The Economy of Nothing
On the way to work I heard a story about the decline in Spanish bull fighting. In the last 5 years Spain has gone from hosting just shy of 3000 fights per year to just 500. The economic troubles of the nation have resulted in fewer people willing to shell out the high ticket prices to view their national past-time.
For some people I'm sure this is wonderful news, fewer bulls to the slaughter for the entertainment of the masses. For others it is the loss of their livelihood. For most though, it is the loss of piece of culture, a rich history that reaches back to a time before Capitalism was conceived. People in Spain are loosing their way of life in order to catch up with a system that is in it's final act.
These arenas are a way to keep local economies strong and the spirit of the people strong as well.
Here in Canada our bull fighting arenas are hockey rinks. There are a myriad of them in large centers and at least one in every small town or village across the country. They are part of our culture and part of out local economies.
In 2012 when the NHL went on strike, it was estimated that local businesses lost almost 2 billion dollars in revenue. So, yes, the players are payed way to much. The owners profit margins are way to high and the taxes they pay are far to low. But it is undeniable that there is a huge upside to the industry on the whole. From the food vendors and parking lot attendants to the bar owners and taxi drivers, game nights are a big money maker.
Purchasing a ticket to see a bull fight or a hockey game may seem like a poor way to spend ones money, especially when money is tight. People may feel as thought they aren't getting anything valuable in return, and while this may be true for some people, for others it may be well worth their hard earned dollar. At least money is being exchanged for goods and services.
What concerns me is the money that people are spending on absolutely nothing.
Worldwide, consumers are spending almost 10 billion a year on imaginary goods. Virtual real estate, pictures of gifts, imaginary bullets of imaginary guns to shoot at imaginary people. This is a where the whole system falls apart. If something is only made once and then sold hundreds or thousands or millions of times, there has only been one legitimate purchase...the first one.
I think of i-tunes or other sites of digital music downloads and can't help but notice that the economy is being destroyed by technology. It made sense to me a decade ago, when buying a CD cost $15-$20. You went to a store where someone payed rent, gave money to a person who was payed to take your money and re-stock the CD you bought. Then that person handed you a bag that was made in a factory in some far away land and in that bag was your physical compact disc. A disk that contained music, put onto said disc in a building where someone payed rent and payed someone to make these cd's. I know, a bit of a run on, but you get my point. A whole lot of people when into me buying that CD.
When I go and download an album for $10 on i-tunes I get the songs, sure, but I get physically nothing. This is not how Capitalism works. Once the song has been recorded and uploaded to i-tunes there is no more labor force needed what so ever.
There is a huge benefit to our eco-system thanks to this technological development that we will be seeing in generations to come, but for now, we have yet to make sense of how this can work on an economic level.
Is technology steering us towards a greener future? Most definitely. Have we been able to grasp a way to keep 8 billion people at work while these same technologies make most of our jobs obsolete? Most definitely not!
Our inability to keep up with technology has been obvious for quite some time. The people who are in charge of multi-national corporations and G-20 nations have seen the writing on the wall. They are well aware that this system that we are living in can't be sustained, so they're bleeding every last penny out of the populous while they can.
It is quite obvious that in order to fix the system people have to go back to work. Get the robots out of the factories and get the people back in. Profits won't be maximized but there will be profits over a much longer period. Current laws make it illegal for corporations to make any choices that would sacrifice profits, this is the achillies heel of the Capitalist model. If corporations had to put business ethics first and profit second, or at least equal, I'm convinced that the ship would begin to right itself.
I guess the question that we, the working class, need to be asking ourselves is; "are we ready and willing to go back to work, and are we willing and able to stop spending money on nothing?". We the working class can get back to work for ourselves, on the local level. Keep the money out of the hands of companies that produce nothing or produce goods without human contact. I know that it's not easy, but like anything, with practice comes ease.
My wife and I spent a week in Spain about 5 years back and fell in love with the nation. The culture was awe inspiring. To come from North America and see a culture that was so laid back, warm and above all, comfortable in it's own skin, was something that I have craved all my life. Their way of life has been intact for centuries and to see that culture crumbling, all so that it can pay off debts to the EU is heart breaking.