Policies / Economy
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We live under an economic system that is crumbling. The promoters of the so-called “free” market economy believe that because they were apparently successful in forcing the collapse of Communism theirs is the only possible economic system that can exist. This obsession with money has eroded the quality of life for millions
These people back up their arguments using biological models of “survival of the fittest” and a supposed human nature that tells the economic scientists how people will live their lives and ultimately spend their money. Money is promoted as the most important thing that a human being could possibly have. Hundreds of thousands of people can only get through the day by dreaming about what they will do when they win the lottery. The media and advertising constantly manipulate us into believing that happiness is only to be found with the latest car, or a holiday, or a particular brand of clothing or cosmetic. This obsession with money has eroded the quality of life for millions. A sense of community and feeling of friendship with ones family, neighbours and friends is more and more replaced with cut-throat competition and insecurity. Economic globalisation which allows the free transfer of capital and unbridled speculation brings down governments that do not submit to the rules dictated by the IMF and the World Bank, whose masters are unelected. Sovereignty passes more and more from national governments to the boardrooms of the banks and multinational companies whose economic strength is such that by threatening to transfer their production elsewhere they know that they will earn financial incentives and the weakening of hard-won social legislation that was put in place to protect workers from just such a threat to their security. We have not even mentioned the devastation that is caused to the environment by unchecked companies in their desperate search for an extra percentage point of profit. And in the west we close our eyes to the fact that 80% of the world’s economic resources are concentrated into the hands of less than 20% of the world’s population. Each year millions of people in the developing world die from the effects of poverty: several thousands times more people than are killed in acts of terrorism and yet billions of pounds are spent on counter-terrorism, whereas the best form of counter-terrorism is social justice which is what is lacking to billions of people today. Humanist principles are not against money. It is a tool that allows for the exchange of goods and services between people in these times where we do not measure value in terms of gold coins. However we do believe that money should be at the service of people and not the other way round. If people die because of money or, more specifically, the way the economic system uses money then we have to question whether, in a civilised society, we are bound to the economic system or if we cannot use our intelligence to design a system that allows everyone to have the opportunity to flourish. The Humanist Party promotes the creation of interest free banking, employment models based on employee co-management and co-operativism. We consider that the free-flow of money without checks and balances destroys economies instead of helping them to develop. We do not believe in a nanny state that takes all the decisions for the people, on the contrary we believe in de-centralising power as far as it can usefully be taken. We do believe that the planet has all the resources available to meet the health, education and security needs of all members of the Human Race. We do not have this because the economic system in place is designed to destroy the lives of people. It is dependent on a proportion of the workforce being unemployed, it is dependent on having a market somewhere to exploit. When this neo-liberal model has overtaken all the remaining parts of the planet, the system is destroyed because there is nowhere left to exploit. |
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