{"id":61268,"date":"2015-07-20T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61268"},"modified":"2015-07-20T12:55:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T11:55:12","slug":"soulless-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/07\/soulless-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"Soulless Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robert<\/a>Austerity, the tool of neoliberal capitalism, stands up to Greek democracy and<\/em> stares it down. Oh well.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re remarkably comfortable with soulless economics.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis, speaking this week in Paraguay, cried to the nations of Planet Earth: \u201cI ask them not to yield to an economic model . . . which needs to sacrifice human lives on the altar of money and profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

But we have yielded to this economic model, in thought, word and deed:<\/p>\n

\u201cAt issue,\u201d USA Today informs us, \u201cis whether Greece has taken adequate steps to cut spending and raise taxes to deserve the new three-year, $59 billion infusion of funds it has requested, and whether it can be trusted to follow through on the austerity program it has proposed as the price for new loans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pope\u2019s words haven\u2019t penetrated the pseudo-objective certainties of financial reporting, much less the dark sanctuaries of money and power. But they must. And eventually they will, or human evolution is dead. An allegedly impersonal economic structure, which quietly benefits the infinitesimally few who have far more than they need, is no foundation for our future.<\/p>\n

This economic system is a relic of the Industrial Age, or perhaps it\u2019s a relic of the Agricultural Revolution. It\u2019s imbued with deep prejudices \u2014 human beings can be bought and sold, the nurturing of human life (women\u2019s work) has no monetary value whatsoever \u2014 and reinforces our place outside the circle of life, separated from one another and from our deepest values.<\/p>\n

Climate change and poverty are intertwined, the pope cries out in his stunning encyclical, \u201cLaudato Si\u201d \u2014 \u201cPraised Be\u201d \u2014 which reaches well beyond traditional Catholicism in its scope and message . . . and well beyond the parsimonious morality of global capitalism. We must, he declares, \u201clook for solutions not only in technology but in a change of humanity\u201d and \u201creplace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And we cannot bring about a change in humanity without a change in our economic system, which asks for sacrifice only from those who already have next to nothing and has no language that values generosity, except the sort that flows from the poor to the rich (but then it\u2019s called \u201cinterest\u201d). The present system does not acknowledge our connectedness to one another or to the planet or in any way understand that true, lasting prosperity emerges from sharing and giving, not exploitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the campaign of bullying \u2014 the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office \u2014 was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles,\u201d Paul Krugman wrote recently in the New York Times. \u201cIt would have set a terrible precedent . . . even if the creditors were making sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s more, they weren\u2019t. The truth is that Europe\u2019s self-styled technocrats are like medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients \u2014 and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n

What God are we worshipping?<\/p>\n

In his book Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein writes: \u201cIt is hugely ironic and hugely significant that the one thing on the planet most closely resembling the forgoing conception of the divine is money. It is an invisible, immortal force that surrounds and steers all things, omnipotent and limitless, an \u2018invisible hand\u2019 that, it is said, makes the world go \u2019round.\u201d<\/p>\n

And thus Greek ATMs have no euros to dispense. \u201cWithout more help from the European Central Bank,\u201d the USA Today article continued, \u201cthe Greek banking system may soon run out of cash\u201d \u2014 implying that cash has the same sort of objective existence as oil or wheat or diamonds. That\u2019s absurd, of course. Its existence is purely symbolic: an exchange medium with a commonly agreed-upon value backed by a government or central bank.<\/p>\n

Krugman, describing the mysterious persistence of this medium, wrote that \u201cif the money doesn\u2019t start flowing from Frankfurt (the headquarters of the central bank), Greece will have no choice but to start paying wages and pensions with IOUs, which will de facto be a parallel currency \u2014 and which might soon turn into the new drachma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Money, in other words, is a function of social need. It is not an independent entity controlled solely by a financial priesthood, whose terms for its use \u2014 high interest rates, austerity, endless debt and poverty for some, endless freedom to exploit the human and environmental commons for others \u2014 are absolute.<\/p>\n

Imagine a currency that serves a humane, intelligently conceived economic system, one that has at its core an awareness that all life is sacred. Imagine this reality reflected, rather than spurned, in every financial transaction that takes place, no matter how small, no matter how large.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austerity, the tool of neoliberal capitalism, stands up to Greek democracy and stares it down. Oh well. We\u2019re remarkably comfortable with soulless economics and have yielded to this economic model in thought, word and deed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}