WHAT FEELS REAL

The thunderbolt that hit me during the Democratic convention, but also through the lightning rod of Jason Hickle, is that much of what we consider to be our “country” is not real.  It’s human-invented at different points of history that gradually mount up and mesh into something we think is real.  It rests on the Constitution but doesn't stay there.

Most obvious are the idea of the stock market and the idea of the gross national product.  They are about money, not resources.  America began as a bonanza of resources for a Europe that had become crowded, enabled by cerealization of France and Germany that promoted population growth, and made intercontinentally mobile by the invention of sailing ships.  By today the explosion, the expansion, of the Americas has begun to reach limits and therefore substitutes invented grounds of wealth, popularity or "know how".

The stock market pretends that people can buy bits of ownership in major corporations and therefore have the kind of access to functioning in the company as voting in an elected government.  Both have become illusions, almost to the point of everyone realizing what they had forgotten.  Here we are all over again facing riots and starving children.  The first impulse many of us have is to look for that guillotine the French used.  The second impulse is to take the second step:  if our lives are being dominated by things we made up ourselves, then we can own them and redesign them.

The next first step will have to be figuring out what are genuinely real resources and what are things that just seem so because they’ve been around a long time.  This is a bit tricky since one of our resources is not physical but is a created realm of knowledge that we call technology.  Yet this can be stolen or hidden as though it were something concrete.  

A dimension of wealth like “art” has value depending on appreciation and desire.  This is connected to the waxing and waning culture which is connected to the whole population and environment as they interact.  These forces are “felt” rather than logical, and they have much impact on what we think is real.

Locating the beginnings of an idea can be helpful.  “The New York Stock Exchange was founded 17 May 1792 when 24 stockbrokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement on Wall Street in New York City. Famously, they met beneath a Buttonwood tree and formed a centralised exchanged for the burgeoning securities market in the United States.”

Looking up things about money are almost as circular as looking up things about sex, going from one euphemism to another.  What is the “securities market?”

“Securities market is a component of the wider financial market where securities can be bought and sold between subjects of the economy, on the basis of demand and supply. Securities markets encompasses stock markets, bond markets and derivatives markets where prices can be determined and participants both professional and non professional can meet.

“Securities markets can be split into two levels: primary markets, where new securities are issued, and secondary markets where existing securities can be bought and sold. Secondary markets can further be split into organised exchanges, such as stock exchanges and over-the-counter, where individual parties come together and buy or sell securities directly. For securities holders knowing that a secondary market exists in which their securities may be sold and converted into cash increases the willingness of people to hold stocks and bonds and thus increases the ability of firms to issue securities.”

Sounds like horse racing to me.

If all the doubletalk and euphemisms are removed, the stock market and securities are basically grub stakes, or to be less colloquial, betting on an IOU in the belief that it will be fulfilled.  Some say it was a way for medieval “peasants” deprived of the land that had always sustained them to persuade their former owners to invest in them while they started the enterprises that became the backbone of the middle class: shops, practises, services.

Others note that this was the basic dynamic of the beginning shipping industry when those who were able bet on the return of the ships meant to carry valuable cargo, whether silk or indigo.  Some simply didn’t return, others brought back fortunes.

“Gross national product (GNP) is an estimate of total value of all the final products and services turned out in a given period by the means of production owned by a country's residents.”

“The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a US Congress report in 1934.  . . .After the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a country's economy.”

(I’m getting all this stuff from the Wikipedia.)

Lately there has been much criticism of the GNP, both because it includes as much death and tragedy as it does the addition of happy wealth since the totals of insurance paid out and the costs of war and reconstruction after catastrophe are included.  My mother used to say, “Heavy on the GROSS.”

But also it becomes evident that GNP has nothing to do with the contentment and high quality of life in any country, since nations with low GNP’s often express more satisfaction with their lives than those with the high GNP’s.  Thinkers are trying to devise new indicators that weigh happiness against mere wealth.  Home ownership, secure jobs, committed families, education, and the elimination of what is coming to be called “precarity,” as the opposite of “security.”  One problem with all this pleasant stuff is boredom when all the surprises are removed, so it is a balance to strike.

But the biggest argument AGAINST the GDP is the depletion of resources, which are actual and subject to the Law of Nature.  Profits from cutting all the timber are never measured against the preservation of forests in the future or even the consequences to other resources in the network of life.  Even less is it possible to see that the limits of resources mean the limits of existence.  Dying crops mean famine.  The unavailability of some drugs can mean death at the same time as the cheap availability of street drugs for emotional escape can also mean death.

The task of government is to keep the Rule of Law in line with the Law of Nature, or the governed body will die.