The Economy Is Efficient—Just Not for People

This is a topic that I have wanted to write about for a while. Specifically, I thought it was strange that our current economic system could not reorient people during the pandemic to do more productive work. That is, people who were laid off during the pandemic did not have other options for how to provide a service to others (and earn money for it) as movement restrictions became tighter and the resulting economic fallout was felt.

Many around the world were furloughed. And even if they were given some degree of government support through a temporary basic income (if they were lucky), they would still be unable to participate in the ways that they perhaps hoped, because of limitations imposed by our current economic system.

In the traditional economic system, we organize our interests and efforts based on what is in demand at a certain time. This is considered efficient.

But is it?

What if the work that you want to do is important to you and to others, but not rewarded appropriately in a traditional sense? Some in the arts, for example, could profess to this—the irony that following one’s passion for art could also mean that they must accept that it does not pay well enough to do so, despite the joy that art brings to people. We refer to some in the arts as “starving artists”—I’ve never heard the same being true for an accountant.

But what if we nurtured talents based on interest and capacity and did not care about the traditional economy’s dictates around the efficient supply and demand of such work? Efficiency here is less about matching people to “available” jobs, and more about matching people’s interests to human service that maximizes their innate talents, regardless of the demand for those roles.

This differs from our current economic model, which organizes work around obsolete and unsustainable notions of supporting economic “goods”—chasing financial and real estate booms, reacting to short-term market infatuations, measuring economic success through commodity prices despite their environmental impacts—rather than orienting roles toward what genuinely improves people’s quality of life and sense of fulfillment, the health of the planet, and the success of future generations. This, to me, is true economic efficiency.

Many people are not able to meet their passions because of the constraints placed on them via political or socioeconomic restraints that they are either born into or that develop over the course of their lives. We love rags-to-riches stories; but many more humble, hard-working people often have to fight their way into stability when the economic system is constantly at odds with their well-being.

Our goal and promise to each other should be to help people find their passions and purpose that can accelerate economic activity and well-being. At the core of this is the recognition that service to each other for economic growth shouldn’t feel like a fight, but a privilege to see each other succeed and grow together.