A Financial "Religion" - "Economism" Dominates the Earth at Great Price

The Church of Economism and Its Discontents

Richard Norgaard, "The Church of Economism and Its Discontents," Great Transition Initiative (December 2015), http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents. - See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.8PVAReS0.dpuf

Two centuries of explosive economic growth have radically altered our material and ideological worlds. With human activity now the major driver of geological change, the industrial era has come to be called the Anthropocene. This inquiry instead adopts the term Econocene, underscoring its ideological foundation: economism. The concept of economism, the reduction of all social relations to market logic, often appears in critiques of political movements and neoliberal economics. Our concern here is with economism as a widely held system of faith. This modern “religion” is essential for the maintenance of the global market economy, for justifying personal decisions, and for explaining and rationalizing the cosmos we have created...
"The economy, in other words, really is
​the world’s greatest faith-based organization."
​This uncritical economic creed has colonized other disciplines, including ecology, as ecologists increasingly rely on economistic logic to rationalize the protection of ecosystems. More broadly, economism often works syncretically with the world’s religions even though it violates so many of their basic tenets. A Great Transition is needed to replace economism with an equally powerful and pervasive belief system that embraces the values of solidarity, sustainability, and well-being for all...
Econocene is a fitting term for this new era because it makes us think about the expanding market economy, the ideological system that supports it, and its impact on society and the environment. Reflecting on environmental boundaries led ecological economist Herman Daly to propose limits on material throughput. Environmental economists propose taxes on greenhouse gas emissions and the creation of markets to resolve environmental conflicts. While acknowledging the importance of making markets work within the limits of nature and for the common good, I will explore how this new dominance of economic thinking, which I will call economism, has reshaped the diverse cultures of the world and come to function as a modern secular religion.
2 - See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.8PVAReS0.dpuf

An advantage of the term Econocene is that it evokes the everyday cosmos of modern people. Artifacts of the economy—towering buildings, sprawling shopping malls, and swirling freeways—surround the 50% of the globe’s population who live in cities. A combination of smog and bright lights now obliterates the starry heavens so important to humanity’s historic consciousness and so humbling to our species’s historic sense of importance, focusing our attention on the economic constructs all around us. The cosmos reflected in the term Econocene includes not only the material artifacts of the economy, but also the market relations that bind us and define our place in the system. Urban dwellers are now fully dependent on markets for material sustenance. They awake to radio announcers discussing supposedly significant changes in exchange rates, stock markets, and the proportion of people looking for work. The dominance of the market is not just an urban phenomenon: its “invisible hand” guides rural life as well. The crops planted reflect expected future prices, and soils reflect their history of economic use. Farmers have become so specialized that they, too, buy most of their food in supermarkets. In order to grapple with the challenges of this new era, we need to give it a name that resonates with people’s lived experiences.
Although economics is cloaked in the rhetoric of science, the modern economy runs on faith. To begin to understand why faith is so essential to the operation of markets, consider the following scenario:
Imagine that a small number of people realize that our market-based food system is vulnerable to the rapid spread of plant and animal disease, the planetary limits of phosphorous use, the possibility of droughts hitting all of the major areas of grain production, and myriad other problems. These people would likely start trying to develop ways of growing food themselves to ensure their own survival, buying as much fertile land as possible. Now, imagine that this insight spread to more and more people. As these people lose their faith in food markets, they would walk off their jobs and try desperately to grow their own food. If this behavior became widespread, the economy would soon collapse, and the vast majority of humanity would starve, leaving the whole socioeconomic system in shambles. Is such a scenario any more difficult to imagine than a global financial crisis resulting from the bursting of a bubble driven by the belief that homes always go up in value?
- See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.8PVAReS0.dpuf​
With increasing maturity, we come to realize that who we have become and what our desires are depend on the choices we have made and the people we have known. Our own essence and those of the people closest to us are dependent on and affected by these choices. Economists ignore this reality and worship the “freedom to choose,” treating obligations to wider society as costs to be avoided.
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The divisibility of societies into individuals and nature into property has, for economists and increasingly for society as a whole, become a default assumption that merits no mention. These provisos, however, are rarely met: social and natural systems cannot be divided into separate parts, and few parties are ever sufficiently informed. - See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.8PVAReS0.dpuf

Exchange decisions should be bounded and modified as necessary to benefit people and nature as a whole and prevented when they cannot be so modified. The exceptions to this need for collective oversight are situations in which the property involved is truly divisible, no third parties are affected, both parties are fully informed, and the exchange is purely voluntary.
As this reframing shows, exchange between individuals without collective oversight would be rare if the full complexity of our social and natural systems were the default position.
- See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.8PVAReS0.dpuf

For most of human history, populations were much smaller, and the technologies available were simpler and less likely to affect third parties or the natural system as a whole. Accordingly, people needed less knowledge to be sufficiently informed. However, since Adam Smith presented us with the logic of exchange nearly two and a half centuries ago, population levels and the impacts associated with new technologies have grown dramatically. A complex systems perspective, then, should have increasingly become our default perspective. Instead, an ideology of atomistic individualism and private property has become entrenched despite its clear limitations. Economics, law, and much of political science—all supposedly scholarly enterprises—have been fully complicit in this folly. - See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.8PVAReS0.dpuf
The moral dimension of economism becomes apparent in how it is invoked to justify the status quo. Since the neoliberal transition that accompanied the election of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl, it has become increasingly common, in both private conversation and political rhetoric, for people to argue that markets correctly determine who gets what. The achievement of great wealth is a sign of merit, even moral probity, whereas poverty is a result of individual moral failings. Because wealth is “earned,” it should not be taxed, even to provide for basic needs such as public education. The wealthy are the “job creators” on whom the system depends, and increased taxation would hinder them in performing the “good work” of getting rich.
Economism, by rationalizing market outcomes, becomes the new “opium of the people,” playing the role Marx once attributed to religion in keeping people from rising up against the system.
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Economism, by rationalizing market outcomes,
becomes the new “opium of the people,”
playing the role Marx once attributed to religion
in keeping people from rising up against the system

New Economic Notions

Using Social Doctrines Expressed by Pope Francis in His Encyclical Hold the Potential to Regenerate the Earth
and Build a More Just Society

Solidarity 

Solidarity is unity (as of a group or class) which produces or is based on unities of interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies.[1][2] It refers to the ties in a society that bind people together as one. The term is generally employed in sociologyand the other social sciences as well as in philosophy or in Catholic social teaching.[3]

What forms the basis of solidarity varies between societies. In simple societies it may be mainly based on kinship and shared values. In more complex societies there are various theories as to what contributes to a sense of social solidarity.[1]

Solidarity is also one of six principles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union[4] and December 20 of each year is International Human Solidarity Day recognized as an international observance.

According to Émile Durkheim, the types of social solidarity correlate with types of society. Durkheim introduced the terms "mechanical" and "organic solidarity" as part of his theory of the development of societies in The Division of Labour in Society (1893). In a society exhibiting mechanical solidarity, its cohesion and integration comes from the homogeneity of individuals—people feel connected through similar work, educational and religious training, and lifestyle. Mechanical solidarity normally operates in "traditional" and small scale societies.[5] In simpler societies (e.g., tribal), solidarity is usually based on kinship ties of familial networks. Organic solidarity comes from the interdependence that arises from specialization of work and the complementarities between people—a development which occurs in "modern" and "industrial" societies.[5]

  • Definition: it is social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals have on each other in more advanced societies.
Although individuals perform different tasks and often have different values and interest, the order and very solidarity of society depends on their reliance on each other to perform their specified tasks. Organic here is referring to the interdependence of the component parts. Thus social solidarity is maintained in more complex societies through the interdependence of its component parts (e.g., farmers produce the food to feed the factory workers who produce the tractors that allow the farmer to produce the food).

Distributism 

Distributism (also known as distributionism[1] or distributivism[2]) is an economic ideology that developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century based upon the principles of Catholic social teaching, especially the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno.[3]

In the early 21st century, some observers have speculated about Pope Francis's exact position on distributism[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] because of his denouncement of unfettered capitalism as tyranny in his 84-page apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium:

Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills... A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits.

According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right,[11] and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism), a few individuals (plutocracy), or corporations (corporatocracy). Distributism, therefore, advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership.[12] Co-operative economist Race Mathews argues that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order.[13]

Distributism has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism,[14][15] which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitive.[16] Thomas Storck argues: "both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenmentand are thus modernizing and anti-traditional forces. Further, some distributists argue that socialism is the logical conclusion of capitalism as capitalism's concentrated powers eventually capture the state, resulting in a form of socialism.[17][18] In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life".[19]

Some have seen it more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (these being built into financially independent local cooperatives and small family businesses), though proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as examples of the historical long-term viability of distributism.[20] Particularly influential in the development of distributist theory were Catholic authors G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc,[16] the Chesterbelloc, two of distributism's earliest and strongest proponents.[21][22]

Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that originated in the Roman Catholic church, and was developed following the First Vatican Council. It has been associated by some with the idea of decentralisation. In its most basic formulation, it holds that social problems should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level consistent with their solution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary (that is, a supporting, rather than a subordinate) function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, neuropsychology, cybernetics, management and in military command (Mission Command). In political theory, the principle of subsidiarity is sometimes viewed as an aspect of the concept of federalism, although the two have no necessary connection. The principle of subsidiarity plays an important role in the political rhetoric of the European Union concerning the relationship between the EU governing bodies and the member states.

Flaws in Our Current System

Market Fundamentalism

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Rugged Individualism 

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 Corporate Collectivism 

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21st Century Models

The Cooperative Economy

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Restoring the Commons

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