Key Points
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Over-industrialization, overproduction, and over-consumption have made our modern economy inefficient. Many resources are exploited not for people’s well-being, but to maintain the existing system.
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The current economic system is depleting the natural resources necessary for our existence, although there is no real shortage of them. Inconsiderate exploitation of natural resources contradicts the attitude of mutual guarantee (where all are guarantors of each other’s well-being), incumbent upon us due to our living in a global-integral world.
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The transition into a balanced and functional economy will expose many financial, material, and social surpluses, which will be diverted toward public benefit as a result of the transformation in our relationships and the adoption of mutual guarantee as a global socioeconomic treaty.
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In realizing the principle of mutual guarantee in society and in the economy, we will discover that the needs of the world society can be met while allowing Earth to replenish its resources and exist in comfort and harmony with humanity and Nature.
A key element in the current economic theory is lack. Among other fields of research, economists study the use of finite resources that can be replaced by others. A lack does not mean complete or near absence. It means that the world as it is today cannot fully satisfy the desires of each and every one of its inhabitants because the resources at hand are limited—whether they are metals, food, or oil.
Therefore, all resources can assume the state of lack. One of the roles of the economy is to send those resources to places and markets where they are the most efficient and in highest demand. In other words, they must be allocated and distributed efficiently.
For example, milk can be sold as milk or used to produce yogurt or ice cream. The economic question here is, “Which of the possible products will yield the greatest benefit?” This “benefit function,” coupled with the property of potential lack, creates conflict and competition that breach the harmony among people and remove them from a connection of reciprocity, care, and collaboration. This undermines the mutuality incumbent upon us in the global and connected world in which we live.
The economy expresses the relationships among us, yet it also affects them, as is evident from the lack and the egoistic profit function that create rivalry, coalitions, tensions, and conflicts. Because we are in a global economic crisis that stems from our incongruity with the connected world to which humanity has evolved, it is time to adapt our relations to interdependence to enable us to build a new economy. The variable, dependent upon the new goal function, is “maximizing” the well-being of the human society and achieving the optimal standard of living for all.