The most difficult questions are usually the simplest. The so-called experts avoid them to feed on, both literally and figuratively, obscure debates on minor subjects, forgetting to focus on the essentials, usually because it bother them.
In economics, for example, there is endless debate about the efficiency of markets, the role of competition and the importance of innovation. Since the tragic failure of centralized economies, a lot of time has been spent, a lot of books have been written and a lot of prizes have been awarded (including a fake Nobel Prize in economics, financed by banks) to explain why markets are the best way to allocate scarce goods, and that all we need to do to achieve the ideal distribution is to remove all obstacles to competition.
Even if it is true that rents always lead to a disastrous allocation of resources to the detriment of the weakest, and that the public distribution of private goods is inefficient, the fact remains that the distribution of public goods can be neither fair nor efficient if it is decided in an authoritarian way by a clan, private or public, as it is still the case in many societies; especially when corruption is added.
This has led to the idea that the two best mechanisms for distributing resources are the market for private goods, and democracy for public goods.
Of course, it is far from being that simple. There are a thousand intermediate categories of goods, a thousand forms of market, and as many forms of democracy. There are a thousand influences of the market on politics, and of politics on the market. Some deduce that capitalism controls politics (and this is not far from being the case, at least in the United States). Others deduce that, on the contrary, politics and government impose rules and burdens that paralyze markets (and there is some truth in this assertion too).
In all cases, a particularly difficult question is generally overlooked: why doesn’t the market lead to companies producing what is most useful to consumers, as it should? Why are the companies that make the most profit, and thus attract the most capital and make the most investments, the companies of the death economy, producing and using fossil fuels, artificial sugars and drugs, in every possible form? And not those producing healthy food, pure water, renewable energies, education, health and culture? Some of the goods and services of the life economy are public, and should remain so. Those that are not should be developed further.
And, consequently, why aren’t the richest people in the world those who produce the goods most useful to people’s happiness and humanity’s survival?
I will be told: “Who are you to decide what’s useful for people’s happiness and humanity’s survival? If people are happy spending their money as they see fit, why does that bother you?”. I will answer: “It bothers me because that money could be better spent on what would allow humanity to survive”. Today’s consumers are quick to see the benefits, however fleeting, of the products of the economy of death, which are killing them and ruining the planet’s future; and slow to see the advantages of the economy of life, which also ensures the survival of future generations. And producers profit from this: they produce what creates the most immediate profit. How can you blame them? It is the condition of their survival.
This is precisely the main role of politics: to introduce long-term requirements into market behavior, either by educating consumers, encouraging producers or constraining both.
So far, they have failed to do this properly. And it is getting worse. Politicians don’t know, don’t dare, and don’t want to steer companies towards the life economy; nor do they know how to make life economy sectors profitable. And when it does, it is criticized for allowing private companies to make a profit on public goods.
It is a contradiction in terms. I dream of the time when regulations, taxes and subsidies will make it absurd to search for and exploit oil, and to produce the poisons of the agri-food industry. And when no one will complain about private companies making profits with products and services useful to future generations.
j@attali.com
Image: The Moneylender and His Wife, Quentin Metsys, 1514.