In 1930, John Maynard Keynes published a brief essay, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." In it, he predicted that due to technological advances, his grandchildren would only need to work 15 hours a week.
Keynes wrote the essay almost a century ago, a century of unprecedented economic development and growth, a century of scientific discoveries and technological innovations that revolutionized and optimized all sectors of the economy and produced enormous productivity gains.
Was Keynes' prediction wrong, as many claim? Or was Keynes right, and the productivity gains were appropriated by the plutoligarchy instead of resulting in a 15-hour workweek and a more just distribution of the wealth generated?
Could it be that we don't enjoy a 15-hour workweek because of a lack of political will?
If so, why?
The neoliberal revolution!
The neoliberal revolution is based on the deregulation of capital markets, the elimination of commercial barriers to private investment and the free movement of capital, the shrinking of the State with the privatization of public infrastructures and services, the implementation of austerity measures, and the relocation of production to underdeveloped countries.
Financial capitalism (market fundamentalism) co-opted the real economy, and the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate) became the engine of the new economy.
If productivity gains had been converted into a reduced workweek and a more equal wealth redistribution, market fundamentalist meritocrats would classify it as economic heresy.
The Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall), https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass-steagall-act, was repealed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, which fueled the 2008 crash.
The supremacy of financial capitalism means a return to feudal rentier parasitism. Industrial capitalism at least had the virtue of developing the real economy; financial capitalism is destroying it.
Mixed economies, regulated and intervened by the State with free or low-cost universal public services, were and still are the secret for economic prosperity and guarantee a more equitable distribution of the wealth created. That has been systematically destroyed by neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism distorts what the economy is and what it is for.
Keines' predictions were not wrong; he could not predict that a parasitic laissez-faire capitalism would hijack the real economy and the State.
Under the neoliberal paradigm, the fourth industrial revolution, AI and robotization, the automation of the economy, and the digitalization of society will increase inequality.
The apparent promise of a society of abundance and leisure will serve whom and for what purpose?
It will be yet another lost opportunity for humanity to implement a universal model of social and ecological economy that respects the limits of nature and allows people to lead creative and meaningful lives without having to compete for crumbs.
The current paradox combines manufactured scarcity with the obscene accumulation of wealth. If this political economy paradigm is kept, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will continue to deepen, and we will end up living in a technofascist transhumanist dystopian society.
The fourth industrial revolution will bring improvements like all previous technological revolutions. The question is: how the benefits will be distributed, and how will the risks be managed?
How to Survive the 21st Century - Davos 2020
Yuval Noah Harari on the creation of the useless class.
The success of neoliberal financial capitalism depends on the imposition of austerity, job insecurity, social inequality, deregulation of the economy, and privatization of public assets and services.
Based on this assumption, we are supposed to believe that green capitalism (including the financialization of ecosystem services) is the solution to the polycrisis created by neoliberalism!
Perhaps it would make more sense to demand a shorter workweek, a fairer distribution of wealth, the revitalization of universal basic services, and the implementation of a social and ecological political economy.
But as long as we continue to believe the stories we are told about government debt and financing, fiscal and monetary macroeconomic policies, and so on, we won't be able to understand why Keines' predictions didn't come true.
“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” -Albert Einstein.
The dominant narratives continue to propagate the TINA spell (there is no alternative), the myth of the end of history by Francis Fukuyama, and the unrealistic mathematical models designed by orthodox economists.
The Nobel Prize for Economics was not part of the original list because economics is not an exact science; economics is and will always be political economy.
The premises and variables picked by the economists to design the mathematical models are never free from ideological contamination.
How will we deal with the automation of the economy and digitization of society?
Most probably we shrug our shoulders and accept the creation of the useless class and allow the neo-Malthusians to convince us of the need to reduce the population by resorting to eugenic measures.
Overshoot is a real problem; demographic growth, over-exploitation of natural resources, excessive consumption, pollution, and waste production cannot be ignored. We need to be skeptical of the solutions presented by technocrats, (pseudo)scientists, orthodox economists, and experts aligned or bribed by the dominant elite because the collective interest and common good are not part of their agenda.
Anyone committed to maintaining the current economic-financial structure and the class pyramid is not thinking about making the world a better place for humanity or saving the planet but is focused on maintaining the status quo.
Many jobs in which we waste precious hours of our lives are useless and even harmful to society. However, as they are profitable, abolishing them would be considered a crime against capitalist entrepreneurship. By the same token, activities essential to people's well-being are discarded when they are not profitable.
The State must regain control of natural monopolies, infrastructure, basic universal services, energy, health and education, the issuance of sovereign currency, and public banking to finance the real economy for the benefit of society.
The search for profit is incompatible with the provision of basic universal services; the gains in efficiency over time are transformed into parasitic rent-seeking.
A privatized State can neither defend the public interest nor the collective good.
The private sector should be limited to productive activities in the real economy. Allowing the private sector, especially the FIRE sector, to "create" wealth based on financial speculation, compound interests, and rents exponentially increases virtual (digital) wealth disconnected from the real economy responsible for the financial bubbles.
Most of the new money entering the economy is created by banks in the form of loans. The privilege of creating and allocating money should never be controlled by private banks because their priorities and the needs of the real economy are not required to match.
Neoliberal plutocrats (the too-big-to-fail class), on the one hand, demand a limited State and, on the other, coerce the State to bail them out. Financial capitalism is a wealth-producing machine that benefits 10% of the population at the expense of the gradual degradation of the living conditions of the remaining 90%.
Addiction to convenience keeps us comfortably numb as we watch the transition to the New Brave World, in which we will be stripped of whatever is left of our humanity.
We lightly accept the passive role assigned to us while third parties decide the new societal paradigm to which we must submit.
Democratic duty does not end at the voting booth, especially in a period of transition to a new societal paradigm.
Should our role as citizens be reduced to stupidified consumers and spectators?
Technocracy is an ideological system rooted in technoscientism that intends to save humanity by resorting to technofixism while maintaining an anachronistic civilizational paradigm.
The dogmatic assumption that science and technology have the potential to solve all the problems that humanity is confronted with is nothing more than delusional hubris.
Each new techno-industrial revolution creates new layers of complexity and dependency, requires more energy and natural resources, and produces more waste and pollution. Carbon-free is not pollution-free.
Using metaphors that emphasize concepts that create mental images of a technologized, functional, and harmonious world is essential to selling us a type of transition that does not require any change in the power structure.
Let's assume we believe in the principle that planet Earth should not be used as a backyard for human civilization dominated by the supremacy of capital (Capitalocene).
In this case, we have a duty to put an end to six centuries of arrogant and organized imperialist barbarism under the pretext of bringing civilization to all corners of the globe and focusing on creating the conditions and institutions to implement a universal holistic civilization. Universal does not mean imposing a single model of society nor receiving orders from a center of power but organizing the global economy around the principles of a social and ecological political economy.
Mammon is the god most revered by civilized people; he reigns over everything that happens on this planet and dictates the fate of most existing species. Mammon has the power to remove mountains and bury consciences.
To build a holistic civilization (one that accepts the limits of human nature and respects the limits of nature), we would have to stop worshiping the god Mammon, removing him from the pedestal he occupies and the ivory towers he controls.
Mammon makes us feel entitled to the freedom and the right to consume, possess, and control without restrictions. Mannon glorifies the unlimited accumulation of wealth, property, and proprietary rights and legalizes the undemocratic concentration of power.
Any paradigm shift requires a change in assumptions.
How we frame language when formulating questions conditions the answers we arrive at.
Legacy media function as mouthpieces for the status quo to manipulate public perception to manufacture consent.
The polarization and tribalization of society obscure our ability to focus on the roots of problems, such as class consciousness and the power struggle.
Either we become aware of the need to fight for a holistic civilization based on a social and ecological political economy, or we let the powers that be pave the way for a transhumanist techno-fascist dystopia.
The clock is ticking.
