Fantasy economics

Professor N. Parkinson and the Peter Principle among others have noted the problem of size when human minds are not big enough to cope with it. The parallel of the need for child-scale in primary schools is human-scale for adult activity. Otherwise what is happening may be building ever higher inverted pyramids too easily unbalanced and toppled, and the bigger, the bigger the crash.

Fantasise a parallel eco-universe – it is publishable at least, even if not yet incarnated - in which CEO's bonuses depended upon the improved value of the company's service to the customers and the nation. Poor maintenance response? Customer complaints increase? Cut Telstra CEO's bonus to minus $1 million.

Salary and wage scales? In the parallel eco-universe, public opinion sets the base and the range. Supply and demand can set individual increases above the range - not the power of a set of individuals to reward themselves. A parallel committee made up of average-pay citizens sets out a parallel r set of scales for remunerating members of Parliament. Resigning unnecessarily before your term is up? Pay for the bye-election from your pension.

The basic defect of capitalism is greed, which insatiable and grows by being fed. CEO's incomes are the living model. The basic problem of socialism is laziness and common stupidity, which so easily wrecks socialist states and cooperative workshops. Some form of public enterprise would be preferable to public-private-partnerships, to make the most of both social justice and individual enterprise. A survey of history not only shows that aggression pays off, but also that all worthy achievements have required more cooperation than competition.

The fair reward that is not 'who can, takes'.

Rather than Medibank private being sold off so that there is no competition to limit the greed of private medical insurance companies, the principle of public-private competition can be extended – a state companies registry for buying and selling stocks and shares, a state real-estate register for buying and selling property, patronise them if you will.

Let us consider banking – or rather, since fantasyland is even more wondrous here than in fantasylawland – let us leave this to our next episode of fantasy-almost-fiction. But some hints – inflation is not countered by letting banks make millions by raising interest rates, and public saving is not punished because banks don't need it because they borrow cheaply abroad to increase the foreign debt,

Many words in economics are baskets with lids – and the lids should be off. What do you mean by 'growth', what do you mean by 'free trade'? A problem with a single enormous global economy is that one blow out can wreck the whole lot. Shudders in New York cause earthquake ripples. It is manipulated by those who can. What a shocking solution to African problems to seek to cut European farm subsidies so that Africans can export commodities in return for European value-added – thus leaving Africans deprived of self-sustainability even in agrarian land for their own food, and still the beggars to the industrialised world. Fair trade for the coming days would encourage all countries to be as self-sustainable as they can be, and trade to be for what they themselves cannot produce, with none forced to drop protection for good produced by sweated labor overseas.

But this arouses the obvious point - so many countries cannot sustain themselves, nor can they produce exports to pay for what they must import. The populations of the world are imbalanced in their locations. How can ten million refugees with camps often like permanent cities, dependent on food aid, ever be self-sustainable again?

Fantasy economics has to take facts into account, in building a world that is a haven to everyone. And one fact that is in denial is that the growth of human population is at the expense of everything else, including our own future. Even in the lands with the 'growth' complex that unless their populations keep growing, they will not be able to support the elderly as now they support the young, cities are taking over countrysides, rising values of real estate make the biggest fortunes, there are water shortages and social discontents.

While from the rest of the world, the economic refugees increase in number, and seek to stream across borders. Nice for employers wanting docile workers – but not the dream for fantasy economics. The greatest aid that developing countries can be given enables them to develop their own economies so that everyone can live in their own country at a decent standard of living.

In every country currently riven by civil disorders, populations are growing too fast , and the bigger they are, the less that slowing stabilises the actual numbers multiplying. Fantasy economics would expose the political, religious and commercial interests that drive population growth and that prevent women having the chance of being able to bear only the children they want.