Day 19 - Starvation is Murder - Part 2: Feedback

This blog is a response to a comment made on "Day 17: Starvation is Murder".

Thanks for a really interesting article and really highlights how possible it could be to eradicate poverty and the suffering that comes with it. I wonder if it would be useful to highlight which are public and private expenditures as public expenditure can be directed from one thing to another with policy and the amount stays the same as it come from a fixed source eg. tax. Whereas private expenditure is often individual and variable, for example if everyone stopped buying cosmetics everyone in the cosmetics and attached industries would lose there jobs, stop paying tax, take up welfare/services and so there would not necessarily be the same amount of money left to transfer to other more important things. Anyway I would be really interested to hear your thought on this

It would make a difference in terms of where the money comes from -- public or private expenditure -- as you pointed out. Though, within this blog I merely touched upon one of the many aspects within our current economic system which reveals the values we as a society place upon certain outcomes or goods -- which when reflecting upon it, are quite irrational from a broader perspective when looking at the current state of the world, and the abhorrent conditions many find themselves within.

When looking at the issue from a different angle, it does not really matter where the money comes from (public or private), as the essential point is that we are living in an economic system with distorted values. The expenditures listed, reflect the dynamics between supply and demand which is one of the base fundamental systems in our economy. The problem already starts right there, where a person's demand is necessarily linked with their ability to pay for the goods/services wanted or needed (and the fact that there's no differentiating between a 'want' or a 'need' in itself is also problematic). This results in skewed supply and demand curves which determine how much and at what price particular goods and services should be provided -- as they only answer to the demand/wants/needs of those who have money and does not reflect the needs/wants from the whole population in question. This would then (partially) explain the expenditure figures. If everyone's wants and needs were taken as a valid demand, no matter what the state is of a person's income -- these figures would be quite different and the various industries, sectors and markets involved would then restructure themselves according to these new sets of values.   

This in itself is however not a complete solution, as now obviously those with low income / no income still dont have the means of accessing the goods and services they need/want. For this a system ought to be in place, where the Basic Income Grant is a cool first point of implementation, to provide those people with a disposable income. Such a system would however still not be a permanent solution, as there are still so many other points in place in our current economic system which would ultimately render this change ineffective -- yet it's a good start to begin with.

The solution that I propose is that of the Equal Money System, which is a more broader encompassing perspective/solution to our current economic system (than for instance the BIG porposal). You can read up about it here: www.equalmoney.org and feel free to join the forum @ www.equalmoney.org/forum for discussion.