthy and in control? Funny how we’re in a Social Darwinist moment as wealth inequality rises again. But I’m sure people couldn’t possibly be working backwards to justify their position. Certainly the wealthy, who fund research, wouldn’t twist a science as pure as economics like they did the soft science biology.
  - lanfeust6 1y ago
    Meanwhile extreme poverty levels have been steadily diminishing and quality-of-life broadly improving. But you're concerned with some people having more money. That is to say, equality of outcome. No safety net would ever be enough for communist ideologues, because results and well-being don't matter. Only ideology, and punishment. There's a reason would-be socialist states have back-tracked from central control of economy and allowed competition (Lenin did this so quickly in spite of his zeal it would make your head spin). They kept the authoritarianism though. Once those tendrils get in, they're tough to get out. Only a few countries shed that in the 20th century, one of them being South Korea; places that embraced Liberalism, because they had the good fortune to have leaders with sense. Liberty qua Liberalism is good, and the checks-and-balances are meant to evolve over time. The alternatives are abject failures, and you'll propose nothing that hasn't been one.
    - DragonStrength 1y ago
      What does that have to do with whether or not economists are serving a useful role day-to-day? For instance, most economists now agree most economists were wrong about the way to respond to 2008, and the austerity measures actually caused more pain for most people. Seems like exactly the sort of recent failure which should make us question their current advice. Especially if the current advice benefits the folks paying their salary. Regardless, I stand by my derogatory comments about social Darwinists.
      - lanfeust6 1y ago
        Because yours was just a thinly veiled comment on Capitalism, dressed up as one about Economists. > the austerity measures actually caused more pain for most people You're thinking of the Great Depression, not the Great Recession. Have you looked up just how much the U.S. government spent in that time? The bailouts, etc? This was not austerity.
        DragonStrength 1y ago
        My criticism is most definitely of economics as a field and is a common topic among economists today as they reckon with their failures post-2008. Economists do not all agree on everything. I am most definitely thinking of the Great Recession which I lived through. I encourage you to research the low growth era that followed and what economists think now. You won't have to go far back because five years ago when the pandemic started there was a lot of writing about the failings of that era. In fact, the consensus seems to be we over-corrected this time, but still better than what we did in 2008. But yes, we made the investors who created the mess whole while making the American citizens eat the costs. It's a bit baffling to have something so widely written about dismissed so confidently by someone who doesn't seem to understand what we are even discussing.

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BSOhealth 1y ago

Probably not "incredibly stupid" But, "the economy" is generally just a descriptor for what people need/want, and what they're willing to do for it. A phrase like "slaves of the economy", with the implication that someone should be entitled to escape that condition, is about as ridiculous as thinking you are a "slave to nutrients" or a "slave to oxygen" or any other physical constraint. You can't escape it; you have to eat--what are you willing to do to get food? However, what I think you're probably more upset about, and what you probably should instead be phrasing it as, is economic manipulation. That is something that can legitimately be unjust. Power and information are some tools to manipulate or benefit from economic conditions to a greater extent than others, and therefore have more boats or leisure time or political positions (or food or N95 masks or jobs etc etc)

leereeves 1y ago
When someone complains about "the economy", they aren't complaining about the abstract idea of an economy, they're complaining about a particular economy (usually the one they live in). One could literally be a "slave to this economy" in a slave-based economy, or figuratively in an economy where other people own the land (for example) and force them to work.
- deleted 1y ago
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- spwa4 1y ago
  But that makes these claims of "slavery" even more absurd. Would you have to do more or less living as a subsistence farmer? Would you have better or worse quality of life? That's an easy one: no way in hell, it'd be SO much worse. Our society can only exist with extreme specialization. Hell, if we take into account that the land available couldn't even remotely support the people living on it (~2km2 per person per year), so there'd be a famine under those conditions and you'll what's being suggested as "alternative" is effectively extreme suffering followed by death for 95%+ of the population, maybe 99%+.
  - 1y ago

engineer_22 1y ago

Are you American?

Buttons840 1y ago
Are you saying focus on "the economy" is uniquely American? I do think some interesting arguments could be made to that end; I don't know enough about other countries to say.
- lysace 1y ago
  I think it's more about a common lack of understanding that there is a world outside of America that actually matters, economically speaking and that the "economy" is actually a global system.
  - engineer_22 1y ago
    Nope just a question
- engineer_22 1y ago
  It's literally a question

lysace 1y ago

> but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy" We all live in a global trading economy. This has been the case for thousands of years. We don't have a global dictatorship. This is good. Also, this is a thing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank?tab=chart&c...

ajross 1y ago

> But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Stuff. You like stuff, I like stuff. If you had more stuff of one kind you could do different stuff, good stuff, even. And the people out there doing good stuff could do even more if they had more stuff to do it with. Everywhere you look, people like stuff. People with more stuff are happier on average, every time it's measured. People with serious stuff deficits end up being the ones to start wars, even. "The Economy" is just the stuff. There's no magic here. You're imagining a villain, but it's all just stuff.

roywiggins 1y ago
It's stuff, but most importantly, food and shelter. It's the thing that builds places to live and claws calories out of the ground. When the economy grinds to a halt people start to go hungry. (People do go hungry anyway. We often do kind of a bad job feeding everyone, considering the enormous technological and logistical resources available now, but that's a historical anomaly)
rflrob 1y ago
To tag on, the economy gives us more than just physical "stuff" (though that's one of the easiest things to measure). Do you enjoy travel? How about clean water, yoga classes, or therapy? What about the ability to post a message to complete strangers over the internet? As much as we could, in theory, do all of those things without having an economy to support it, money is a shockingly good way to give you whatever it is that you value. Yes, some people have more money than they know what to do with (and, I would argue, than is good for them or us), but I've seen no reasonable suggestions that as many of us can have what we want without a reasonably open market economy. I don't think we're at a local optimum in the fine details of the rules for that economy, but I don't think moving to a whole different part of the possibility space is likely to be better than where we are now.

spacebanana7 1y ago

Political power is a function of economic strength. This is as true for individual politicians as nation states. Victorian Britain has the biggest navy in the world because it could afford the biggest. Tony Blair has the most political discretion of any modern PM largely because the economy was so strong during his tenure.

hollerith 1y ago
Another reason it had the biggest navy is that it didn't need to spend much on an army to prevent invasions because it has no land border with any other power.

dismalaf 1y ago

> Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy" "The economy" is a sum of all human activity. Not the other way around. We don't work for "the economy". "The economy" is the result of what we do. Trying to understand what we do, why we do it and how to make life better for everyone seems like a pretty good goal IMO.

testing22321 1y ago

I’ve spent decades thinking the same, and decided I don’t want to be a part of it. I work as little as possible and spend my time exploring the world, hiking, camping, eating cheap street food. Even driving my own vehicles around the world I spend less than $20k a year, so I don’t need to work much. I just don’t participate in the things I don’t want to - no phone, no tv, no new clothes, used car. I Enjoy time, not money & things.

kilroy123 1y ago
Hear, hear. I've worked for software companies for 18 years. In that time, I've taken 4-5 years off on sabbaticals to travel the world. Life is too short to _not_ do that, in my opinion.
slibhb 1y ago
> Even driving my own vehicles around the world I spend less than $20k a year 20k is higher than 90% of the global population.
- testing22321 1y ago
  Absolutely, I’m well aware that what I’m doing is only a choice for people in the developed world. Of course if I were content with walks in the park, I’m sure $10k/year would be enough.
- znpy 1y ago
  More people should know, think and reason about this. As soon as you reach about 34-35 k$/year you’re in the top 1%, globally. Most people thinking “the top one percent” are the problem don’t realise they are part of the one percent (and thus part of the problem)
Braxton1980 1y ago
So you participate, just with less hours, that's part of the economy
pbh101 1y ago
Cool, that’s your choice. But it also exists within the economy. Nobody demands you to play a particular part in a democratic market-based economy, but you exercising your ability to buy cars, hiking gear, airfare, tents, and cheap street food and your choices are all just as much part of the economy as the choices others are making.

roywiggins 1y ago

I would say that the main thing is that crop failures no longer reliably produce famines (outside of war zones anyway). You know how some countries are, well, poorer than others? That's what economic measures are measuring, among other things.

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skippyboxedhero 1y ago

The real gap is "the economy" vs "living standards". For example, quality adjustments for inflation stats are so bad as to make comparison over long periods meaningless (a few years ago, the ONS had to retract decades of inflation data due to poor quality adjustments...and this was for components where quality adjustments are quantifiable). One of the reasons why is because you can clearly see that life today in most rich economies has plummeted in quality. Technology has spilled over from the US but if you take away those gains, there is very little underlying improvement. Skills are collapsing, governments/companies struggle to provide basic services, disability is skyrocketing, it is a complete mess (and this is often linked to "the economy", look at Canada, look at the UK, set on paths of permanent decline for short-term political gain).

Avicebron 1y ago
This probably exists or maybe it's impossible to measure. But is there a widely adopted quality of life index? Or "fulfillment index"? Like if someone is commuting an hour working full time in a LCOL area and can't afford a house, that would be scored lower than if someone is working remotely for a huge salary from a various resorts around the world, which would be a higher score.
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  You don't need an index. Are the people in your country happy or not? Are they having children? Are they participating in civic society? Crime? Signs of social unrest? There is an issue with people being systemically negative but it is very obvious which countries are thriving at a high-level from aggregate behaviour. The problem is that some societies (unsurprisingly the ones that have a problem in this area) do not want confront this. So you have countries where the economy is collapsing, it is obvious to everyone...and they are getting economic policies from corporate lobbyists...to fix "the economy". I think this is getting at the spirit of the OP's point, most people who talk about "the economy" just have a very short-term, very self-interested take.
  - pbh101 1y ago

kmckiern 1y ago

> I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Reductions in extreme poverty, increases life expectancy, improved access to education and healthcare.

huijzer 1y ago

> But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Travel, entertainment, and healthcare for example.

dist-epoch 1y ago

"The economy" gave you freedom from being a hunter-gatherer.

skrebbel 1y ago

Because generally, in broad strokes, a good economy causes good everything else. If it's easy for people to get a decent job, then people lead happier lives, fewer homeless, lower crime etc. If goods are accessible and affordable, everybody goes yay. Diseases get treated, lower suicide, etc. Obviously when you zoom in it's not black and white at all, eg the US has incredible GDP but also lots of abject poverty. But even in some imaginary proto-USA where the inequality is 10x worse, if the economy shrinks, fixing that is going to be harder than when it expands. I agree with your objection that it's ridiculous to do "everything" for the economy. But wanting the economy to be healthy should be a thing everybody can get behind, from far left to center to far right, even if they violently disagree about how to take it from there. So a paper called "the economist" worrying about the economy sounds pretty sane to me.

kubb 1y ago

When common people talk about the economy doing well, they mean that it's easy to make a good living. You can get a job, a house, a car and food. Maybe you can even have leisure and a bit of luxury. When economists refer to the economy doing well, they talk about a bunch of indices being in a range they consider good. These indices are constructed in a way that is supposed to make them correlated with desirable outcomes on a large scale, but what's considered desirable is ideological and the indices themselves are often useless. When capitalists talk about the economy doing well, they mean that they're getting richer at a satisfactory rate. People are buying their products, and can afford to pay a lot for them. Their assets are appreciating. You probably guessed that these aren't the same things, but they're being conflated.

astrange 1y ago
The indexes usually aren't "constructed", PALFP is literally just calling people and asking them if they have a job and are between 18 and 65. There is some construction going on; seasonal adjustment is useful for the same reason you shouldn't assume the unemployment rate goes up every weekend.
- kubb 1y ago
  GDP, CPI, PPI, PMI, CCI... Not to mention that considering full employment as the desirable state assumes a certain ideology (work is good, low unemployment pushes wages up which is good, etc.).

looping__lui 1y ago

Do you know how to grow vegetables, how to produce antibiotics, how to diagnose and treat diabetes, how to operate a farm, how to build up and run an electrical power grid, how to build a fridge, a TV, a car or a motorcycle? No? The “economy” allows you to trade something that YOU are capable of into an imaginary representation of currency which you can trade in return for things you need but are incapable of doing yourself. And it does that so well and so effectively, that mankind has achieved a quality of life unseen in human history. Children don’t randomly starve to death during a winter, your mom doesn’t just randomly die from an infection any more and we have a pretty chilled live compared to our ancestors 10 thousand years ago I believe. Yeah, I don’t know what the economy has given me in return either.

dottjt 1y ago
I guess the issue regarding the OP is that there needs to be some kind of balance. It's great that we have all these things, but it's at the cost of ever-increasing productivity and time. Perhaps in the modern age this trade off no longer seems fair, at least at current proportions.
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  There is a balanace, the size of entertainment markets, like video games, shows that
  - dottjt 1y ago
    I would describe that more as a distraction or a cope in response to something, not as a balance. With balance you wouldn't need excessive entertainment to begin with. It'd be like saying we have cigarettes to deal with stress or mental health professions to deal with excessive expectations of society. They don't address the cause in the first place.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      What is the balance referring to then, what is the stress

flappyeagle 1y ago

The economy gave you your entire existence. You’re not subsistence farming, raising your own sheep, spinning your own yarn. You’re not bartering potatoes for a dowry. Seriously man get over yourself

fleek 1y ago
[flagged]
- astrange 1y ago
  Many people do say they live paycheck to paycheck in surveys, this is true. But in the same surveys they say they have three months expenses in savings accounts. So it's pretty unclear what they think they mean by this.
  - fleek 1y ago
    They really mean "I can't save enough money to meaningfully change my lifestyle or advance my status in an amount of time I feel is reasonable." Basically they are lamenting that the American dream is dead, or a lie, and that they will always be working and never live the lifestyles portrayed by their favorite influencers. There is some truth to the idea that many people will never own as much property or live as lavishly as their parents did however.
- HDThoreaun 1y ago
  the history of mankind is basically nothing but suffering. We are living in without a doubt the best time to ever be alive. The economy is the reason why we arent all killing each other

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alganet 1y ago

That's it, you should be an economist. It's about the people. Now complete the ritual. Take their place and bring peace and prosperity to your new empire.

phillryu 1y ago

I think this is a pretty common and growing sentiment that I've felt too. One thing that has grounded me is learning and reminding myself that capitalism has driven extreme poverty across the world to the lowest share in known human history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#:~:text=Extreme%20poverty%20is%20the%20most,%2C%20shelter%2C%20education%20and%20information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#:~:text=Extrem... I'm not sure if this on its own is enough to make up for the negatives, but it did personally restore some perspective that there is some real good to it alongside the bad. So I've personally shifted from more doomer sentiments on peak capitalism to feeling a little more hopeful. (That despite the dysfunctions of it there could still be a functional good foundation worth keeping and iterating on rather than the only solution being throwing the baby out with the bathwater.)

samiv 1y ago
Let's fix that right there. Capitalism is a concept, a tool to organize production in a society. It doesn't do anything by itself. And the capitalist didn't do any of those things. It was the social democracy that demanded and made capitalists around the world to share the benefits of the system to the rest of the society. For example in the Victorian era Britain the working class people were dirt poor working 16h a way 7 days a week. The capitalists didn't give anything willingly the working people had to demand these things via unions, labor movements and social democracy.
- phillryu 1y ago
  Trying to understand what you're saying, especially with 'let's fix that right there'. Is it basically the idea that the good we've gotten out of it (like driving down extreme poverty) has required 'social democracy' as another concept or force, to bend capitalism towards something better? And that a more useful perspective is zooming out from just capitalism by itself to include that? I do feel like I still have a pretty limited understanding of how all of this fits together, so I appreciate you trying to teach me something here.
- jokethrowaway 1y ago
  The fundamental precondition for all these changes is that capitalism massively increased the overall wealth of Britain. The market did the rest: higher wages, lower prices, new inventions improving life for everyone, increased living standards. Workers negotiating and fighting for better condition, and joining forces with other workers have nothing to do with social democracy, it's a normal market mechanism to regulate the supply and demand of workers. Where social democracy enters is with the political activism and the relative legislation, limiting working hours and banning child labor.

homefree 1y ago

> “But I can’t see what it is “the economy” has given us in return.” More wealth for more people faster than anything else in human history? Add in all the things that come along with that like reduced infant mortality, improved longevity, less violence, etc. Compare that to what anti-economy marxists deliver: a lot of ideology followed by death of millions. Markets are really good at solving problems and organizing resources efficiently - they’re not perfect and exist within political natsec concerns, can have bad incentives that lead to tragedy of the commons types of outcomes, but those can and often are mitigated when it’s in the interest of the parties to do so.

astrange 1y ago
Marxists definitely aren't officially anti-economy, the original idea was that communism was supposed to give you more stuff. Many of the people who call themselves that misunderstand it though and indeed are just opposed to having to produce anything.
antifa 1y ago
[flagged]

conover 1y ago

Uh, it’s given you a lot in return. It abstracts away a lot of the human condition for a lot of people. Personally, I don’t want to go back to growing food to feed myself and bartering. Most people are aligned with that point of view. Edit: In fact, it works so well, you can ask what it does for you.

intended 1y ago

The “zeroth” rule of economics. Wants are infinite, resources are limited. Everything is the economy, its just how its set up, and how it can be taken advantage of, is the problem.

Braxton1980 1y ago

>But I can't see what is what "the economy" has given to us in return. Food, housing, etc

marcodiego 1y ago

In Brazil the entity "the economy" is called "os mercados" meaning "the markets". It is handled by the press as a personality who has humor, wishes, preferences and power. It is actually somewhat funny or curious when you read things like "the markets didn't liked what was said and shares fell". Of course, it is clear that politics has impact on investors but, other than being able to vote, there should be no other way to influence politics in a democracy.

nout 1y ago

The economy is us. The economy is how we express our needs and "haves" at scale. In smaller settings - family, friends - you can often just communicate the needs/haves directly, but anything beyond that needs some efficient tool. Now the current system how we do banking, money, who decides, etc... that's indeed broken at the very foundation. On the flip side I can wholeheartedly recommend the Margaritaville episode of South Park! Such a beautiful satire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaritaville_(South_Park) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaritaville_(South_Park)

supportengineer 1y ago

You want health care right? How else would you get that without employment?

alganet 1y ago
That's it, you solved it. It's all about healthcare. Now, complete the ritual. Take their place and bring health and care to your new empire.

HEmanZ 1y ago

The economy is the abstraction for all aspects of getting people the goods and services they want and need. Literally everything you don’t produce on your own. How did you access this website if you have never received anything from the economy? “But I can’t see what is what the economy has given us in return” is such an absurd statement that the only generous interpretation is that you really didn’t think through it before posting. People rightly care a lot about the economy because they care a lot about the goods and services that they consume but don’t produce themselves. We don’t sacrifice everything to the economy, no country in the world does, but it holds extremely high priority.

colonCapitalDee 1y ago

It's given you a place to live, and groceries, and plane tickets, and magazines, and allergy medication. Modern consumers have been desensitized by abundance to the point where they are detached from physical reality. The economy is real, and damage to the economy has real consequences. Growth of per-capita GDP almost always leads to increased living standards, and shrinking per-capita almost always leads to decreased living standards. What are "decreased living standards"? It's more paying more for the conveniences of modern life like plane tickets, or restaurants, or homes with useful appliances. At the macro scale, it's having less money available for medical research and welfare. It's rising prices, without a corresponding raise in income, resulting in less to go around.

smj-edison 1y ago

I think of "the economy" as a set of emergent principles that come from many people trading goods and services. For example, the USSR had a black market, which was an economy. No matter how much regulation was put into place, an economy (though hobbled) still emerged. Economists study this emergent behavior and use economic principles to accomplish their goals (whether that's to improve the well-being of people, or to increase a company's size, they're both applying these studied principles).

robocat 1y ago
Our human systems are too complex for us to comprehend. So everybody's internal models of the world are often radically/tragically incorrect. And our words are necessarily poor at defining an abstract conceptual system that defies our comprehension. The definition of emergent as apples to an economy is hard to grok. And hard to communicate, even when the two communicators have a common mental model (sometimes education, sometimes acquired via social media or propoganda). You can see politicians on the receiving end of systemic forces - where it seems like the politician doesn't comprehend what is happening because their model is wrong. We then create stories about their incentives - layering unintended misdirection on top of our collective ignorance.
- smj-edison 1y ago
  > We then create stories about their incentives Reminds me of Heinlein's razor, lol: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." On the topic of communicating complex systems, Dynamic Land[1] is explicitly working on explaining systems through interactive visualizations (among other things), you might find it interesting! It's still in the research phase, but I love that it engages as many senses as possible to help build intuition. [1] https://dynamicland.org https://dynamicland.org
  - robocat 1y ago
    dynamicland is interesting. The website looks great - definitely some motivated graphic designers (although I had a few usability issues using mobile Safari). That said, I would definitely love to visit the labs to have a play with some of the stuff they have been developing demonstrated in https://dynamicland.org/publications/ https://dynamicland.org/publications/ (Note: can't click/tap pretty tabs on right - the headings on the page are the links to click/tap)

lvl155 1y ago

I’d go one step further and say why are economists so fixated on growth and specifically production? We don’t need to constantly grow the economy.

0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
Growth is necessary unless you have a balanced budget. Otherwise debt will crush you.

znpy 1y ago

Some years ago (during covid? Can’t remember) i read that very often if you replace “the economy” with “rich people yatch money” many headlines suddenly make sense. And that struck with me because very often it does make way more sense that way (eg: forced RTO).

tootie 1y ago

I think it's a misnomer that The Economy is a thing we created and it flows out of the government and federal reserve or whatever. Nomad hunter gatherers of the steppe are still beholden to the laws of supply and demand the same as a real estate developer or software engineer. There are just different inputs and outputs. You can opt out of conspicuous consumption or rampant consumerism, but everything that is scarce will obey the laws of economics. Money is convenient abstraction, but food, shelter, safety, dignity, health, peace are all scarce. All are in high demand and in variable supply. Capitalism as a means of allocating scarce resources falls thoroughly into the bucket "the worst form of resource allocation except for all the other ones". If you weren't worried about GDP, inflation or the stock market, you'd be worried about something much worse. Surely we can do better if we mature as a society, but that happens very gradually.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

What has the economy given us? Among other things, computers and network cables, so you could complain about the economy to the whole world, instead of just to your neighbors.

throw0101b 1y ago

> Maybe I'm incredibly stupid but I still can't understand why everything in our lives have to be entirely devoted to "the economy". Things like CPI are important because they underpin things like wage increases in contracts as well as government pensions. It's probably one of the most analyzed numbers that is released. And while there's always measurement error, getting things accurately—especially trends—determines planning for things like factory expansions, production runs, supply chain contracts months out. These will determine staffing and employment needs—the livelihoods of many, many people. "The economy" means employed people who have to pay rent/mortgages, groceries, etc.

UtopiaPunk 1y ago

"If genocide is good for the economy, then I am for it. If genocide is bad for the economy, then I'm against it." https://youtu.be/UOJ0zY14EbI?si=NRLz9TnH8mNfMv5m https://youtu.be/UOJ0zY14EbI?si=NRLz9TnH8mNfMv5m

kaycey2022 1y ago

Because the economy is the only thing about us that matters. It is the only thing that distinguishes us from the animals we rule over. Everything we do is in it's service (or disservice). Everything you have is because of it, and everything that is denied to you is also because of it. We aren't just modern day slaves, but biologically enslaved to it. Nothing about this is modern. It has existed every since people decided to live together and create society. To escape slavery and become absolutely "free" you need to escape society.

disambiguation 1y ago

The "economy" is just a word for how a group of people decide to allocate labor and resources. How to do this fairly and effectively is a subject of debate - whether its free markets, central planning, pillaging, piracy, or anarchy, I don't think there's any version of it where you aren't doing some kind of "work" to make sure your needs are met at the end of the day. Of course the overly complicated and abstract nature of today's economy would make anyone question if the (alleged) "value created" still corresponds to "real value", and if all this complicated stuff isn't more trouble than it's worth. Growing more food and building more houses is value that everyone understands. Keeping the bond yield curve from inverting.. not so much. Still there's no immediate alternative and no obvious fix, so we have to work with what we got.

auxbuss 1y ago

Robert Saunders, Reader in Modern British History at Queen Mary’s London, wrote an interesting thread about “the economy”. https://bsky.app/profile/robertsaunders.bsky.social/post/3lajb4m3d4c2s https://bsky.app/profile/robertsaunders.bsky.social/post/3la... He starts out by noting that the economy as an idea is very recent invention. And yet it tops the list of voters concerns. "If you had told Mr Gladstone that "the economy has grown this year", he would not have understood what those words meant." (William Gladstone was the British Prime Minister, on and off, between 1868 and 1894. He is considered to be one of the great British PMs.) "Gladstone was the most financially literate statesman of the 19th Century. But the idea of something called "the economy", which could "grow" or "shrink", did not exist." "It (THE economy) first appeared in a major manifesto in 1950 and didn't get its own section until 1955. That's also when terms like "economic growth" appeared in Parliament." “What we now call "economics" was usually termed "political economy”. "Economy" was not a technocratic exercise, but a moral and political arena." "… it subordinated a moral and political judgment (what is "good economy?") to a blunter question: how do we make "the" economy bigger? In reality, economic choices were still moral and political. But they were cast as technocratic questions about "competence" and know-how." "(and) … it turned "the economy" into a "thing", to be weighed against other, different "things": such as "the environment" or "saving lives". And it encouraged a tendency to make "growth" the goal, without asking what was growing, why and to whose benefit." I recommend reading the whole thread if you are interested to learn how we got here. And looking forward? "Recognising that our concepts are historically specific - that they have been different in the past and might be different in the future - helps us to imagine other ways of talking and thinking in the present. In an age of so many economic challenges, we surely need more of that."

xtiansimon 1y ago

Well, diverse situations summarized by the word “economy”, right? In general a good economy has opportunities, and stability. A bad economy is filled with many pitfalls, perverse outcomes, and human suffering. What’s interesting is how the effects of a bad economy divide between people who are devastated and those who weather the storm and maybe even profit—smaller and smaller groups, which is an inversion of what we want from a good economy. All common sense, no? I think you’d have a peculiar life if these things dont effect you.

d3ms 1y ago
The economy we have now transcends rationality. It no longer exists to serve a function like distributing goods or developing the productive forces. Instead, its particular manifestation now is treated as dogma - eternal and unchanging. We pray for shallow declines and sharp growth like peasant farmers pray for rain. Meanwhile, we, the common people, pay for holy wars against ideological enemies. Long ago we gave up on innovation in favor of rent-seeking and parasitism, like the high priests of old. The economy, namely free market capitalism, has become the new state religion in the west.

d3ms 1y ago

What you are noticing is the irrational worship of free markets by the middle and upper classes. The mantra, repeated ad nauseam by the entire American/European establishment, is that somehow private industry and free markets are inherently morally good. The Economy, or at least this particular expression of it, has replaced religion. Its high priests, like in antiquity, dictate the fates in their white marble temples.