Bean counting

Every time one listens to a minister or reads a news story about what the government is doing and how well, one is only stuffed with some financial numbers going in and out of the economic system. Budgetary allocation, taxes collection, GDP rate, inflation, and foreign exchange reserves are the most cited numbers used to compare one government with another and/or to make sense of future trends. Useful as they may be, they do not tell the whole story of human experience and existence and it is here one will attempt to explore the question of ‘why’.

For reducing man to ‘economic being’, Thomas Carlyle had dubbed economics as a dismal science. Many others, including John Ruskin, talked against capitalism for its dehumanising power in society even at the time when the science of economics was still in its infancy. Rapid industrialisation in Europe had forced many intellectuals to start interpreting history, religion, and other human interactions through the lens of economics. Even today, most of us believe that economics is the be-all and the end-all of all what we do and who we really are.

This worldview, which is against the essential human nature, is being promoted and sustained through different power structures including religious institutions, education system, media, and the government itself. These structures broadly reflect economic realities of the time and can hardly be radically transformed to cater for other human needs. Capitalism, being the dominant economic system in the world, has created climatic apocalypse and colossal income inequality but is still in vogue thanks to the structures that support it.

In some countries, the rulers believe that anything beyond economic prosperity (material wellbeing) is a luxury or a kind of appendix — an unnecessary tissue that can sometimes cause trouble and should better be removed. They think that individual liberty and social development should be foregone for the sake of economic progress.

Disproportionate emphasis on economic development, which is the soul of capitalist model, produces two catastrophic externalities. One is the rising income inequality between and within countries. The world is sharply divided into the island of super-rich and the ocean of super-poor. About 10% people possess 86% of the global wealth. Corporations such as Apple, Google, Alibaba, and Amazon are individually richer than some countries put together. These giant businesses have operations around the world with power to dictate countries, control individuals, and manipulate economies.

The second colossal damage that capitalism continues to do is overexploitation of natural resources on the one hand and pollution of environment on the other. Maximisation of shareholders’ wealth (euphemism for greed) is considered as the core objective of every business decision, both in theory and in practice. Curriculum of all the mainstream business schools reflects the primacy of shareholders’ interests (safety of and return on investment) vis-à-vis that of other stakeholders including employees, society, and future generations.

According to Yuval Noah Hariri, the impact of technological disruptions, the threat of nuclear wars, and climate change are the emerging challenges that no country can do about anything alone. Climate change, for example, may be beyond the concerns of ordinary people and states but it might eventually make the land uninhabitable for all species. Individuals focus on the day-to-day problems, CEOs of MNCs attend to their competitive challenges, and policymakers strive to keep the wheel of economy moving. This myopic worldview is based on a false notion of progress.

Politics, which unfortunately has been reduced to bean counting and the here and now, should have played a deeper and broader role in the world we live in today. We cannot afford to ignore sociology, psychology, and ecology for ‘it is the economy stupid’ mindset. Man does not live on bread alone. He wants a life which, according to Abraham Maslow, culminates into self-actualisation with satisfaction of all lower-level needs. Creating such an environment is the primary duty of rulers.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2021.

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