Economy Without Humanity

We are partakers in an era where professional economists have grown so prominent as to minimize all other voices.  It used to be that power was everything.  Then it was politics.  And now it’s the bewildering world of finance.  There has been a kind of universal benefit in their rise to prominence in that we have come to understand the importance of economics to our individual, national and global endeavours.  The world’s financial elite most often hold degrees in economics or business and readily apply the advice of economists in amassing their fortunes.But if economists are so smart, and if the world’s power brokers place such great trust in the science of economies and finance, how do you explain the chart above?  It’s compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) and provides a rather alarming cameo of the times in which we live.  In a number of key sectors that affect the state of every single human being - climate change, population, Gross Domestic Product, depletion of water, number of motor vehicles, and even paper consumption, to name a few - the world is approaching the brink of the great unknown.  Those associated with such statistics are clear to remind us that all the lines on this graph are interconnected and that a change in one affects all the others.Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but the change has been dramatic between 1960 and the present - a period that neatly coincides with the rise of the economists and their overpowering effect on public policies and private priorities.  If the links are indeed valid, it leaves one outstanding question in our minds: How did they get it so wrong?  Economics is supposed to be about sustainability, not just supply and demand.  But in our rush for prosperity a new kind of economic system arose that had little to do with the world where average people live.  Leaders across the board came to see economics as a formula as opposed to a human necessity for life and sustenance.  And the moment it became separated from human needs and values, it became capable of manipulation and specialization.How else to explain the current reality of so much wealth being generated globally and yet little being done in tackling the challenges listed in the WHO’s graph above?  Consider the private email sent by prominent economist Lawrence Summers when he was Chief Economist at the World Bank:  “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the less developed countries?  A given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages.”  I could go on, but it only gets worse.  This is economics-ese - a language so deeply removed from the greatest of human challenges so as to almost function solely in a test tube.Except it doesn’t, and it won’t any time soon.  It plays out on the African Serengeti just as easily as it works its way through the stock market.  It removes money from people just as surely as it separates accountability from wealth.  It acquires its holdings independent of the rate of carbon dioxide we put into the air. It guarantees extreme wealth just as it ensures abject poverty. It lifts the wealthy as fluidly as it lowers the middle class.  It can put millions of automobiles on the road - the very machinery that, through its emissions, forces families off the savannah.  It assembles exotic furniture at the same time as it erases the forests that built it.  Worst of all, it seduces the very governments that constitute the last bastion of defense for average citizens and families.This isn’t some dour forecast, but rather a call to action. The privileged and well-placed, for all their fantastic success, have abandoned the root of the very essence of economic value - the elevation of the average individual from want and danger.  One cursory look at the graph reveals that they have failed, for all their accomplishment.  It worked for a couple of centuries, but not anymore.In entering the age of decline we are also putting the possible solution one step closer to citizens.  Inevitably losing their faith in financial institutions and the governments that were meant to oversee them, Canadians and their counterparts worldwide will eventually demand both accountable political administration and equitable financial revenues.  It’s coming and only a matter of when.Keith, one of my great friends from Calgary, sent me the following quote by Paul Hawken in an email yesterday.  In its own subtle way it forms a call to arms: 

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

While the vast majority of people on this planet remain distracted in daily living, a veritable army of scientists, philanthropists, the odd courageous politician and civil servant, citizens, and people with lived experience are raising their game with each successive new worsening graph.  Through their actions there is hope, but should we join them there will be success.