Surviving the Economy

Abstract

There is a shift in economic thinking from a growth model with its constellation of competition, scarcity and deficiency, to a co-operation model that emphasizes steady-state, abundance and satisfaction. The dominant economic paradigm of corporate capitalism went from recession into meltdown on September 12, 2008, when the Cheney/Bush administration let Lehman Brothers fail. The new Obama administration is transforming the way people talk and do politics. Following both orthodox Milton Friedman monetarism and conventional Keynesian fiscal thinking, the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration are throwing trillions of dollars into the economy in an attempt to stop the bank hemorrhaging enough to create new lines of credit. If the entire economy is severely deflating, as housing foreclosures continue, driving down the value of assets of large banks, the Obama administration will have to shift to a more pragmatic analysis than traditional Keynesianism. The next economic system needs to focus on masses of people living in large cities and small towns. Components of a viable social information structure in a computer age include: using public sector employee salaries as the benchmark for private sector wages, the tax structure, and the pricing structure for housing, transportation, utilities and other necessities; adequate public light rail transportation; computa, a personal economic grid to manage an individual’s personal data, and create a confidential aggregate database for social policy analysis and evaluation; local governance via a socio-economic-environmental plan; and local decision taking based on information developed through the Viable System Model of Stafford Beer.