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Our interpretation of an economy, the word and its functioning
Since we started with Sustainocracy, our core human values driven society and shared responsibility among all people and institutions, we also developed clear view about the real meaning of the word “economy”. In this article, published via Academia and Researchnet, our interpretation and working reality is detailed. A new mindset was born and helps change everything into a more harmonic and safe reality.
The story of a loaf of bread
A local bakery of a village is happily baking 100 breads every night for his 100 customers. The breads cost 1 euro a piece and the daily turnover is 100 euro. All 100 families in the village are loyal customers. It has been like this for many years and everyone is happy.
One day the wheat salesman came by to say that there is a growing shortage. The price of the key resource has to go up. The baker can still get the usual supply but the situation is critical. The salesman said that everything was done to bring the situation back to what it was before. The baker had no choice and raised the price of his bread with 10 cent. The loyal customers understood and paid the difference gladly, knowing that is was only temporary. The turnover of the bakery raised by to 110 euro per day.
The situation did not change. The wheat salesman returned to say that the prices did not only go up further, he would also have to half the supply. The baker was desperate and went to the local politicians. They promised that everything would be better if they were re-elected but meanwhile he would have to cope with the dip. The baker raised his bread price to 2 euro but could not make more than half the usual amount. He decided to sell the bread in halves. The loyal customers were furious but had little choice. They bought the half’s for 1,50 euro. The turnover of the bakery had risen to 150 euro even though he had produced only half his usual amount. The local newspaper was talking about an economy of growth and certain local business people taking good benefit.
The resource problem continued and got worse, despite the promises of the suppliers and the politicians. In the end the half’s would cost 3 euros and the baker even sold bread by the slice. His turnover went further up, his productivity down and his customers became less and less loyal. They could not afford it anymore. Newspapers report that “the market was grimm”.
One day certain wealthy local citizens decided to make the bakery the deal of a lifetime. They were fed up with the half’s and slices of bread. They wanted their entire loaf of bread every day and were willing to pay 10 euros per piece. The bakery accepted, of course. He had been tought about market working in business workshops. His turnover shot up to record sales. The baker even became entrepreneur of the year and was invited to membership of the local Rotary to discuss “common interests” among the “powerful” every week. His status had grown but in his shop many people could not buy slices anymore, not even breadcrumbs. There were people now living in poverty and hunger in the village. And they are angry…….but the economy was growing.
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Now you can think of your own happy ending of the story. What will happen?
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Moral of the story: When you hear powerful people say that the economy needs to grow and that it is going to solve all the problems, please think twice, unless you are this baker of course and you have not thought yet of a happy ending 😉
Various different economies
There are various types of economy as you may have gathered when you are a regular visitor to my blogs. We have the economies of:
- Consumption (what we use) – eg. products
- Speculation (what is difficult to get) – eg. a house
- Crisis (what we fear to loose) – eg. insurrance
- Consequences (what we have lost) – eg. healthcare
- Debt (what others expect from us) – eg. banks
- Fiscal (what is demanded from us) -eg. taxes
All these economies are related to each other and fight a battle to sustain themselves in a financial world. They all have a product to sell and populate the left hand side of the picture below (financial leadership). They all have one thing in common: they want you! They want your attention, your money, your dependence and your votes.
Most of the world is active on the financial leadership side but depends of the side of sustainable leadership.
The other side of the picture is the transformation economy, the economy of change. This is a very special type of economy. It does not want to control you nor does it compete. It just wants health, harmony and sustainable development. It is automatically activated when things go wrong on the left hand side. It requires awareness, vision and a new sense of reality.
The left hand site just wants growth. A typical tendency is that growth shows health but also sickness through the appearance of intoxicating “antivalues”. These antivalues can be detected easily as we have learned by analysing human history and the history of societies. They have to do with greed, lust, power,etc. The antivalues are normally in the hands of powerful people and institutions who take benefit at the expense of others (deadly parasites) subtracting values from society rather than adding (hence the word “antivalue”) until a crisis puts them out of business and power.
Antivalues make the world sick and in crisis.
New values can cure us from the right hand side, which is always present and active yet not always noticeable. Those values need to grow in strength through applied change. This takes time but also needs space, strength and opportunity.
We only tend to want to cure ourselves only when we are really sick. Before that we behave as if illnesses do not exist. Prevention is not a democratic strength nor recognition of the signes of sickness. For many there are powerful reasons on the left hand side to ignore, neglect and even openly dispute antivalues out of self interest, opposing change with everything they can.
We are living in unique times. Antivalues in the past only seemed to affect our human communities. Now we realise that they also destroy our environment and human health. The transformation economy emerges with all kinds of corrective causes some of which are unique to the era we live in.
We call this the era of the Global Shift (Ervin Laszlo) or Quantum Leap (Jean-Paul Close). The changes that are demanded are of a more universal nature affecting human nature everywhere. It is only becoming visible now (unique antivalues such climate change and pollution) demanding the most intense changes ever.
The transformation economy emerges everywhere through a new type of leadership, Sustainable Leadership. It becomes not only visible (such as Sustainocracy), it provides also a new field of healthy interaction where institutions and societies of the left find their new growth inspiration and renewed strength. The changes that we can anticipate will be referred to in history as one of the most significant era in human evolution. As the left gets sicker the right grows stronger until it breaks through. Then a new economic health period emerges that cleans up the left for a new era of growth. Then it starts all over again.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 