Corporate feudalism
Madam Editor,
For almost a decade the world has been fighting “recession” and trying to keep it a bay. Enormous amounts of money are being pumped into economies in attempt to increase consumption and investment so that “growth” and employment can be stimulated and sustained.
Sadly such Herculean attempts are making little progress because what happened was not “recession” and using such policies to avoid another catastrophe like 2008 is probably the most certain way of inducing another much more serious collapse.
The threat of employment is further exasperated by unprecedented automation and robotics which as it becomes available at significantly reducing cost, increasing replaces human effort on an enormous scale.
A new form of Corporate Feudalism is being allowed develop as concentration of power and wealth within Super Multinationals while increasing num- bers who until recently were essential participants in economic activity are abandoned to business failure, unemployment, insecurity, dependency and despair.
This is really what Brexit and Trump in the White House and increasing movement from democracy towards extremism is all about. Very disgruntled, insecure and angry people biting back.
Global response to date has been entirely directed towards increasing consumption so that “growth” can be restored in hope that production and employment can continue unabated.
This is utterly futile as productive ability has reached levels whereby even if consumption could be doubled, output would very quickly begin to oversupply such inflated market requirements.
There is constant talk of strengthening free trade and the “free market” towards achieving a solution. There is no such thing as free trade and free markets anymore. All markets and trade are enslaved by gross oversupply which instead of being restrained and managed is being encouraged and promoted by those who appear to have very little appreciation of just how much technology can achieve and produce New economic ideology is required to manage and control new technology. Output must be planned and restrained to a safe margin greater than consumption so that functional market conditions can be restored.
Commerce must adapt to secure sufficiency rather than growth while adequate employment, as the most dignified method of distributing wealth and including mass populations in the economic merry-go-round, must be generated from a reducing pool of work. Otherwise the economic and political future looks very gloomy which is a tragedy as we live in the very best economic time that ever existed.