Economics remains the unnatural element of civilization.

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economics

Is there anybody here who would like to argue the opposite?

Ask Malthus.

Okey Dokey. Malthus grace me with your presence.

it is really not worth arguing anything with something that thinks itself as Nihilist of Despair.

(Oh boohoo)

( Hands out some tissue.)

Joker just checked out twenty books on the history of economics.

( Is feelin solid.)

I can’t wait until I find out if religion has had any involvement in shaping economics.

( Joker is going to take a wild guess and say that it has. )

( How shall we distinguish economics and religion?

How shall we distinguish state governments and religion?)

(How shall we distinguish social metaphysics and economics?) =D>

“Economics remains the unnatural element of civilization.”

What is so unnatural about it? It is about housekeeping and the management of resources. Without such procedures there would be no Civilization. Economics is about the replacement of consumed goods, which keep us alive and healthy. Without economic management we could not put food on the table, cloths on our back or a roof over our head. Without it we would not have the infrastructure or sustenance that supports our community.

If economics is unnatural then Civilization is unnatural. If it is unnatural, it is the excesses of it. But, then, the excesses are also as natural as Civilization itself.

Here is some interesting tid bits to start our conversation:

Economists are more like theologians than scientists.

Economists are the heirs of Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.

The role of economists is to serve as the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress that serves many of the same functions in contemporary society as earlier religions have done before them.

This secular religion is humanism.

Theologians throughout history not only explored the greater mysteries of life but also issued pronouncements on many questions of everyday social life including economic ones.

Economists operate on faith in calculating their predictions.

The secular religion of economists is the ongoing promises of a “true” path to a future salvation.

Because this path follows along a route of economic progress, and because economists are the ones- or so it is believed by many people- with the technical understanding to show the way, it falls to the members of the economics profession to assume the traditional role of the priesthood.

I suggest Thoreau’s Walden.

Today’s world science and economics have replaced religion as the most powerful of orthodoxies.

In contemporary society social science has usurped the traditional position of theology.

It is now social science that tells us what kind of creatures we are and what we are about on this planet.

It is social science that provides us images of personal behavior and legitimations of the structure that governs or commands us all as religion did in the past.

Economics beyond politics is embedded with religion and mythological narratives.

What is economics beyond religious symbology?

Economics have their own divine commandments and golden rules.

Economics have their own ritualistic ceremonies and crusading faiths.

Like the priesthoods of old, the economics profession has often become defensive, sometimes more concerned with preserving its prerogatives than the people themselves.

The striking belief of economists is the faith and hope that equilibrium will be formed by markets.

A key requirement for a market system to thrive on is a standardized set of values which collective superstition readily supplies.

Economic progress is so important because progress is seen as the path to the attainment of a new heaven on earth to a secular salvation.

If the obssession of money is as many have believed the root of all the malign passions the end of scarcity and the arrival of an era of full material abundance can mean the end of most forms of misery in the world.

Like some priests of the past some economists today are motivated in practice by the opportunity for private gain- for cushy university appointments, lucrative consulting contracts or other personal benefits.

Yet many economists have been sacrificing and continue to sacrifice monetary gain in the pursuit of religious truth in this case the truths of economic efficiency and the path of material progress.

To the extent that any system of economic ideas offers an alternative vision of the “ultimate values”, or “ultimate reality,” that actually shapes the workings of history economics is offering yet another grand prophesy in the religious tradition.

In the religious economic gospels, the existence of evil behavior under dualism in the world has reflected the severity of the competition for physical survival of the past. People often lied and cheated, murdered, and stolen, were filled with hatreds and prejudices because they were driven to this condition by the material pressures of their existence.

The state of material deprivation is the original sin of economic theology under economical observation.

What then is believed by economists is that if sin results from destructive forces brought into existence by material scarcity, a world without scarcity, a world without complete material abundance, will be a world without sin.

Money, capital and commodities then form fetishisms in this religious market affair all the while progressivists assume through faith that there exists a one true “natural science” of society whose knowledge would provide the technical basis for governing.

Economists declare themselves the keepers of the community’s material welfare.

All men are taught to be good workers as to do so makes oneself a holy religionist through faith in the religous spectacle of the economical market machine.

Idle fingers are the sign of the devil but working hands keeps the wild untamed emotions that are uncontrollable at bay like a curious religious spectacle in ritualized form.

Final distribution of income is used side by side in that which is religious morality along with the ideal distribution according to moral precepts.

( Joker will write more later on.) ( Rest assured.)

Take a look at what I got so far and then tell me your opinions.

I have more where that came from.

As I understand you Joker you are talking more ideology than economics. Or you might be confusing ideology with economics.

At its foundation economics is non ideological.

I think you mean that money and capital are the unnatural elements of civilization. Economics is just a system of organization and analysis. I don’t think that any ideological problems would be found in economics rather than its roots.

In a regular economical situation there is no unnatural element. ( I can agree with you there.)

However we don’t have a regular economy in the modern sense. We have a market value system guided by fixed ideologies.

If you take a look at ancient man you will see his economy of survival is much different compared to the modern essence of a market economy.

Oh really? Show me the difference please.

Thoreau’s Walden gets into it. I think it’s right up your alley.

I have read Thoreau. Be more specific.

[b]More reasons why I believe modern market economies are unnatural onto being fictitious insanities:

Crazy Horse- “One does not sell the land in which all living creatures walk on.”[/b]

Economies are not autonomous.

Economics are subordinated to politics, religion, and social relations.

The market mechanism created the delusion of economic determinism.

Commodity rules the market place. Commodities are empirically defined as objects produced for sale on the market; markets, are empirically defined as actual contracts between buyers and sellers.

Labor, land , and money are essential elements of industry; they also must be organized in markets; infact these markets form an absolutely vital part of the economic system but labor,land and money are obviously not commodities; To postulate that anything that is bought and sold must have been produced for sale is untrue in regard to them.

Labor is only another name for a activity of men that goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money finally is merely a token of purchasing power which as a rule is not produced at all but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or finance.

Labor and land were made into commodities, that is, they were treated as if produced for sale.

Of course they were not actually commodities since they were either not produced at all (as land) or, if so, not for sale ( as labor).

Land and labor are no other than the people themselves of which every society consists and the natural surroundings in which it exists. To include them in the market mechanism means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market.

The organization of labor is only another word for the forms of life of the common people.

The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious by that of the equally fictitious priesthood that calls itself the market.

Nevertheless, it is with the help of this fiction that the actual markets for labor, and money are organized; they are being actually bought and sold on the market; their demand and supply have become real magnitudes; and any measures or policies that would inhibit the formation of such markets would ipso facto endanger the self regulation of the system.

The commodity fiction therefore supplies a vital organizing principle in regard to the whole of society affecting almost all its institutions in the most varied way namely the principle according to which no arrangement or behavior should be allowed to exist that might prevent the actual functioning of the market mechanism on the lines of the commodity fiction.

The extreme artificiality of market economies is rooted in the fact that the process of production itself is here organized in the form of buying and selling.

No other way of organizing producion for the market is possible in a commercial society.

A market economy can exist only in a market society.