This Economy Is Not Human Nature
by John K. Fitzpatrick
written for Spoon Magazine, Oct. 2004

Last episode (It's Not 'The Economy', Stupid) we found that we together devise and use institutions, made up of roles and rules, so we can produce, allocate and consume stuff.  Usually talk of economics focuses on the items produced, and the money needed to allocate it, and who get's what items, and how many. They often call it "supply and demand". That IS important, and in future articles I will get back to the 'stuff'.  But now I want to delve into what is usually overlooked, which is how the rules and roles themselves are shaped by, and also shape, how we think and act, what is called our human nature.

There is no agreement about how to define and study human nature, but there are a lot of assumptions about it that get used by different economies.  Here are a few that get trotted out:
1) People deserve the outcomes of their choices.  If they choose badly, it's their own fault.
2) The more choices, the more freedom.
3) Each human has a little chunk of total freedom, called 'free will' or 'the soul' which can make these free choices.
4) People know what they're doing, people are 'rational' or 'spiritual', which makes them choose well and make themselves happy, wealthy and wise.

My point isn't that each of the above assumptions is false (though I think they are mostly false), but these are assumptions that underlie the roles and rules we play in this economy, and by playing by these rules, we become those rules.  So we have become used to thinking it is our own fault we are poor, because since we each think we are more free than we actually are, we could have made better choices than the ones we made at the moment, choices that are then used to hold us down and apart from each other.

Consider the words of David Hume, written in 1758:
"Nothing appears more surprising...than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as the most free and popular."

So the irony is that this economy which claims to offer us a belief in more freedom actually results in less freedom.  The only freedom we each attain is constructed and provided to us by each other. Not by competition, but by cooperation. We need to build a different economy which is based on this truth of, and in return enhances the best of, our human nature. Next issue, I will start to outline how this new participatory economy could work.