Moral Economics

I rather like the boating metaphor in explaining economics. Your economic existence is rather like traveling on water. What do you have to have with you to do what you do? More stuff means a bigger boat. Your investments and borrowings are part of your cargo; some are fixed to the boat and some are easily moved. Either way, you have to keep that sucker afloat. Your cash flow is how much buoyancy you have to float it. The water level reflects how much liquidity exists in the economic system. It works the same for individuals and for any aggregate, like a business, that shares an economic reality. Get the picture?

Gross economic debt freezes liquidity; it lowers the liquid water level. The debts others hold most certainly affect you, just like shipping and navigation in an icy area. In global economic terms, we are passing through an ice age. Most available economic resources are frozen. There’s not much left so you need a shallow draft and good buoyancy. Your actions in economic terms would mean a preference for paying off debt and liquidating fixtures you don’t use. If at all possible, detach your primary economic activity from bigger ships, because you will grind to a halt when they do.

There are limits to the metaphor, but it’s pretty good at helping you focus on real-world results of your decisions made for non-economic reasons. In other words, don’t get trapped into thinking economic logic is the whole story, but be aware of the economic implications of your choices. Here’s one dirty secret: Things are all iced up because we have all bought into a common global system already without knowing it, and conceptual debt in one country tends to be honored in another. Any country that plays too independently will be isolated and caged like a predator. Much of what you are told is political is actually mere economic dispute. The global banking lords would rather you didn’t think about that.

I’m guessing when I suggest this economic ice age will eventually pass without destroying everything. It’s based on a couple of factors. One: I’m utterly convinced the Internet (in one form or another) will continue to exist into the foreseeable future. It’s the one thing that hardest to freeze in part because the most expensive part of it is controlled by folks who are likely to keep it alive at all other costs. If the whole thing became government property it would be a different story, but the nature of this thing means the backbone remains in private hands, and those hands would rather die than let it fall apart. The banking lords can’t afford to change it’s fundamental design and can’t afford to let it fail.

Two: Global mass shipping has almost stopped already, but there remains a very high traffic in small shipments and individual packages. Most economic chatter on the Net tends to ignore that factor. Everywhere you look this business continues, but I’ve yet to see any comprehensive analysis that takes it into account. In that sense it shares a lot with the black market; it’s hard to get accurate statistics on something that isn’t organized through any single choke-points. All the attention is on the big stuff that’s easy to track, but commerce isn’t dead just because nobody is chartering gigantic loads.

So, back to that metaphor, the current market reality is that whatever growth is possible will come in the area of smaller boats that turn and meet the tide more nimbly. The day of industrial giants is gone, unless they can learn to disperse operations over a number of smaller and responsive units. To the degree possible, find your market niche and work it hard. If you manage a big operation, be ready to ditch the old management philosophy.

I say this not because I’m some kind of genius management guru, but because I know how God operates in this world. He is forcing the world to return to His moral principles woven into reality itself. The capitalist-socialist paradigm was a big lie all along, but it was kept moving by sheer momentum and mass hypnosis. But Creation itself as cosmic moral principle has brought it to halt. The gollum was dead all along. What we see in terms of a global reset is not economic entropy, but God’s own nature at work prospering things as they come closer to His revealed moral character. The moral fabric of reality has the final say.

If you spend some time learning His Law Covenants, you can see through those details to His heart and you can begin to please Him by cooperating and conforming to Creation’s design. Pray and discern how that character should manifest in your context. Keep His Presence alive in your responsive obedience, always adjusting and trimming things to meet the moment. Take ownership of things He places in your hands and let Him control everything else.