This is for me the book of the year. Tomáš Sedláček is a Czech economy professor and advisor of former Czech Republic president Václav Havel. Tomas Sedlacek unveils the underlying myths in our economy, like the necessity of growth and the unavoidable accumulation of debt in western democracies. The author first discovers 'economy' in the great myths of mankind, like the Epos of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament. It becomes clear that economy is not about the optimisation of mathematical formulas maximising economic 'utility', economy is about man and his human condition, about the eternal choice between good and evil.
This book is instructive because of the myths themselves and because of the critical view on economy as an 'exact' science. For me the most interesting parts were: the Epos of Gilgamesh itself, the lack of arbitration in the scientific community (creators and arbiters of truth are basically the same), the axis of good and evil (ranking philosophical views according to their moral view on 'utility'), and the "sabbath economics".
The author points out that Hebrew society considered the observation of the Sabbath as an obligation, not as a permission. Moreover, every seven years, the soil had to be left to rest and debt slaves were freed. Every 49 years, debts were forgiven and the land ownership changed. There was a kind of systemic reset in the economy, to release the internal pressure and to reduce the ever growing injustice in society. Is it a coincidence that we have a huge economic crisis now that we have had almost 70 years of peace in Europe, without one single organised "system reset"? It is time to organise a jubilee year for our economy !
See also my blog about generosity.
2 comments:
Dear Wim,
Sure , economy is a social science. All the mathematics and figures are there just to describe and to try and comprehend the complex processes going on. But what I see as the biggest problem and the great challenge is the power of money ! At first money was a very useful tool in the economic exchange, making things way more easy than was the case of inefficient barter . This boosted the economic exchanges and thus the global wealth. But then – and IMHO this was inevitable – the tool grew exponentially and so did his power. Money was no longer a mere tool, it came at the heart of the system. Extremely complex, fractional and with overwhelming and lesser and lesser manageable power. Because the other actors in the process, we, the people, did not match up to this evolution : our greed and fear remained as they were in, say, indeed the time of Gilgamesh ! This discrepancy is life-threatening. “Omnis comparatio claudicat”, but some similar process can be seen in tribal warfares. They always existed – and will continue to exist - but in primitive societies they were manageable and did come at a painful but still “affordable” cost of life. It all changed with the introduction of powerful firearms, while the people remained as violent and full of hate as before. But now the death toll and the human suffering has grown exponentially, beyond control !
It thus all boils down to our science and technology, monetary, military or other, running ahead of our ethics ! There is no point in reducing the former. One can only hope that the latter keeps up !
P.S. I’ll try and read the book
Paul,
Indeed, good viewpoint: morals always lagging behind actual progress. Man only learns after crisis: war, famine, stock market crash...But how unteachable can we remain? We can't afford this lagging behind in matters of e.g. ecology? We already have a pre-crisis intuitive bad feeling... Let us trust our myths and our intuition.
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