The modern economy

A sane economy would be: Straightforward production of what people need and desire; straightforward allocation of labor and material resources to achieve such.

How far we have come from that! … to arrive at the modern globalized Rube Goldberg machine that delivers stuff to our doors.

Someday people will laugh at it. After the tragic aspects are forgotten.

The modern economy is composed of [a] the world of stuff; [b] the world of governmental manipulations; [c] the world of finance (representative chits … these days electronic, not paper).

The pile of stuff is enormous, but the pile of chits is even larger. The latter slosh around the world at breathtaking speeds.

We observe:

* world [a]… automation plus huge productive facilities in Third World countries plus inclusion of low-wage labor pools have resulted in tendencies toward deflation

* world [b]… the central banks have fought those tendencies via inflationary monetary policies

* world [c]… the disjointed forces of [a]and [b] distort Big Finance to the point of being chaotic; the flows are so massive, the stakes so high, the speculations so manic that the economy lurches from crisis to crisis