The Garden

If you follow what the press has to say about our current economic problem, you might get the impression that the government is the only entity that has the capacity to offer any kind of solution to the problem. Given that the scale of the problem is so large, it is often believed that you need an entity proportionately large to correct the problem. Since the U.S. government is likely the single largest organization in the country, it is therefore appropriate for the government to take action when economic problems, like our current one, arise. I would like to challenge this belief and offer that instead it is the actions of the “every-day” person that carries most of the corrective power in circumstances such as these, and suggest that interventions by the massive government actually serve to inhibit, or subjugate, the corrective power of the general citizen.

Given that the economy is little more than the organized interactions of producers and consumers, it is easy to consider that the average citizen is actually quite powerful with respect to impacting the state of economic affairs. Each citizen is both a potential producer and a potential consumer in the economy. It is therefore inherent within each person the capacity to make choices that affect the larger economic whole. As a potential producer, one has the option of how to choose to create value in the economy—i.e., one can choose where and how to work. The better one is at producing things of value in their chosen field, the better off the economy as a whole becomes because of this influx of value into the economy that this person’s work has provided. Likewise, as a potential consumer, one has the option of how to choose to reward or encourage the creation of value in the economy by others. This consumerist power can determine what sorts of goods or service are considered valuable by the society, and provides an incentive for others in the society to produce them. Both of these powers are intrinsic to the citizens of a free-market society, but limited in the government.

The extent to which a citizen chooses to be a producer of value is largely determined by that individual’s personal choice. That is, one has the power to choose whether they will activate their ability to create value or not. One could have all the ability in the world in one productive area, but if they choose not to use it, the economy as a whole derives no benefit. It is therefore up to each of us to choose whether we will exercise our fullest abilities in the production of value in our economy. The government does not have the capacity to activate this potential within each of us at will, nor can it replicate our productive capacities without us. All the government has the power to do is seize the value created by its citizens and redistribute that value according to its own ideals—the government does not have the power to create things of value on its own. The government is simply neither designed nor equipped for the creation of original value. It is therefore odd to turn to the government when production is declining, as it currently is with respect to the rising unemployment rate. If, somehow, people are choosing not to produce things of value in the economy, the only remedy to that problem is for people to choose to resume producing things of value—whatever that choice entails. If people find that they are incapable of producing things of value despite their desire to do so, then there may be a serious problem involved, but there is nevertheless nothing the government can do about that. The government cannot invent new ways to produce value—that is not the government’s nature or function. It is, as it always has been, up to the ingenuity of the individual to find ways of producing value in a society. This is where we should be putting our focus; not on the government who is utterly impotent in this area.

Further, as I mentioned, each individual is also a potential consumer. This means that each of us can impact our economy through the purchasing decisions we make in our daily lives. This again is often overlooked in the mainstream’s discussion of the economic situation. Even though there may be limitations to the purchasing options that each of us has in some areas, overall we still have a lot of power in our hands when we make decisions about where to spend our value. The government does have more power to affect this aspect of the economy than it does the productive side because the government has the ability to take your purchasing power away from you and give it to someone else. However, the extent to which the government does not intervene in a citizen’s purchasing decisions is the extent to which that citizen can impact the state of the economy. If one were to feel that the manufacturing of goods in America were a valuable thing in the economy, then the more one chooses to buy American products the more American products will likely be produced. If, however, one chooses to buy Chinese products instead, for example, this will consequently diminish the extent to which American products are likely produced. Consumers, therefore, have a significant responsibility in determining the fate of their economic system and thus ought to be considered in times of economic turmoil.

The emphasis on government solutions is too simplistic in my opinion to adequately address the nature of our economic situation. We ought to think more carefully about how we spend our disposable incomes and attempt to shoulder much of the responsibility for the state of our economy rather than sluggishly pass the responsibilities off to the government. We are both the producers and consumers of value in or society and nothing will change that.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 19:41 and is filed under Ranger News Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.