The economy is cancerous
Nuclear proliferation agreements were driven in part by fear of nuclear fallout caused cancer. The proliferation of tobacco smoking also met it’s demise because of cancer. People are much more afraid of cancer than a more quick death.
The other part of cancer that everyone intuitively understands is that normal measures of health — height, weight, pulse, CO2 levels don’t work for someone with cancer. Cancer has it’s own lingo — carcinogens, tumors, metastasized, late stage and this lingo is far more appropriate for our current economy than GDP, debt levels, trade balance, inflation and interest rates.
1. Cancer is usually slow and can be seen coming
It’s been well know for more than 50 years that fossil fuels were trouble. The theory and measurement of carbon dioxide causing climate change date back to 1896 and 1938 respectively.
It’s also been known for a long time that a nation that depends on non-renewable energy has what we will call an economic tumor. If you are a nation that sells fossil fuels for economic growth then the people you sell to can at any time start using alternatives. If you are a nation that uses fossil fuels for economic growth then supply can at any time dwindle.
So in this semantics war in the Ukraine isn’t something that came out of nowhere — it’s a metastasized economic tumor and fossil fuels are an economic carcinogen. Monopoly power is another economic carcinogen — it doesn’t directly destroy an economy but causes conditions that can.
Inequality is also an economic tumor and it can be measured https://realtimeinequality.org. So also for economic tumors like the cost of health care and education.
2. Cancer causes malaise
The collapse of birth rates doesn’t fit into economic models that don’t include economic cancer. Nor do worker movements like quiet quitting. But for economic cancer malaise is an expected outcome:
However, the causes of cancer-related fatigue are often harder to determine because there are often many factors involved. It might be from the cancer itself and/or a side effect of the cancer treatment.
“My biggest worry is that the world is losing hope.” says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. It’s true that depression and recession have long been in economic parlance but “losing hope” and late stage capitalism are descriptions usually associated with cancer patients.
3. Cancer can go into remission
A cancer patient can feel partially or completely healthy without necessarily being cured. The 1980s to 2007 is called in economics the great moderation. This period shaped our current understanding of what an economy is and it was dominated by the concept of “market forces”.
Somehow central banks included themselves in with “market forces” even though they are the opposite of a market. But the main idea was that there was some form of competition in goods and services that resulted in consumers getting what they wanted.
Notice that market forces and supply and demand in general are semantically incompatible with a cancerous economy. In a long period of remission the ability to even describe disease can be lost.
4. Cancer must be treated
Contrary to popular belief Steve Jobs did not actually refuse cancer treatment. However there are many forms of cancer, like the one Jobs had, where the best form of treatment is uncertain.
This is situation we now face with economic cancer. We know we have to do something but what?
Obviously step 1 is to reduce economic carcinogens like fossil fuels and monopoly power.
Step 2 is a four day work week. Once you realize just how much of our work is economically malignant the four day work week, already a good idea for workers and corporations, becomes mandatory. The fed’s idea of deliberately causing a recession is somewhat the same chemotherapy like treatment but with a lot less chance of remission.
Step 3 is nationalizing health care and education. That’s actually not as drastic as it sounds as much of the health care and education systems are already non-profit and predominantly government funded. Just that now non-profit would also mean bureaucrats would be limited in the amounts they could steal.
Nor would nationalizing cure these systems problems. What step 3 really does is prevent the profit motive for people to grow these economic tumors in forced consumption products.
But step 0 is to start describing our economy accurately. Like cancer parts of our economy have turned against us and hope will not be restored without admitting the problem.