THE TRUE WELFARE OF HUMANS
I remember being unable to wrap my head around the basic concept of social welfare in the supply vs demand curve in economics class. I was in a state of disbelief and asked the same question to the professor again and again. I was experiencing this feeling so strong that I was unable to comprehend that we were stuck for more than 10 minutes, and all my fellow students started laughing. It was a laughing matter for them but for me, it was rather a revelation.
I asked myself again and again over the last months, “is it true?”. I was never even convinced minuscule that social welfare can be achieved by playing with the greed of two different extreme sides of humans (Producers versus Consumers) and by controlling them by fear (Regulation and legal framework). I asked again today, what if we are trying to measure and control the wrong parameters that were indirectly correlated to welfare. The supply and demand of any resource like labor, land, and capital is indeed a good indicator and may represent the welfare to great extent in old days but not today or in the future of our societies.
I started to replace each parameter with the closest possible parameter to social welfare in a normative way.
What is the true welfare of humans?
The dreams of a human were matched with the self-fulfillment achieved in supporting that dream.
(Fulfillment: the state of being actual or complete; Generated in individual )
(Dream: something that one hopes or intends to accomplish; Generated in an individual and approved by society )
Assumption: These are perfect events with zero opportunity costs.
Three-point welfare for a human
Replacing price with love
….(Our conscience limits it to the existing word “love”, but it is more of one’s life driver)
What can be replaced with the price that encompasses both quantifiable and unquantifiable aspects of societal welfare….I believe nothing better than love can do it because may not today but with sensors and data in the future, Love will be quantifiable. Just an extension of human activity like EDA sensors measuring the stress and likes on individual content on a social platform etc.
Replacing quantity with time
The materialistic aspect of the world can only be removed when we start handling the environment & Things around us as an object of experience that has time. When the economy revolves around usage rather than production, minimalists will have a chance to achieve much-needed sufficiency in this world.
Just like a normal demand vs supply curve, there will be points of definitions like elasticity, efficiency, surplus, the law of demand/supply, opportunity, love exchange, discrimination, etc. The selected parameters will obligate to maximum rules extended in normal classical economics.
The next question is
What is happening to total welfare now according to the suggested supply-demand curve?
Forget about dreams, 21.7 % population of the world lives in acute multidimensional poverty. Equal amounts are in the stage of vulnerability to MDP. ( Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021) .Inequality is burgeoning.I say, it is a pure failure as a society.
How to address this kind of market failure?
Just like in the case of a supply shock, shift the fulfillment curve to the left or cap the love for fulfillment.
• Increase the use of the wealth to the need/mandate the need of love cap for fulfillment.
As some intelligent guy quoted, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We need to evolve our consciousness and believe me getting out of price tag and number on quantity will need another level of consciousness for societal acceptance.
Buzz words like social credit system, universal basic income, and sustainable development are just trying this in a different way but they will never reach equilibrium only because they are assessing themselves on the wrong parameters.
Yes, that’s a fairy thought. we never give up on a fairy thought because it’s stupid but will only because of something rationale and possibly the best second option. Yes, we make gaffes, look bad while trying to find a way to solve a problem, but we need to be happy about them too. I am working on the supply chain and finance eco-system because I think as we evolve through time, how we interact with production systems as an individual needs to change and make the producers the direct agent to fulfill one’s dreams. I dream of economics that helps people, “ to spread more love and take the joy of it “
