Economics Are Everything

The hurricane disaster has provided more proof for the title of this post. Economics are indeed everything.

What happened in New Orleans? You have a lot of poor folks. Being good capitalists, they exploited an opportunity to come up. While there were people only taking what they needed to get by, I think this was the exception to the rule. I think the rule was in fact "grab what you can, while you can". What were people taking that they did not need? Gold. Gems. Guns.

And what else? What about the people seen taking large amounts of supplies like diapers? Once again, I do not doubt that some of the people were taking diapers because they have a baby and NEEDED the things, but I would also suspect that some enterprising street business man was taking them to re-sell them later. I do not think it is a crime to take stuff you need after a disaster, but it is a crime to take more than you need with the idea you can make some money selling the stuff. The right thing to do is to take what you need, and leave the rest for someone else who also needs it.

But in this case, the right thing to do is so anti-capitalist that even Adam Smith would call you a fool. Under our system of economics, the "right" thing to do is to exploit the crap out of any opportunity that you see. After all, if you do not cash in someone else will. Our system does not care what the opportunity is, or what the circumstances are. So if the street price for a gallon of water is $5, and I bought my water for $1 - I made $4! And if I stole the water, I made $5! This is, on paper, the same thing as buying at wholesale and selling at retail. The ONLY difference is that people see buying a PDA at a lower price than I sell it for is OK, but selling water for a large markup after a disaster (when supplies are limited and demand is HUGE) is not OK.

As far as economics go, either case is OK. Supply and demand at action.

I have often said that our system is not sustainable. This is what I mean by that statement. We can not reasonably expect that a system that allows business to dictate government policy, that encourages rampant consuming, and has no theory issues with me selling diapers for $50 a box after a disaster - can possibly last forever.

And looting will ALWAYS be a problem - until views change. And views can not change, because economics drives everything.

See the problem here? Capitalism will not allow people to only take what they need. Capitalism is going to drive people to exploit ANYTHING they see for fun and profit. Capitalism is, indirectly, one of the reasons why things got so out of hand in New Orleans. Capitalism in its pure form drives people to madness and greed.

But nobody wants to talk about this fact. This blog is probably the only place you will read anything like this. Nobody wants to even think about what I have written. Nobody wants to realize that they ARE part of this problem too. Do you really need that electric can opener? I know you have one - but do you need it? How much energy is wasted daily because of those things?

Now for part two of the problem. What alternative do we have? The answer to that is none. No other economic system created in the past few hundred years has lasted. Commuism? Blah! It was never really put into place. What the Soviets had was not really what Marx wrote about. But that is not important - the Soviet system did not work. That alone is enough proof that the USSR was on an economic dead end street. And as for Marx, his ideas assume that nobody is greedy. But we all know that people tend to get greedy. Sorry Karl, but your stuff will not work either.

I have no idea what the system will evolve into. Nobody does. I only hope that the system evolves before it collapses.

Care to guess what will be next? Give it a shot right here!