Wednesday 2 May 2007

Economic Utopia


A highly impractical, but not entirely impossible state would be a state
of Economic Utopia. What would that be, one may wonder, and the answer is
that it would be such a state (and am not talkin abt geographical states)
where money would not be over-valued, stones, gems, precious metals would also
not be valued at their rarity.

Ideally, an Economic Utopia would function on the long forgotten barter
system which originated in China. But how can the process be adopted in
our times? Production would continue as usual, but free of cost. Why?
Because if one was to go to buy a chair, for instance, the shopkeeper
would give it to him knowing that if he needs a trouser he can also go and
get it for free, because the one who would sell him the trouser can also
get a computer for paying no amount.

Now, that takes care of the consumer goods and durables, but what about
services? Would one go to work everyday, knowing that they dont really
need to work in order to satify human materialistic needs? Maybe they
would, if services compensate for services. One goes to work in whatever
chosen field one wants to (aah, to follow one's heart's desire to go for a
favoured career without thinking of money), provides services and comes
back at the end of the day to find that the plumber or the doctor wont
take money. Services for services.

 However, land and it's ownership would be a fickle concept, if everything is for free, everybody would want a huge chunk of land and that could lead to a lot of chaos, land is limited after all. But other than that, just imagine, no money, no debit and credit cards, no class divisions based on wealth and other posessions, no holding yourselves back, no slogging for material desires (read shopping!), no financial insecurities and tensions of making payments. 

On the flip side, quality would perhaps go for a toss and excellence would
be neither inspired nor awarded. There would be no real struggles, perhaps
people would be lax, careless and indulgent. And nobody would want to the dirty business for sure. Hehehe.

Surely, that is a somewhat vague way of describing the functioning of such
a Utopia. I hope I did not sound like Jairaj!

PS: To the person dropping anonymous comments on my blog, kindly reveal ur name, I would like to read your blog too :P


3 comments:

crackfire said...

Ahh the first comment.

Hansa have you been taking economics courses in your new work place.
I think your economic utopia would transcend into sluggishness because of no incentive to innovate.

Anonymous said...

Gurlie.....whos is dis jairaj? Secondly i lkuuuurve ur concxept of economics.... keep it up!!

Anonymous said...

that sound like an anarchist in the making!! i love speculating the way you do too sometimes. i think its good to sometimes ask economic theory with its technicalities to take a hike and try to imagine a system from scratch based on common sense.