Our economy is an artefact, a man-made system design. 

The Target Beneficiary? Homo economicus — the self-sufficient and rational individual who has unlimited desires and seeks to maximize personal utility and satisfaction. He is modeled after the hegemonic ideal of masculinity and the most privileged economic subject: the white, Western, heterosexual, able-bodied, bourgeois, urban, male. 

The Designer’s Toolbox? Storytelling. We created the pervasive narrative of capitalism as a universal social good, as the engine of well-being for all. Markets are presumed efficient at rewarding people with similar talents and preferences equally, so any inequalities must be due to differences in effort. People and nature are artificially separated to allow for the latter’s commodification. To fuel capital accumulation, wage labor productivity is turned into a measure of human worth, while house- and care-work are made invisible and branded as women’s ‘labor of love’.

The Unique Value Proposition? Virtuous cycles of wealth for the few and vicious cycles of poverty for the many.

William Davies and Sarah Kember, Economic Science Fictions (London: Goldsmiths, University London, 2018)

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)

Who designed it? All of us. Governments, corporations, and citizens/consumers on a daily basis make decisions on the values and aspirations that guide our economic institutions. But as Audre Lorde has said, the Master’s house is in the Global North.

The North Star? Endless financial growth, profit maximization and capital accumulation which can be easily captured by a KPI. 

The Creative License? A government that creates and preserves the institutional framework for capitalist practices through liberalization, deregulation, and privatization. 

Our current economic system is intrinsically unsustainable. Environmentally unsustainable because the Earth simply does not have sufficient resources to sustain this way of life for everyone. Socially unsustainable because its focus on endless consumption, competition, and monetary pursuits will never be able to provide for our heterogeneous rights, needs, and wants.