Machines must not substitute man
Index
1. Overview
2. Distortion of reality
3. Super saturation
4. Substitution of the human work by machines
5. International division of work
6. The priorities
7. Demographic control
8. What kind of production?
9. The challenge of science and technology
10. The most restriction
11. Forest and mining production
12. Production of weapons
13. Paper of the governments
14. The comprehension of reality
15. Conclusions
12. Production of weapons
13. Paper of the governments
14. The comprehension of reality
15. Conclusions
1. Overview
Some centuries ago the word wealth was synonymous of the possession of precious metals; but in the modern world wealth is interpreted essentially, like the possession of money. So far, the main objective of the economic policy of the majority of nations is to accumulate money it does not matter how. For the common people is the same. The workers work, in first instance, for obtaining money; the entrepreneurs invest their resources and time for a similar end; thus, we can say that money is the first objective of the governments and of the people involved in production: workers and entrepreneurs. This trend has settled the financial economy as the core of the economy above the material production.
But money really is not wealth. Money is a simple mean for interchanging things. The true wealth is the material things, especially the natural resources: water, food and energy, in that same order. Money is an illusion of wealth. Money is only metal and paper without intrinsic value: http://pablorafaelgonzalez.blogspot.com/2011/06/money-is-only-metal-and-paper-without.html
From the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries man achieved the most advanced scientific and technological knowledge’s of history, but at a big price: the destruction of nature and environment. For reaching their objectives, the economy has employed intensely a factor of production that, until now, has been abundant: the natural resources. In the first stages of the economic development man overexploited wood; from the second half of the 19th century wood was substituted by used coal and petroleum like principal sources of energy in the new industrial development; an important consequence of the production of energy is the contamination of the planet. Forestry resources, land, water of rivers, lakes and seas has been also overexploited and contaminated by the industrial activity. The destruction of the forests has continued until now and already there are regions where they practically have been razed.
This economic development path has been accompanied of other important fact: the high rate of population growth, which passed from 6,115 millions of inhabitants in the year 2000 to 7,000 millions in the year 2011; an increase of 14.47 percent in only eleven years, figure that reveals the gravest of the trend.
All the situations previously mentioned lead to two questions:
Which is the ethical dimension of the economic growth? Is possible creating a best world?
In this essay I will present a vision regarding those questions.
2. The distortion of reality
Because of the illusion created by money, which is valuated like the true wealth, the economic activities are not considered according to its social utility but according to its capacity of generating benefits in form of money. The most important is money and it determines the economic priorities. This manner of approaching the reality has been the principal cause of the economic and social disparities of the world.
Production is oriented to the activities that generate more money and not to the activities that the people need more. Sometimes production coincide with the people needs but in many cases production create artificial needs and impose patterns of consumption, through the advertising, instead of satisfying the true requirements of the population. Hundreds of unnecessary products are launched every year to the global market.
Scheduled obsolescence, net accumulation of capital and the investment of reposition are the mechanisms that feed the economic growth, because they are based in the permanent increase of production and consumption of goods and services. Growing consumption of any kind of goods and services, especially in the industrial nations, is the combustible of the economic growth. Despite this, in the most important capitalist nations like the United States, exist millions of poor people, even hungrier people and homeless people. In the developing countries the situation is worse; in those countries the majority of population lives in a situation of sub consumption. If these countries enhance the purchasing-capacity of its population, the world reality would change radically, because of the pressure that the new pattern of production and consumption would exert on the natural resources. If with the current level of consumption the world is at the brink of collapse you can imagine what would happen if a most pressure on the natural resources is carried out.
3. Super saturation
As a consequence of the preeminence of the financial sector upon the rest of the economy, the financial services are super saturated in many countries. This fact might be a cause for the bankruptcy of many of them worldwide because in many cases the market is not enough for the number of the existent financial institutions. You might think that perhaps the abundance of banks and financial enterprises might be considered like a sign of perfect competence in this sector but in the reality this not so. The super saturation of banks and enterprises in the financial sector and in other sectors of the economy provokes the opposite effect of the perfect competence, which is the disappearance of the financial institutions and enterprises. There are numerous examples of that situation in the world reality, especially in the financial sector.
4. Substitution of man by machines
The first consequence of the industrial development was the change in the pattern of production since the artisanal method to the production in big scale through the machinery. Machine substituted man work, trend that is each day most as a consequence of the technological advances.
5. International division of work
The developed nations are leaders in science and technology; the third world is leader in raw materials supply; the emergent nations are at the middle of the road but getting every day most importance. Several initiatives have arisen in the last times: new economic and political blocks like the G20, BRICS, Mercosur, Unasur and others.
The Neo liberal model imposed to the world from the 80s year’s resurrected two theories: a) The Theory of Comparative Advantages and b) The Quantitative Theory of Money.
The Theory of Comparative Advantage give especial benefits to the most developed nations because it is obvious that they are who have the most productive capacity in the world; it is a theory that consolidate the privileges of the industrial countries and deepen the underdevelopment of the Third World countries.
A most balanced economic world is an ideal objective. The productive specialization according to the vocation and capacity of each country is important but should not be the principal criteria for the international division of work. Because of diverse causes like the environmental protection, the economic development, strategic, military and others reasons, sometimes nations realize not profitable activities since the financial point of view. For example, perhaps for a country to buy fishing products in the international markets might be less expensive than to maintain a proper fishing fleet, but, for economics and security reasons that country might doing a sacrifice and keeping its fishing fleet at any cost; too many examples in this same sense exists.
The other conceptual support of the current global economic model is the Quantitative Theory of Money which really is a theory to favor the poverty and the scarcity. It is not truth that the abundance of money is the main cause of inflation. The principal cause of inflation is the human egoism; the unlimited wish of enrichment of speculators, which use its power to despoil the market.
The Quantitative Theory of Money is employed by the monetarists to justify the programs of austerity in diverse countries; that is the medicine that they are applying now to Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
6. The priorities
They are:
+ peace + food + medicines + employment - contamination
The priority should be the intense use of the work force and the lesser use of natural resources that is now, in the 21st century, the scarce factor of production. The intense use of the work force would let diminishing two big problems: a) the poverty and b) the unemployment. So far, the world economy has followed the contrary way, it mean, the intense use of the natural resources and the resources of capital (money, infrastructure and technology).
The intense use of technology has provoked big levels of unemployment worldwide because machine has substituted the human work. It is comprehensible and justifiably the improvement of the productive methods through the technological development but there is an ethical consideration that should not be avoided: production must be to favor man and not to cause to him damage.
7. Demographic control
But none of the objectives previously mentioned may be reached if the world population continue growing like has grown until now. It is necessary to diminish the world population growth because at mid term the world resources will be insufficient for attending the population needs. That is the truth but the world leaders do not recognize that truth openly; why? Really I do not know why but it is evident that the situation is very difficult. You can verify it simply observing in your community the long files in banks, in supermarkets, drugstores, airports, the traffic jam, etc. All they are clear signs of the overpopulation, this mean, the lack of sufficient means or resources for attending the population demand.
8. What kind of production?
That is a key question. The food production and its distribution should be the most important. You can to live without many things but you cannot live without food. In the developed nations the scarcity of food is not a problem in this moment but in the developing nations the situation is different.
Producing more and best food for the growing population is a challenge; the other big commitment is to assure it’s just and appropriate distribution worldwide. Agencies like the World Food Program, WFP, are very important in this sense. Hunger in the developing countries is something real and also in some developed nations, like the United States, where too exist important levels of poverty; so that hunger and poverty is not only an exclusive problem of the developing countries. The most challenge is that the perspective for diminishing this problem is not clear.
9. The challenge of science and technology
If the methods of production provoke unemployment it is obvious that those methods are not just neither positive for people. The most challenge of science and technology is to conciliate the technological advance with the need of proportioning employment and happiness to people. Science and technology must be at the service of man and not vice verse.
10. The most restriction
Humanity is beginning to face a phenomenon that is not enough known until now: the natural resources scarcity; already there are clear signs in that sense, like the water stress and the water scarcity in many regions of the world. This will be the biggest problem at mid and long term. Water is a finite resource, but is wasted and contaminated worldwide. The effects of the water restrictions on the agriculture are one of the most worrisome.
Petroleum is the other finite resource overexploited that has begun to give signs of diminishment.
11. Forest and mining production
In general, natural resources are wasted in the entire world for maintaining an unjustifiable pattern of consumption. Moreover of the overexploitation of vital resources as water and petroleum the world face other big problem like the devastation provoked by the forestry and miner production. That is the kind of production that should not grow; for example, the Amazonia region is being depleted by the action of lumberjacks and miners: the Amazonia is the last lung of the planet and their destruction will have a disastrous impact on the entire world. However, their forests and hydrics resources do not receive the adequate protection of the authorities; on the contrary, this year 2011 the Brazil’s Parliament considered reducing the size of the protected territory and to let a most action of the depredators; something really unbelievable. Similar situations occur in other regions of the world, like Africa and Asia, even in the United States, where the government has authorized the petroleum exploitation in Alaska.
The use of coal like source of energy is the other big problem for humanity, because this is the most contaminant element of the fossil fuels. Petroleum also contaminate but less than coal. The problem is that the consumption of coal is growing. Countries like China, that possess big reserves of this resource employ big and growing amounts of this combustible and the perspective is that the consumption will increase in the coming years because of the new paper that this country is acquiring in the international economy.
The forestry production and the miner production, especially of coal, are not positive for the human beings. The world should avoid or diminish that kind of production.
12. Production of weapons
Production of weapons represents an important percentage of the developed nations GDP; therefore its relevance in the economy. War was, is and will be always a profitable business for many people. For that reason a world without weapons is not possible in the reality. Unfortunately it must be recognized that the weapons exert an important paper in the keeping of peace; it is the balance that the terror generates. All the weapons constitute offenses against the human dignity, but some weapons are worse than others; for example, the nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are weapons of massive destruction and its building is a crime against humanity. The world should avoid or diminish that kind of production.
13. Paper of the governments
The governments have the duty of promoting the social welfare. But one thing is the ideas and theorist conceptions and other thing is the true reality. For example, the programs of austerity imposed at countries like Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal this year 2011 do not take in account the population welfare but the bankers interests.
For many governments, the most important is the benefit of the wealthiest sectors of the society and not the middle class and the poor class; therefore they apply orthodox, Neo liberal economic programs.
14. The comprehension of reality
I understood that some traditional orthodox economic concepts are simply a lie; those concepts were thought to favor the most powerful economic sectors. For example, money ---as was expressed in previous epigraphs-- is only an instrument of interchange; there is not limit for the issuing of money; the abundance of money is not the main cause of inflation.
I observe the commercial boom in this season of Christmas when the people receive more money. In these days people buy more food, beverages, clothes, shoes, toys for the children; others buy durable goods like cars or semi durable goods like television, refrigerators, kitchens, furniture, etc, and I ask myself why does that commercial expansion cannot stay in the time?
The answer is very simple: the governments can maintain the commercial boom developing a financial expansive policy.
If you pay more money to the people you can maintain in time the economic growth. The governments can sustain the economic expansion in the time by mean of its monetary, financial and fiscal policies. The governments may issue ---without restrictions--- their own currencies, their national currencies. Therefore they are able of to guarantee the abundance of financial resources for the economic expansion. Only it is necessary to open the mind and to abandon the orthodox prejudices regarding the issuing of money. For example, the past month, October 2011, the Bank of England recognized that austerity is a mistake and announced the emission of thousands of Sterling Pounds to avoid the recession and support the economy of that country; and the Bank of England is the oldest bank of the world. The financial expansion is the way to wellbeing; austerity is the road to poverty.
15. Conclusions
- The economic growth must have an ethical objective; it is not sufficient the net accumulation of capital. Production must satisfy the spiritual and material needs of the human beings and not only serving for accumulating more money.
- The economic growth should create the amount of jobs for attending the population augment.
- Machine is necessary for the efficiency of the economic development but the human being should not become slaves of machines; the most important is the people and not machines. Machines must serve to man and not vice verse, man serve to machine.
- The priority of production and the economic growth must be the rational use of the natural resources and the production of food, medicines and other essential goods and services.
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