Manufactured scarcity is a structural feature of capitalist economies to coerce citizens into having to sell their labor to survive.
The privatization of most services and the concession of public spaces to private exploitation is a way of limiting access, that is, of manufacturing scarcity by commodifying lucrative services that populations cannot do without.
Manufactured scarcity is the product of a class-based society with an economic system that places the pursuit of profit above any other value.
Not even the permanent fog of pro-privatization propaganda can obfuscate this reality. Whenever the free market prevents people from accessing essential services, market freedom should be called unbridled barbarism. Human dignity and respect for life are completely obliterated by arbitrary capitalist rules that generate artificial scarcity with no justification other than the profit motive.
The so-called free market is generous in freedom to manipulate, speculate and form cartels so that prices reflect the exemption guaranteed by the law of supply and demand for the capitalist class.
Artificial scarcity makes essential goods, products and services such as nutritious food, clean water, energy, mobility, housing, health and education inaccessible to those caught in the clutches of the invisible hand of the market barring access to that same market.
The same happens with austerity, inflation and taxes, instrumentalized as political weapons to reduce the real value of purchasing power generating artificial scarcity. Fabricating artificial scarcity is a form of class warfare, to limit the access to goods, products, services and spaces based on financial affordability. Essential goods, products, services and spaces that are artificially prohibited to citizens with low financial resources is a form of social terrorism.
The manufactured scarcity prevents the productivity gains added by technological innovations to production and transformation processes from being democratically distributed, because the capitalist system does not aim to satisfy people's needs, but to increase surplus earnings.
The relocation of the production of goods and products to low-wage developing countries, through free-trade zones/special economic zones agreements, was the solution found by the capitalist class to maintain and increase profits while mitigate the problem of artificial scarcity based on a fake prosperity model.
While in the so-called advanced economies, especially in the US and the UK, the financialization of the economy was gaining preponderance with the financial services industry, investment advisors, brokers, financial analysts as rising stars. The FIRE sector became the engine of economic growth and real estate speculation gave rise to the real estate bubble that burst in 2008, yet another form of manufacturing artificial scarcity by plunging millions into destitution.
The fictitious wealth generated by the speculative economy generates scarcity in the real economy and increases social inequality. Access to a basic need such as housing becomes a luxury, and instead of having a public, social and cooperative housing program, we have an increase in homelessness. The 2008 crisis was never resolved, the financial sector was never fixed, real estate speculation remains a fundamental part of the financialized economy. Austerity measures, wage restraint and inflation are political tools to manufacture scarcity imposed on citizens who find themselves unable to satisfy essential needs even when they have a permanent job.
The financialization of the economy facilitates capital accumulation in a limited group of citizens and imposes manufactured scarcity on the majority of the population to varying degrees, depriving people of the means to satisfy essential needs.
An impoverished population is a vulnerable population, ready to accept the unacceptable, such as inhumane working conditions, long hours and wages below the survival line.
From the point of view of capital, what matters is having a reserve of redundant and desperate labor that private companies can draw on by offering misery wages in exchange.
Artificial scarcity has everything to do with increased profit margins and capital accumulation and nothing to do with economic rationality. An economy that artificially deprives people to access goods, products, services and spaces we all need to live with dignity, health and well-being is a criminal economy, structured to serve the interests of the rentier class of the FIRE sector.
It seems to me that the working class and the poor in general should focus on developing a comprehensive awareness of these problems rather allowing themselves to be misled by narratives that emphasize meritocratic slogans and place the "entrepreneur" class on a pedestal, when in fact the system is a fraudulent scheme to exploit the most unwary and defenseless.
The end of manufactured scarcity involves the decommodification of goods, products, services and the access to spaces essential for the satisfaction of basic needs, dignity and minimum comfort.
The solution to artificial scarcity is not the artificial abundance of superfluous goods, products and services that contribute to the development of unsustainable consumption habits and wicked addictions.
Working to build an economically and environmentally balanced and fair society is the opposite of what the capitalist system imposes. The capitalist system developed the consumer society as a way to increase profits and promote economic growth. This strategy works in impoverished societies that cannot satisfy the basic needs of its citizenry, but when a certain level of well-being and comfort is achieved and the system must continue growing to avoid collapse, we have an aberration.
Where should we look for existential meaning on a path dedicated to the acquisition and consumption of unnecessary products, goods and services, often purchased with the money we don't have? What is the logic of this type of "experiment" with devastating effects on the environment and our physical and mental health?
Raw materials, natural resources and energy have to come from somewhere, and waste has to go somewhere. The objective of immediate and compulsive satisfaction of desires, whims through superfluous consumption habits is legitimized on the absurd logic of freedom of choice as an absolute value, while. a substantial part of the population is subject to manufactured scarcity and is prevented from having access to essential goods, products and services.
Human well-being is largely based on the quality of interpersonal relationships, family, work, leisure, whatever the social context, psycho-emotional well-being depends on how we feel treated. Many people indoctrinated to accept being seen as inferior, often the target of paternalistic comments used to disguise feelings of superiority and entitlement, take voluntary submission and the feelings of helplessness as part of who they are shutting out the need to rise up against the oppressors.
In a class society, the feeling of hierarchical superiority can be disguised or corrected, but it remains implicit subconsciousness and interferes in the way we relate to and perceive others.
Capitalism exacerbates and justifies inequality, normalizes exploitation and does not shy away from humiliating those who, according to the capitalist logic, are misfits. Capitalists preach the sermon of freedom while building walls, fences, barriers and filters of all kinds to keep the many out, resorting to the sermon of meritocracy as a moral justification. For capitalists and free-market fundamentalists, freedom is the universal right to commodify human relationships besides the rest of the web of life.
Unfair treatment, involuntary submission, implicit or explicit humiliation, feelings of impotence are chronic problems in a society that rewards inequality, exploitation, cruelty, in short, that desensitizes people, forcing them to live in a permanent state of struggle for survival, afraid of losing the petty privileges acquired.
Class-based societies are structured in such a way to make us feel contempt for lower social status, unless we take an honest approach to class prejudice from every possible angle, we do not overcome it, for all that matters is not enough claiming that we are not prejudiced when, in fact, our actions demonstrate the opposite.
Universal public services are the antidote to commodification. We are indoctrinated to believe in the fairness of the user-pays principle, which makes sense up to a point. The user-pays principle, in order to be fair, would have to start by leveling the access because socio-economic inequality works as an artificial block.
The root of the problem is in denying access through manufactured scarcity, those who cannot pay are automatically excluded. For the capitalist system, the citizens cannot pay, it is their problem, and like Pontius Pilate, washes the hands of any responsibility for the manufacture of artificial scarcity.
A society in which a huge slice of the population is unable to acquire essential goods, products and services, or access spaces privatized or granted for private exploitation that at some point in history were in the public domain, is a dysfunctional society.
Universal public services guarantee equal access to all citizens without exception and the quality of services is equal or superior at a lower cost than most services provided by the private sector.
Private operators tend to eliminate competition through the process of acquisition, merger and market manipulation. Capital accumulation is a form of political power that gives the capitalist class the capacity to manipulate, monopolize, and influence markets and governments.
Capitalism is based on the pursuit of profit and unlimited accumulation of capital, so one way or another, the capitalist class will end up controlling the state, that is obvious. Only with capital controls and income ceilings would it be possible to prevent capital from becoming a political lever.
I don't know people more delusional than those who believe that the problem is not capitalism, but the government, when it is more than evident that the accumulation of capital and proprietary rights are at the origin of the co-option of governments by special interests.
The government of any capitalist country always represents the interests of the capitalist class. The more capitalist the society is, the less capacity the government has to intervene in the economy and society, the state is controlled by the capitalist class on behalf of the capitalist class.
And when the "democratic" partnership between Capital and State is threatened by evil socialists/communists who want the government to defend the interests of the State, that is to say that the government should take care of the nation as a whole, the capitalists drop the “democratic” mask and show what they really are, fascists.
Neoliberalism is fascism with a liberal facade, the values cherished by liberal democrats do not match reality, as soon as citizens dare to question the prevailing order, the fascist fist is immediately felt.
The economic and financial interests of oligarchs and plutocrats completely distort what should be normal competition based on the law of supply and demand on which the free market should be based.
For the capitalist class, the free market means the possibility of exacerbate profit margins through speculation, proprietary rights, patents and all legal instruments that allow manipulation of the deregulated market.
Public services are designed and developed to meet the needs of the population and must be democratically controlled, this aspect has to be improved because we have centuries of a culture of submission that must be replaced by a culture of democratic participation.
In addition to being beneficiaries of universal public services, we are the rightful owners. One of the most frequent criticisms of the public sector is that employees and professionals are not scrutinized because the state is an absent abstract entity. The state is all of us, what we need to put into practice is a culture of democratic participation and responsibility for what happens in the community.
We live in an ideological-political-cultural paradigm that encourages contempt for everything that is public and free, and we lose the sense of community belonging. Community management is a serious matter, citizens have the duty to participate in decisions that affect community life.
Most decisions are imposed from the top down and the average citizen accepts as normal what is actually a form of authoritarianism. Democratic participation is fundamental to correct economic, social and environmental asymmetries, at national, regional and local levels.
The UBI and a public employment program guaranteed is the basis of a social and ecological political economy, that is, to serve the people within the boundaries of the biosphere.
The state can have different configurations, but the only form of democratic state is the state that serves the people. A classless society is not a utopia, a society without a state is a utopia. For the State to serve the people, society must have universal public services, a public employment program and the UBI to guarantee a minimum level of economic security and social justice.
All citizens should be given the opportunity to do with their lives what they think makes sense, not what others believe is best for them. We still have an educational system formatting citizens to serve a dehumanized society, in which what should be penalized is exactly what is rewarded.
A society that is based on artificial scarcity obliges most citizens to live concerned with economic and financial issues created by the capitalist system to subdue people. Many of the economic and financial concerns are artificial, that is, they are not due to the real scarcity of goods, such as housing, food, drinking water, energy, health and education services, telecommunications, public transport, etc... but due to scarcity manufactured by an unhealthy system that controls the means to dictate who has access to goods and will experience manufactured scarcity.
A society functioning on a frame of artificial scarcity and obliges most citizens to live permanently worried about economic and financial issues is a sick society. The economic and financial concerns are real, they cause suffering and anguish, but the causes are artificial, it is the way the system is set up that causes the problem, not the lack of real goods, products and services to satisfy people's needs.
Housing, food, drinking water, energy, health and education services, telecommunications, public mobility, etc... are available on the market but the rule of manufactured scarcity mandates that profit comes first, people have to experience unnecessary deprivations, because the system was not designed to serve a specific group of people, the rentier class.
A political economy that does not seek to dignify life and respect nature, centered on profit and capital accumulation, is a genocidal culture. The economic development with the aim of meeting essential needs and dignifying human existence, following the precautionary principle and bearing in mind that we are not the masters of the world, generally produces positive results while improving people's living conditions.
But the economic development based on profit and capital accumulation is a social and environmental cancer. We are indoctrinated to fall into the TINA trap, I never get tired of using this acronym, "there is no alternative" and although many perceive that the current system is insane, but only a few take the critical reflection to the point of disengagement.
Universal public services must cover health, education, housing, transport, food, energy, water and communications. The decommodification of society is the core of economic, social and environmental policy requiring democratic management along the entire chain.
Neoliberal political economy implements commodification through the financialization of the economy and nature. Neoliberalism is a form of fascism with a liberal facade, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” - Benito Mussolini.
The progressive privatization of all public services (the Commons) is not to provide either better choice or more freedom but to increase the profits for the rent seekers. A weak state is not an absent state, it is a state co-opted by capital, it is fascism.
The governments of Western countries, beacons of democracy and human rights, have been investing in new units of special police forces and militarizing the regular ones, and are introducing robotic dogs to deter and disrupt demonstrations, protests and possible riot situations.
Governments may be formally democratic, but they rule in the name of corporate interests, and this is evident in the militarization of the regular security forces. The governments of most Western countries, beacons of democracy and human rights, have been investing in new special police units, militarizing the regular ones, and are introducing robotic dogs to deter and disperse demonstrations, protests and possible riots more effectively, because demanding economic democracy and social equality is a crime against democracy. Whenever a western neoliberal politician uses the word democracy, make no mistake and get it right, he is talking about depriving you of whatever is left of your democratic rights.
Officially, it is only about having the means to repress violent protests and assure the safety of the population. No, it is about ensuring the neoliberal status quo is not overthrown. We are moving towards the closure of society and this is due to the commodification and privatization process and the unprecedented attack on social and labor rights based on the idea that less state means better state.
The issue is not more or less state, but how do governments use the state apparatus. Society does not have to be constituted by antagonistic interests, the nation is only one and the basic human needs are identical, ideological differences can be part of a constructive discussion, but the elites create and weaponize ideological-political-cultural divisions to shield special interests, and this is what happens when governments are co-opted by the oligarchy.
Universal public services are essential for a humanized democracy. Goods and services essential to the well-being and security of all citizens are not a right, they are a necessity. Health, education, housing, food, drinking water, energy, sanitation, safety and environmental quality are needs to be be met universally, with limits because resources are not unlimited.
The concept of responsible consumption involves the development of a culture centered on equity, simplicity and frugality for a society in which people can really have the opportunity to develop meaningful life projects based on respect for the dignity of life and the biosphere.
A consciousness-centered culture of developing awareness of what one is and why one is what one is, understood as a bio-sociocultural process centered on being rather than seeming.
Pretending is not being, we can choose to impress people by adopting styles that will work as a cultural label for others, but the individual bio-sociocultural identity can be completely at odds with the image that I am giving of myself, these are exercises in deception and self-deception promoted by a culture that feeds on falsehood. Capitalist society imposes manufactured scarcity on the poor to ensure that the rich can enjoy luxurious and wasteful lifestyles.
In practice, that means focusing on what's important, rather than wasting time on fait-divers and time-filling nonsense. Artificializing the way we relate to others is masking and falsifying who we really are in forms of socialization that are pure waste of time and energy.
The construction of a cultural identity by adopting pre-configured styles can function as a cultural label of how others see us, but it can say very little about our real biosociocultural identity.
A culture of self-deception and pretense as a way of adapting to a system that imposes manufactured scarcity on the poor while ensuring that the rich can squander without limits.
We are specialized in exercising deception and self-deception stimulated by a culture of make believe where pretending is key to succeed.
Capitalist society imposes manufactured scarcity on the poor to ensure that the rich can enjoy luxurious and wasteful lifestyles.
Socio-economic asymmetries must end because they do not derive from natural causes, they are the product of a model of political economy that was developed to serve the interests of the top of the social pyramid. We cannot talk about democracy without having economic, social and environmental democracy. It's relatively easy to defend the user-pays principle, because it's easy to argue about the unfairness of calling on taxpayers to fund a service they don't use. This kind of ideological stance apparently seems fair, but actually harms the most vulnerable.
Universal public service fulfills the duty of fundamental solidarity that society must have towards each and every one of its citizens. It is more than proven that societies with universal public health and education services, to mention those that have the most impact, serve citizens better and at lower costs than societies based on privatized systems.
The USA is a flagrant example of a model of a dysfunctional society that should not be followed by anyone, and yet it is publicized as being the example to follow, by the neoliberal propagandists. On average, other large, wealthy countries spend about half as much per person on health as the U.S. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202021%20(U.S.% 20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)
Housing is a basic need, as essential as health and education. Housing is a public good part of the “basket” of essential goods, products and services that must be shield from speculation.
A system in which speculation and rent-seeking excludes a substantial portion of the population from being able to enjoy decent housing due to the exorbitant value of rents is a dehumanized system, not a society.
All citizens without exception need shelter, a modest and comfortable home located in a healthy and safe environment. Social housing must be a priority in a democratic society.
A society in which most citizens look away so they don't have to question the incumbent's powers is a society in which cruelty has room to flourish.The heart of the problem is that most citizens believe in the sacredness of freedom of choice, as if the hyper-inflated prices due to speculation in the housing rental market were a symbol of freedom instead of being what it really is, the rip-off.
Freedom is only freedom if it has a beneficial practical effect on the lives of ordinary people. Freedom of choice based exclusively on economic and financial availability falsifies the idea of real freedom.
The limits of the biosphere must be included in the freedom of choice equation. Environmental awareness is essential to train reasoning with the aim of developing an integrated awareness of problems. Freedom of choice makes us believe that we have the right to satisfy whims and commit all kinds of exaggerations, while awareness of limits helps us to take a comprehensive approach that our thoughts, beliefs and actions have consequences and, therefore, it is crucial to develop forms of systemic insight. Detailed analysis only acquires its full potential when it contributes to the visualization and understanding of the big picture.
Housing is a public good to meet the needs of the population. Who should have and how should the public social housing be managed is a subject open to democratic debate with the involvement of local communities.
The objective of public social housing construction is to provide affordable housing, in order to reduce the percentage of income that families have to pay to be housed. We need modest housing that responds to standards of quality and comfort compatible with current social needs within the limits of the biosphere.
Luxury and eccentricity are largely displays of vanity and ostentation that only contribute to the increase of pollution and waste of resources. This is the type of mentality for which it is crucial to find cultural antidotes, ideological-cultural narratives that replace a vision of the world as a space to be dominated by civilization, which in practice means, expansion of Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/74-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life
Public transport must be widely available and free or very cheap. The public transport network has to be comprehensive and interconnected to serve all different types of users.
Modern agriculture is highly technological. And there's no going back unless civilization collapses. When the use of new technologies and production methods become popular and normalized, society changes and traditional technologies become museum objects. And we shouldn't be hypocrites because the reality is that modern technologies have allowed an enormous increase in productivity with an enormous decrease in human sacrifice. The problem is the expansionist mentality, the sacred cow of economic growth that cannot be contested and as a consequence, more and more territory is used to produce food and raise animals, requiring an enormous amount of natural resources and raw materials to produce all kinds of devices and tools, goods and products to build warehouses, fences, dams, canals and irrigation systems to meet the needs of the globalized market.
A globalized agricultural market, monopolized in a handful of corporations with the power to manipulate, speculate and inflate prices to increase profits. Food is produced for the global markets based on what is most profitable and strategic for a chain of interests and not with the primary objective of meeting people's basic needs.
The market for agricultural products is increasingly globalized, more and more farmers produce for export with a huge environmental impact locally and globally. Agricultural products are processed, distributed and marketed by multinational groups with the aim of increasing sales and profits.
The food market is increasingly commodified and that is easy to confirm in every regular supermarket, the offer is centered on products, not on real food. The space dedicated to fresh food is reduced when compared to the aisles with shelves filled with all kinds of processed products on display with the aim of stimulating consumption, increasing sales and profits to the detriment of the nutritional quality of the food in which we squander money.
A part of the population lives in areas known as "food deserts." And a substantial part of the population does not have the means to buy nutritious food and consequently consumes junk food because that is what market opportunism has to offer people so that they can exercise the fundamental right of freedom of choice. Capitalist society is so efficient that it manages the miracle of transforming abundance into scarcity by condemning a part of the population to live in permanent food poverty.
Agricultural production methods can be adapted to become more ecological. The problem is the economic paradigm and the financial system that runs the entire show.
A fundamental activity for humanity cannot be controlled by a handful of monopoly oligarchs, from seed production to the supermarket shelf prevails the logic of profit maximization and market monopoly, the cartel logic prevails with regard to prices.
The massification of consumption with the development of large urban centers brought enormous changes in animal production methods, for reasons of economic profitability, intensive breeding with large concentration of animals became the norm. Animals are forced to live in artificial conditions and subjected to cruel practices to increase productivity and efficiency.
In order for urban consumers to be able to purchase products of animal origin on a regular basis, animals have to be raised according to capitalist principles, exploitation for profit maximization.
Consumers buy brands, labels, packaging designed to convey an idea of countryside that has little or nothing to do with the sad and cruel reality in which millions of animals are raised and kept so that the products available in the supermarket windows maintain the appearance of food.
Many people ignore the fact that it is impossible to supply the amount of animal products we have access daily without any restrictions and at relatively affordable prices without resorting to methods that most of us consider barbaric. But that's the reality.
The consumption of animal products has to decrease and some of the production methods have to be banned. Animals, like us, are sentient beings and must be treated with respect. Most people do not agree with restrictions and rationing, because again, this means interfering with freedom of choice, but one thing is certain, we will have to choose between ceasing to treat animals as things, and taking into account that one of the causes of environmental destruction is deforestation to produce corn and soybeans to feed the animals we eat. That said, do we want to be for real or being hypocrites is good enough?
Most supermarket chains, as well as the food processing industry, are controlled by a small group of companies, both nationally and globally. Many of these companies use the services of BlackRock, Vanguard or similar companies for fiduciary and asset management. The current allocation model for food production, processing and distribution controlled by these transnational mega corporations means that a substantial part of food products travel halfway around the world before reaching our table.
The food market is saturated with processed foods, full of additives such as dyes, preservatives, flavor enhancers, and the ubiquity of plastic packaging. This model of food production, transformation and distribution requires high energy consumption and depends on intensive and extensive monoculture, as in the case of cereal production.
In intensive livestock systems, the animals are fed concentrates based on transgenic corn and soy. Even ruminant animals that should basically eat grass are fed this type of feed to be transformed into milk producing machines, instead of simply being cows, goats, etc... to meet the market needs of societies based on urban growth.
Meat and other animal products were supposed to be consumed with moderation, which was the norm, except in cases where people lived in places with an abundance of wildlife and were allowed to hunt. Raising rabbits, chickens and pigs provided most of the animal protein to families in southern Europe, which is the case I know best.
Goat and lamb meat, despite being part of the cuisine, were not as commonly used as pork. Pork meat allows you to make quality sausages and the animal can be fed with leftovers and by-products from the garden.
Most people lived in villages and raising rabbits was an excellent alternative to having plenty of quality meat. However, with the emergence of the problem of myxomatosis and hemorrhagic fever, it is almost impossible to breed rabbits successfully under normal conditions.
In any case, meat was a small part of the meal and only on Sundays and on feast days meat was used as the main ingredient. We have to take into account that an animal of a traditional breed and fed without resorting to concentrates takes at least twice as long to reach the same weight as the current genetically "improved" breeds.
The consumer has access to more quantity, with better presentation but with worse nutritional quality, and if we take into account that we consume an enormous amount of processed products, then it seems logical to me that it would be preferable to bet on a culture where the use of meat was more parsimonious but with more quality and with what seems to me to be the most important, a culture in which animals are not seen as products.
Animal well-being, like human well-being is not a fiction, if there is something in this world that is not an illusion, it is physical suffering; all forms of suffering matter, I am acutely aware that under certain circumstances they can be even more destructive. But unnecessary physical suffering that could be easily avoided, is heartbreaking and many times people, for different reasons, do not even realize that they are causing suffering that could be easily avoided, because we are guided by norms, values and beliefs that most of the time distract us from what really matters so that we don't even realize that we too could have lives with much less unnecessary suffering.
Food is a necessity, and food sovereignty should be a matter of national security for every government, with the aim of guaranteeing equity in access to basic foods. Programs and incentives that encourage local food production, family, urban, community and cooperative gardens.
All types of initiatives aimed at supplying the local market, preferably following agroecological practices, must be implemented. But, if we want to be realistic, we have to admit that some of the basic agricultural products require large extensions of territory to be produced in sufficient quantity.
The Government role is to implement policies that prevent control of the national agricultural and ecological reserves by foreign monopolies in collusion with national oligarchs.
It gives me goosebumps that people consider normal that foreign interests can control significant part of national territory through concessions, partnerships or land acquisition. Cooperation between States must, as a matter of principle, exclude foreigners from owning property, and if a regime of exceptions exists, it can never be allowed to be used as a loophole.
The disparity in income between rich and poor countries and the ease of obtaining cheap credit by so-called foreign investors allow them to gather the necessary resources to acquire valuable real estate and large agricultural properties, or to sign concessions for the exploration of minerals and raw materials.
Some of the local landowners have the opportunity to make profitable business, believing that market liberalization and the opening of the economy will contribute to economic growth. Which is true, but over time, what happens is that the local inhabitants watch helplessly the rise of property prices, inflated by real estate speculation and find out they are the main losers.
This is true for all types of property, including agricultural property. Agricultural and territory management policy must serve to correct asymmetries, not to aggravate them, nor to pressure people to move to urban centers in search of a better life.
Each community must have the option to adapt the national agricultural strategic plan to local needs. The priority is to meet the needs of the community with nutritious food and whenever possible following the principles of agroecology. Second, prevent wasting food and overproduction. The export markets need to be reformed because it is motivated by profitability not by rationality. Third, avoid waste production all along the whole process from production to consumption.
According to the free market philosophy, each one produces what he wants, how he wants, sells to whom he wants and is solely responsible, in case of success or failure. Capitalist companies resort to market studies and sign contracts with distribution networks to guarantee the flow of their products.
But although, being an organized process, the breaks along the entire chain are significant because the irrationality goes to the point of literally throwing products in the trash because they are not sold in time and according to capitalist rules, it makes more sense to dump food instead of giving it away.
For small producers, the solution involves local farmers' markets and associative collectivism, producer and consumer cooperatives with points of sale and other forms of organized distribution of food products with the aim of reducing waste as much as possible.
For me, the synonym of food sovereignty is that no one depends on charity to have access to basic foods, reducing citizens to the condition of destitution and blaming them for it is synonymous of capitalism.
Energy and water are essential goods that must be managed as public services. All goods and services essential to survival must be managed in order to satisfy the needs of the whole population. The market exists to supply customers, whether it is to satisfy basic needs, fill swimming pools, water the lawn of private golf courses, etc…
The allocation of resources to every household has to be based on the number of residents and/or of existing special needs. The provision of basic services should be free, and additional consumption must be charged progressively, but always with a maximum limit.
Financial availability cannot be a reason to allow unlimited consumption, this is a way to falsify freedom of choice, it is a way to attribute privileges to those who can pay to the detriment of the rest of the community. It is fundamental to fight against the culture of privilege and entitlement and the supposed meritocracy on which it is based, because when we analyze these myths systemically, we easily realize that they are nothing more than convenient fallacies.
Essential goods, natural resources and raw materials must be managed based on the precautionary principle as a way of respecting the limits of the biosphere. The replacement of fossil energies by the so-called renewable energies must be based on obvious benefits for the environment, taking into account the resources needed to develop and manufacture the technologies and build the necessary infrastructure.
Moderation of consumption should be the main objective, and this should not be seen as a negative thing. What we cannot collectively accept are the market solutions like the financialization of ecosystem services, because the core problem is a system that literally reduces everything to the category of commodities.
Reducing consumption requires a change in mentality, the era of unbridled consumerism has to end, we cannot continue consuming superfluous goods, products and services as if that was sustainable or even desirable way of living.
The consumerist society is not the solution to a meaningful existence. Being instead of appearing, cliché widely known but practiced by few, is the way to give meaning to life because leading an existence in a permanent state of cognitive dissonance to comply with what is expected of us only proves that we live in a dysfunctional society.
Nowadays, telecommunications and Internet access must be part of the universal public services system, individuals and families must enjoy a basic monthly package free of charge.
A universal public employment guarantee program and the universal basic income UBI are at the core of the public solidarity network for social equality. Work should not just be an occupation to receive a salary in return.
The economy has to be social and ecological, which means that the work must have social utility and include environmental responsibility and the citizen should identify himself in what he does, society as a whole must avoid demanding that citizens are forced to do something with which they disagree.
Society must give priority to individual, family, community, collective and cooperative projects in which the whole community benefits, social usefulness comes first.
The most painful, monotonous and uninteresting jobs should be performed by citizens who freely and spontaneously want to do it in exchange for an extra reward, or they should be democratically diluted across society because no one should feel obliged to do a job hated by the majority.
The foundational immorality of class society begins in the ideological-cultural plot that normalizes the obligation of citizens currently classified as undifferentiated, part of the "inferior" classes, to do painful, undesirable work considered unworthy by the "superior" classes.
The purpose of work is to be useful to society, not to keep people busy or to make a profit. As an occupation, citizens must be free to develop projects that may or may not be useful for society, but serve as the means to allow citizens, individually, in groups or as part of a community project, to developing aspects of individual existence with deeper meaning and/or to give a wider purpose to life.
For the capitalist system, nature is a reservoir of raw materials and natural resources at the disposal to the entrepreneurial class to be transformed into profit through the commodification process.
The capitalist class cannot think outside the framework of the colonizing mentality. The objective of any capitalist initiative is to gain control of land, resources, people in order to exploit whatever there is to be plundered while it is profitable and leave it to its fate when it ceases to be so.
For as long as this system exists, humanity and the biosphere will always be at risk. The capitalist system has the capacity to reinvent itself, wear new clothing, change its image and without any qualms it goes from perpetrator to savior. Everybody knows how capital easily buys the will and integrity of the vast majority of people because capitalism is an inherently corrupting, indeed if corruption did not exist, capitalism would have invented it.
It is completely delusional to believe that the capitalist system can be reformed. Socialist societies that lose democratic control of their institutions, at national, regional and local levels, sooner or later will be dominated by sociopaths who will always exist and as it frequently happens in most societies, citizens tend to wake up too late.
The capitalist system is nothing more, nothing less than a model of society controlled by sociopaths, in the same way that imperialism is a megalomaniacal worldview coming out of the minds of psychopaths.
Capitalism is first and foremost a way of using capital to accumulate more capital. Private financial investment is a way for large banks and international investment firms to control the resources and the economy of most countries through the network of Central Banks controlled by the BIS headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and by institutions such as the IMF and the Bank World.
The global financialized economy is still a western-controlled financial cartel, part of the Anglo-American economic-financial-military globalist hegemony project in the form of financial colonialism.
Over decades, the so-called third-world countries accumulated unpayable debts with the complicity of corrupt leaders. Developing countries were also victims of the same debt enslavement strategy. The ultimate objective of this globalist cartel was to dictate global governance compatible with the idea of the end of history.
A global economic-financial system backed by a global military network capable of intervening in any insurrection situation. Most countries would be reduced to perpetual financial vassalage due to the impossibility of escaping from the planetary economic-financial prison.
Global governance is a much more assertive and less onerous concept than the idea of global government. Centralized power defended by a global network of military bases, communications and intelligence services and the set of allies-vassals contributing to keep the system functioning without major problems.
This plan has less and less chance of becoming reality. The geopolitical alignment is shifting, and many leaders of countries in the so-called Global South feel more confident to show what they really think about the rules-based international order.
World War III could break out at any moment, the fuse is already lit, but it has more chances of ending in a nuclear holocaust than reversing the course of history. The civil society of the US/EU/UK/NATO and satellite countries of the US Empire is not politically-ideologically prepared to effectively oppose the neocolonialist imperialist blindness guiding the ruling elite suffering from geostrategic myopia.
One way to assess the delusional state in which most Western citizens probably live is to verify the fragility of the anti-imperialist political-ideological culture. The initiative to bury the imperialist era and face the Capitalocene should come from Western civil society in the form of an anti-imperialist ideological-cultural movement in solidarity with the rest of humanity that, in one way or another, was, and still is, a victim of Western imperialistic colonialism in order to foster a culture of prevention against future imperialist psychopathic illusions.
Humanity needs to implement international financial institutions founded on an anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist culture with the purpose to fund the development of the ecosocialist political economy.
The current economic and financial system is irredeemable. Capitalism is irredeemable, class society is irredeemable, for a very simple reason, as time goes by old habits re-emerge.
A society cannot be class-oriented and fair at the same time, and the financial system is the mainstay that cannot be neglected. The banking system provides a fundamental public service. Private banking is a rigged game designed to extract value from the real economy while convincing us otherwise and reducing us to perpetual servitude, therefore the banking system must be a public monopoly.
The State must have a monopoly on issuing currency and control the banking sector, whose main role is to finance the economy and infrastructural projects for a functioning society.
The State is the creator and the destroyer of currency, the function of taxes is to remove currency from circulation. The current monetary system of creating money through debt/credit adding the compounded interests is one of the factors for systemic inflation. Other factors that contribute to inflation: speculation in commodity markets and corporate opportunism.
Austerity, a neoliberal political tool, imposes wage containment as a way of alleviating inflationary pressure at the expense of the working class, passing on the message that wage increases are the factor/variable with the greatest impact on inflation, which can be partially true, but it is always overstated.
We are experiencing the dawn of a new geopolitical era. Multipolarism and multilateralism are going to replace or at least override Western unipolarism.
Is time for political-ideological mobilization-organization. We should take part in this historical process. The world needs participatory politics and participatory economics for a social and ecological economy, but the Western political leadership only seems interested in encouraging participatory annihilation.
The public employment guarantee policy and the UBI aim to establish a minimum level of socio-economic security. The assumption that people only work when they have an incentive is incorrect. In fact, there is a percentage of people who only work if they have to, but this happens because most people are forced to accept jobs that they hate and, in addition, are subjected to rules and working conditions, which in order to achieve productive efficiency goals , the worker is transformed into a mere appendage of the production line.
This is the technoproductivist vision of profit maximization "elevating" exploitation to the status of technocratic barbarism. In the same way that we must be against a financialized economy in which rent seeking and avarice are glorified, an egalitarian society does not reward economic and social parasitism, all citizens are obliged to make a contribution to society, we have to be useful to society so that society in reciprocity can be generous to us.
There are alternative ways for citizens to be useful to society that do not go through labor exploitation for profit. In the first place comes the production and allocation of essential goods, products and services and all citizens have to be committed to help at some point in the chain so that society can function smoothly.
In second place, comes the non-essential activities, the importance of this distinction is that society should be more flexible regarding the individual involvement in secondary activities with which people do not identify. Alternatively, individual citizens must have the opportunity to develop personal projects.
Working hours should be kept to a minimum so that less satisfied citizens are not sacrificed unnecessarily. In a participatory, social and ecological economy, all jobs, tasks, roles, functions are dignified and the most monotonous, painful, dangerous and unwanted jobs must be the best rewarded, monetarily and socially.
Universal public services guarantee people's access to goods, products and services necessary for a life with dignity. The idea that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector is a myth. The profit logic does not automatically translate into efficiency. Public services can be managed more efficiently, avoid redundancy and waste, save energy and resources.
A society in which citizens are forced to do whatever it takes to survive is an unsustainable and dehumanized society. The capitalist system resorts to manufactured scarcity to coerce citizens to compete with each other for crumbs.
The capitalist consumer society is an irrational way of producing and allocating goods, products and services. Manufactured scarcity sharpens ingenuity, but in a bad fashion because it forces people to resort to every trick and scheme to survive. We could do without many activities that produce goods and provide services that do not add anything useful to society, but people cannot give them up because in many cases is the only source of income for the family.
Capitalism is efficient at turning people into negative entrepreneurs. If the result of an economic activity has little or no use for society, it represents a waste of resources, energy and the life of someone dedicated to perform an activity without purpose. I would say that the result is doubly negative, because it could be easily avoided.
The economy is simple to explain and understand, in the first place comes the production and allocation of goods, products and services necessary to satisfy people's basic needs.
How do we do it?
A national structural plan where the rules and priorities for an ecosocialist political economy must be laid out. At the top comes food sovereignty. Products for export must not follow market criteria, first because the markets are controlled by a handful of multinational corporations that try to squeeze producers as much as possible and second, it is imperative that countries comply with an agricultural production plan in which environmental factors such as, water management, soil erosion,etc… must be part of the equation so that in the long term, countries really benefit from the export strategy for agricultural products, or others, instead of just benefiting vested interests. The importation of goods must be limited to goods that traditionally are part of the food basket, including some exotic products, but based on international agreements that comply with the principles of a social and ecological economy.
The production must be, as far as possible, organized by associations and cooperatives so that there is no redundancy of means and unnecessary investments, more resilience and greater negotiation capacity with suppliers and customers.
Agroecology must be promoted and subsidized to allow people who want to dedicate themselves to food production to have the conditions to do so. Democratic participation at the local and community level is essential so that individuals and families do not have atomized existences.
The community only exists when we feel that what is happening there concerns us, it is a question of social and cultural awareness that involves economic cooperation. The economy has to be social and ecological because only then we feel the need to be an integral part of the human community and natural environment.
The capitalist system obliges everyone to be self-centered, a society based on universal public services can focus on the common well-being, while respecting individual freedom.
Economic growth is not a necessity of the real economy, it is an imperative of the capitalist economy. Politics is the only tool we can resort to shape the society we want, and in that respect we couldn't have been more remiss, I do believe that the time has come to opt for a different attitude.
The issuance of money is an attribution of the national treasury, money is a public utility, not a commodity. The permanent barrage of propaganda praising the free-market capitalist ideology conveys false ideas about the dominant monetary and financial system.
The growth of public, private and corporate debt is directly related to the creation of money through bank credit/debt. In developed countries, the use of credit grows proportionally to the loss of purchasing power affecting the lower-middle class families. For decades, western families lived in a fictitious paradigm of prosperity, based on a growing debt.
The real economy should be protected from financialization, but the emergence of the neoliberal political project, neoliberalism is much more than an economic doctrine, it is a political, social and cultural project that was designed to be transformed into the hegemonic system of global governance controlled by the Anglo-American Empire.
The real economy has been progressively squeezed and co-opted by the financialization process. The Wall Street-City of London plutocracy, through innovative and sophisticated financial instruments, progressively shaped and hijacked the international economy while the neoliberal ideology imposed itself as the only viable solution, TINA.
This problem will have to be faced by the populations because it will not disappear by itself, and it is transmuting into techno-fascism before our eyes. We cannot have any long lasting change if we don’t abolish the existing economic-financial system.
The current economic-financial and fiscal order is committed to destroying public services and transforming society and the real economy into a techno-feudal system. The current system is irredeemable. Green capitalism is just a rebranding. The energy transition is a serious matter, as is the reduction in the consumption of superfluous products, goods and services. It is essential to resort to the precautionary principle to prepare the transition process and not to embark on hollow and dangerous promises. Green capitalism's main objective is to transform ecosystem processes and services into financial assets, infiltrating capitalism in the web of life.
Let's save civilization, humanity, nature and the planet by simply resorting to the free market capitalism playbook. Under normal circumstances, this would be the height of stupidity, but the free market capitalist salvation sermon tells us that we will be rescued from doom when we hang by a thread. The planet, the biosphere and humanity will be saved by capitalist entrepreneurship in the last minute and we will live happily ever after.
We are told that universal public services are financed by tax revenue. The increase in tax revenue depends on either GDP growth or tax increases. Therefore, universal public services depends on economic growth, that is, on the increase in production, exports and consumption, anyways that’s what is expected of a healthy capitalist economy.
The state can increase taxation of the richest to increase revenue, but beyond all the tax evasion mechanisms available to the rich, this is not the right solution.
The solution to the problem of financing universal public services or any other state project lies in the origin of the financing, who is the financier and under what conditions, and how is the money issued and by whom?
According to the dominant economic orthodoxy, private investment is essential to develop the economy and create jobs. In my opinion, a country that does not impose restrictions on the circulation of capital and guarantees special tariff conditions for foreign investment quickly becomes a colony of globalized financial capital.
Monetary sovereignty is the key to develop the national economy and maintain financial sovereignty. Public funding must be the engine of the economy invested in crucial sectors to develop a social and ecological economy. In the first place must be the production of essential products, goods and services instead of stimulating superfluous consumption habits, which in certain circumstances can become dependencies.
We need more quality and less quantity. We need a political-ideological-cultural revolution that brings us closer to nature, centered on the inherent dignity of life.
A political economy model focused on profit and capital accumulation normalizes objectification and desensitization.
A political economy based on universal public services serving the public good rather than private interests. We need to exorcise the capitalist demons that currently colonize our imagination and cloud our reason, we are not condemned to eternal TINA.
Like-minded people should be willing to come together to discuss ideas and form bonds of camaraderie and gradually develop an international movement capable of gaining political space by cooperating with the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist left parties that endure an open war in times when the so-called democratic left is aligned with NATO.
The value of money is in what we invest it on, that is, the real value of money lies in the possibility of changing lives, improving citizens' access to essential goods, products and services.
A social and ecological economy must be the aim of a humanized society. Competition for crumbs forces people to leave a trail of destruction and, due to the rules of the capitalist system, many will never have the opportunity to go beyond the threshold of survival. A system that needs to push people down while demanding voluntary submission is an abominable system.
The problem is not how to get the money, but how to muster the political will. The heart of any problem is always political-ideological-cultural. To understand reality, first it is necessary to deconstruct the dominant narratives that prevent us from connecting the dots that make possible to equate problems in order to solve them.
Decolonizing our minds is the first step towards discovering a different world waiting to be built.
