Can We Give another Chance to an Alternative Economy?

On the one hand there's being sympathetic to people who have been displaced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, there's this belief that the over-consumption led economics that we have been forced to leave behind us by the ravaging virus, is unavoidable to prevent famine from hitting large swaths of population.

Quite the contrary! Very powerful people have it in their interest to make people believe that the most important way they help the economics to thrive is by consuming. Because consumption generates demand. And demand generates business and employment.

But this also makes millions of people hook themselves up helplessly to one monolithic system (which we so grandiosely call the global economy) and rest all their hopes and dreams on it never failing. And this starts the unending cycle of people scrambling hard to get away from the fringes of this system closer to its core. While there's no denying that this scrambling leads to high productivity and quality of output, that's not the complete picture. Please note the reason why we scramble so hard in the first place: Firstly, because we know that being in the fringes of this system is very bad for us, because it makes us vulnerable, helpless and pushes us to the brink of extinction. Secondly, because deep down there's this realisation that, by definition and design, a large majority of the population will be in the fringes, because the urgency to get out of those fringes is the basic engine that drives this system.
 
But there are certain invariants about this system:

• It can generate wealth as no other system can.
• It critically depends on creation of global super-specialists. These are the winners of this system. They are enormously rewarded with wealth and power. The overall efficiency of the system is entirely to the advantage of this very minuscule minority of the population, say R%.
• One of the most towering achievements of this system is that R keeps getting smaller and smaller.
• There simply aren't enough number of specialised jobs to employ to the entire human population. In fact, nowhere close. And there never will be.
• The rest of the population is doomed to struggle fruitlessly to find a toehold in this system. The efficiency thus generated from the insecurity of these suckers leads to efficiency and productivity.
• Whenever the system totters, not always from external forces (e.g. pandemics), but more often under its own weight (e.g. recessions, wars, terrorism, revolutions), the people at its fringes are washed away like ants. Nobody comes to know how many perished.

Therefore, the sufferings that are descending on our poorer brethren is not due to the pandemic, but is a result of the very structure that we have created. It's efficient on the one hand, and extremely fragile on the other. But most importantly, it's extremely unjust and unfair: those who drive it with their sweat and blood are the first ones to perish when crisis hits.

Alternatives do exist. But the reason why they don't get tried is not so much because they are unrealistic, unscalable, impractical or academic, but because the ones who decide the fate of so many people in the current system are also those who gain so disproportionately from this system, primarily by keeping millions -- billions -- on the brink of starvation. Why will they ever agree that anything else can work? Because no other system will allow them to appropriate such unrealistic shares of the commercial loot.

One such economic system that I have in mind would be rejected as plain regressive by most. I am no economist. So, I may not be able to articulate everything well and do I have elaborate arguments in defense of my ideas. Also, the whole idea may be trashed on the basis of the lack of clarity on how to get there from here. But anyway, it's my blog. I can at least write about it here.

Here are a few salient points of this economy:

• It will be less 'advanced'. Technological advancement will definitely be slowed down.
• It will be slower. Commercial activities will be far less. Many businesses which exist today will not exist or will be severely curtailed.
• There may be some severe penalties to pay. Many advanced healthcare facilities will no more be there. Deaths from deadly diseases etc. will be harder to prevent.
• It will be agrarian, artisan based economy. Megapolis economy will not exist.Government may play a role in ensuring that the above basic structure doesn't get compromised. In that sense, there will be similarity with socialism. But the Government will not be the owner of capital as in socialistic system.
• Population mobility will be curtailed, because the probability of doing well in life will be comparable everywhere.
• Scholarly pursuits will be done as an integral part of the agrarian, artisan sphere of life. On the one hand, education, research, art and culture should be closely associated to the needs of people. On the other, it should be kept away from becoming a recreational activity of the rich and privileged. The idea of scholarly independence must be rethought.
• The idea will never be to banish hardships and manual labour from people's lives. Focus of progress will be empowerment, not emancipation from inconvenience.

 I don't claim all the above to be realistic. Particularly, there's something about the way humans are wired that it will be (and has been multiple times in the past) very difficult to set up an economic system similar to the above. Every attempt so far has succumbed to the baser human aptitude for greed, hunger for power and domination, sexual and material insatiability born out of ignorance and suffering.

Nevertheless, some of the brightest minds and elevated souls in history (e.g. Plato, Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Buddha, E.F.Schumacher etc.) have time and again thought about something in similar lines (no covert attempt here to gatecrash into that august party). So this idea is not all that silly. It can for sure act as a reference, a prototype to work towards. I would definitely want to think and read more about it.

Fighting Oppression without Catch phrases

How silly it is to tag someone as privileged or oppressed just by their collective identity! A subset of feminists think being a man is all you need to be privileged and to have no idea how it is to be discriminated against while just being a woman automatically gives you all the knowledge about being oppressed and banter about it on social network. Similarly, being born upper caste condemns you to being identified as privileged lifelong, while having been born in a dalit family gives you all rights to consider yourself a struggler who has risen up in status against a biased society.

I think, we all are privileged and oppressed in different measures. If I am born an upper caste male, I still am born a lower middle class Asian. In my local experience, I have experienced what it is to be denied entry to desirable or aspirational positions on the basis of caste. I am not raising any flags as whether it's fair or not. But most importantly, I am a person with reasonable intellect and empathy. I can feel emotions even if I have not been subjected to their primary triggers. So, I understand it in various ways.

Take for example 'patriarchy'. Of course, there are a hundred rejoinders about what it means and what it does not. But literally it names the father. In fact, it's originally a morally neutral term meaning just a social system. However, it's now tainted with a negative shade. And it's used in a negative sense. Isn't it unfair and sexist? 'Male dominated society' is much more closer to reality, because it explicates the fact that the society has largely been dominated by males. And yes, why should that be? Feminism is another word. It claims to encompass all the work that gets done in the name of uplifting women. But it silently propagates a falsehood: that doing fair and just things has something to do with being feminine. How ridiculous and sexist is this?! Being fair and just is a human quality, not feminine. If people have forgotten this, they should be reminded of this with all the force you can muster. You don't coin a new inherently sexist term and keep throwing it around just because it's locally effective due to its shock factor.

Oppression and discrimination has existed forever. No point in denying that. Oppression has been done against gender, race, caste, religion, ethnicity, disabilities and several other collective identities. We all have taken part in such acts, knowingly or unknowingly. We all have been the victims too.

So, my point is: let's discuss social issues. Victims of social oppression can be identified to some extent by name: e.g. women, Muslims, Dalits, coloured people, Asians etc. But let's refrain from using terms corresponding to the compliment of the victim set which directly or indirectly implicate certain collective identities as the perpetrators. 

Constructive discussions and useful actions can be taken by not identifying specific collective identities. This will let open minded individuals of all identities to freely participate in the movement as long as they have their head and heart at the right place. On the other hand, you create unnecessary strife by using inflammatory terms. For example, I am all for fighting for women's right, because that's just the right thing to do. But, I don't want to fight patriarchy because I am not with the whole drama of first attaching a moral innuendo to an otherwise neutral term and then using it to indirectly implicate an entire gender.

The King of All Oppression

One collective identity which cuts across all others, and probably explains the phenomenon of social oppression the best, is economic status. If you are poor or economically dependent, you will face discrimination and oppression. Economic bounty gets you social power. And power is the key. All oppression is in some sense done for it and using it. Haven't you heard of women who treat their domestic helps cruelly? Haven't you come across a Dalit who beats his wife or a Muslim who is sociopath. Then why do we keep talking about the mere symptoms and shy away from the main disease -- the inequity in economy?

Before you immediately tag me as a socialist or communist (which are another bunch of collective identities I find ridiculous), let me deny being either. Anti-capitalist -- to some extent. All I say is indefinite freedom to earn and spend as much material wealth as one wants is a ridiculously unrealistic and unsustainable ideal. Differences in social status/power should be treated as a necessary evil (but evil all the same). Its blatant and crass display or manifestation should be something that should be frowned on, or even curbed if required. If we do agree to do that, we will encompass all social discrimination. If we continue to consider this a taboo the way we do it now, we will keep hoping to get rid of the disease by treating its symptoms.

I would even say that these social identities which are used to simplify discussions by representing concepts often turn into a weapon of imposters to hide their intellectual ineptitude and laziness. These terms also get picked up by radical factions of all movements and are used to propagate hatred against people. These terms are so susceptible to misuse that I am all for a social experiment wherein we carry out our conversations without using them at all even if that means explaining what we say at length every time.