Over the eons it has been normal for human beings to generate excess. The central means by which excess supply of food or resources was generated was by the use of teamwork, usually working together to either hunt and gather, or to violently subdue another collective group of people. Excess and profit are not the same in every case, but are very similar when looking at what we all want. Profit usually enables an individual or group to have more power to garner more resources over time.
In today’s more civilized world we see the same condition re-worked and centralized around a monetary economy. Essentially, the designers of this monetary system have created a degree of separation from the point to point contact one human being would have with another in the typical transfer of resources. This separation has had many positive and negative consequences. Most notable to me is the lack of desire to consider the cost of any and all pursuits towards profitability. When there is a human to human connection, the people on both sides of the transaction will have to negotiate and consider what the other person’s wants and needs are. However, the system, as it currently functions, only creates the face to face between the bosses, business owners, or politicians, etc… The worker is usually left out of the consideration of consequence. Their families and livelihoods are secondary, quite literally, to the bottom line, which is profit.
I believe it is the next phase of our democracy to get past this hurdle and face the fact that profit needs to have a more holistic definition. All billionaires know that their specific wealth is not only tied up in cash existing in bank accounts. It is much, much more. It is in unliquidated assets, like real estate, property, crop stores, natural resources, etc… And the common worker needs to understand this and take back the understanding that money is only one very small piece of the the pie that makes up our economy and societies at large. Without careful and right thinking of the consequences the rest of humanity and our world will pay for each of our profit based decisions, we will not prevail. It’s time to think again. It’s time to try again.
The rest of the world needs us to lead the way or get out of the way.