Recovery or bust — which road will we choose?
We all know this health crisis is also an economic crisis. We also clearly know what our health services are, how they work and how to protect them — but I don’t think there’s anything like such clarity about our economic services. At the moment, the emergency services for The Economy are governments. They’re coping by ripping up rulebooks to ‘do whatever it takes’ — but do they have what it takes to lead us to a full recovery?
It struck me this would be a good time for people to dip into John Bunzl’s writings about an idea he called Simultaneous Policy. I met him around 2006, and remember loving the idea that we could solve global problems together if only we all called a competitive truce at the same time. He was (is) passionately engaging, and I strongly agreed with the sense of his argument. Truth be known, in my heart of hearts, I didn’t have faith it could work.
The argument says there’s a vicious cycle of ‘Destructive Global Competition’ preventing us from controlling things like weaponry, tax avoidance, pollution and unethical business. Unless everyone agrees equal measures at the same time, bad things keep going on wherever the rules are weakest.
I just couldn’t imagine what could suspend the economic competition. We’ve had raging wildfires, wars, famines, and melting icecaps — all gaining global attention, but none of them enough to persuade everyone to stop.
COVID-19 seems to have done the trick…and I think John Bunzl was absolutely right. Free of all the distracting urgency and noise of the competition, we can at last hear ourselves think about what we’re doing and why.
In this quiet space, people are noticing things they didn’t realise they’d been missing. Wildlife exiled by pollution is already beginning to re-appear, and city dwellers in the worst affected places will never have seen such clean air or water in their lives. We are being offered a clear view of how filthy our fossil fuel habits have become.
Likewise, social distancing is doing more for social cohesion than any amount of economic growth has for years. The way people have been self-organising to marshal forces of kindness, care, entertainment and support offers a compelling case for ideas like universal basic income, promoted since 2013 by Basic Income UK.
Besides the virus itself, I think the greatest danger now is that those most addicted to the global competition will go cold turkey and do all they can to lead us ‘back to normal’ as quickly as they can. Their argument is effectively that all roads lead to The Economy, because The Economy is eternal and true. This is the thinking that led to the Fall of Rome.
What’s ‘normal’ has changed dramatically in just two generations. The Economy has been in hyperdrive, fuelled by a spellbinding expansion of money without apparent limits. Mistaking all this money for wealth, we seem to think we’re failing if the everyday doesn’t deliver a wild party of hedonism and excess. The temptation try just popping a few pills to clear our heads so we can keep partying the way we did before will be strong.
For years, world leaders have poo-pooed the millions who’ve been complaining about the party. They’ve spun the massed demonstrations against global inequality, wars, famines and environmental wreckage as fantasy because The Economy must go on. They’ve effectively argued that whichever road we choose, we can only ever arrive back at The Economy we have come to know.
But now, with the best of social behaviour on show, nature visibly recovering, and the The Economy on steroids forced to take a lie down, we can see that in truth, we DO have a choice about how we make it all work. We are at a fork in the road, and one way leads to a complete bust, the other to recovery.
If we get The Economy off the floor without making some different life choices, and decide to stay on the same road, the next hit could be a knockout blow. In our weakening state, we could easily find ourselves in a terminal coma. Doing ‘whatever it takes’ will involve breaking the spell of the money markets full of people who will predict ruin and despair with all the conviction of terrified addicts who can’t face having to change. All they can see in their paranoid state of fear, is people draining their power by walking away.
The other path is actually much better for everyone in the longer term — and I reckon having a longer term to look forward to is probably a good thing.
Far from being an uncharted, dangerous and untested way, this road is clearly signposted by the Wellbeing Economy movement. There’s a dazzling array of better economic design, and the way is open to all. We know it’s possible to do things differently — and in many cases, ideas have already been trialled. So the challenge of this path is not one of discovery, having to define problems or invent solutions — the challenge is to look at the evidence and agree on how we pull together to use the best of what we know works.
The route signposted by a Wellbeing Economy would make it really clear what economic services do for us, and how. With new clarity, we’d be able to detox The Economy and start a path to true recovery. One where nature’s sweet song can be heard, where the joys of social care are fully shared, and the health of people and planet is truly served.
If ever there was a golden opportunity for some Simpol style thinking, it’s now. I hope the leaders among us encourage the masses to follow a different path.
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