Bean counting

Every time one listens to a minister or reads a news story about what the government is doing and how well it is doing, one is only stuffed with some financial numbers going in and out of the economic system.

Budgetary allocation, collection of taxes, 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) wrote and talked against capitalism for its dehumanising power in society even when the science of economics was still in its infancy. Rapid industrialization 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 end-all of what we do and who we are.

This worldview, which is against human nature, is being promoted and sustained through different power structures (which Marx called super-structures) including religious institutions, education system, the media, and the government itself. These structures broadly reflect the 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, rulers believe that anything beyond economic prosperity (material well being) is a luxury. They think that individual liberty and social development should be foregone for the sake of economic progress. Human rights – mostly pertaining to religious freedom and free speech – are trampled upon in authoritarian regimes on the pretext of national security and political stability.

The disproportionate emphasis on economic development, which is the soul of the 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 the super-rich and the ocean of the super-poor. About 10 percent of people possess 86 percent 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 the power to dictate countries, control individuals and manipulate economies.

The second colossal damage that capitalism continues to do is over-exploitation of natural resources on the one hand and pollution of the environment on the other. Maximisation of shareholders’ wealth (euphemism for greed) is considered the core objective of every business decision, both in theory and in practice. The curriculum of all mainstream business schools reflect the primacy of shareholders’ interests (safety of and return on investment) vis-a-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 anything about alone. Climate change, for example, may be beyond the concerns of ordinary people and states but it might eventually make 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 wheels of the 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 the ‘it is the economy, stupid’ mindset. Policymakers need to look beyond GDP, inflation, and forex reserves.

People don’t live on bread alone. They want a life which, according to Abraham Maslow, culminates into self-actualization with satisfaction of all lower-level needs. Creating an environment that aims higher than bread and butter is the duty of parents, teachers, and the government.

The writer teaches at SZABIST, Islamabad.

Email: dr.zeb@szabist-isb.edu.pk