Enough is Enough - an Economic Paradigm Shift

It is so important for us to realise that there is no longer an economic problem. Our technological genius has gotten us to the point where we know how to produce enough for everybody with much much less labour and angst than we currently do now. The problem that drove our ancestors is no more. But we have another problem in its place. That is in an economic sense we still operate using a mindset that believes we don’t have enough. Basic logic tells us that if we operate out of an idea which is inconsistent with reality it will not work properly. You can see the results all around us. On the one hand we have the enormous over-consumption and gluttony of the west to the point of creating ecological and social disaster, while at the same time a sixth of the world’s population can’t even provide enough food for themselves. We have an abundance of riches that kings of past ages would have wanted, yet large parts of the population cannot access them because they are unemployed. Our consumer culture tells us that the way to happiness is through being able to satisfy never ending desires for more and more things. The late Michael Jackson is an example of how hollow that promise is.

So the new economic problem is how do we get out of the old problem mindset we have inherited from our ancestors and get on with the obvious and in some respects simple task (in other respects unbelievably complex task) of transforming this world into an economic garden of enoughness. Strangely in our current economic language the word enough means “only barely enough”. The implication is that it is on the borderline of poverty. I mean literally enough.

How much more obvious could it be…WE KNOW HOW TO LOOK AFTER EVERYBODY’S BASIC MATERIAL WELL-BEING WITH MUCH LESS EFFORT THAN WE USE NOW. All economic actions should flow from this understanding.