Transforming the Economic system — Buddha’s way

“My heart is too full to express my feeling; you know it, you can imagine it. So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them. I call those men — who strut about in their finery, having got all their money by grinding the poor — -wretches, so long as they do not do anything for those two hundred millions who are now no better than hungry savages. We are poor, my brothers, we are nobodies; but such have been always the instruments of the Most High.” — Swami Vivekananda

We are the instruments of the Most High to bring about the change. Its time to infuse spirituality into our economic system to help it transcend money and evolve into a better one. When religions were quarrelling about their gods and rituals, there came a man who brushed all theory aside and asked everyone to experience the truth. He taught a simple meditation technique that used the tools of this sense world to go beyond them, into the spiritual realm. He was Buddha.

Just as these great people like Buddha, Jesus & Rishi’s went beyond senses into a superconscious state, we can transform our economic system to go beyond money. We humans are a result of billions of years of evolution, but our economic system is what we have created recently, It should be relatively easier to transform it compared to the transformation of a man. So fear not the bold ideal and march on the path.

So, what is Buddha’s simple meditation technique ?

Buddha’s technique is to “objectively” observe the natural sensations in the body. He discovered that our craving and aversion for sensations are the root cause of human suffering. When we neither have craving nor aversion towards sensations then all sensations seem similar and reveal their true nature of impermanence. With deep focus , understanding and practice, Buddha went beyond the realm of senses. He became enlightened.

Drawing a parallel, we all know that it is the craving and aversion for “money” that causes suffering in the economic system — everyone craves for money and dislikes the amount of money the rich hold.

Enlightenment of the Economic system 
Lets see what happens if we apply Buddha’s technique to our economic system. Lets put our economic system into a meditative state, it is then bound to come out as a better one. An economy consists of businesses which employ workers and it runs on monetary transactions (It is money that it breathes and “Products & Profits-for-shareholders” it exhales). If there’s a business that observes “Money” objectively — A Buddha among ordinary businesses — An “Unselfish business” — then what happens ?

As Unselfish business & its employs won’t be craving for money, it would be a non-profit business (note: not a charity).

When profit is not the motto, there won’t be measures applied like today’s corporate’s to squeeze incomes of workers. An unselfish business takes money from customers only to survive. The survival money of a business is decided by how much money its workers want to survive. Since workers (who don’t crave for money) are left to decide their wages, it becomes a Cooperative , a worker owned enterprise or a “worker co-op”. What happens now ?

As a result, the prices of the products sold by a “Non-profit worker co-op”/“Unselfish business” will come down drastically. Decrease in prices increases demand — Basic economic theory. And just like the Vegan revolution, we are now understanding & spreading the message that “Profit making” is the root of evils in the system, which further increases demand for products from such a company and also demand for more such companies — Marketing costs decrease, word of mouth increases.

In case Profits are made — 
An unselfish business will pump back the profits to people in proportion to their purchase amounts. People can decide to keep the money, or can crowdfund a R&D project or an expansion of the company. Customers will have a say in company’s growth. A democratic model will evolve.

Big corporations will come crashing down unable to compete with these new systems. As more & more such “Unselfish businesses” grow, prices of products come down due to the inter-connectedness of businesses. The rich begin to lose value/status as even the poor seem to be able to buy goods for whatever little money they have. As this new brand of companies won’t care if someone gives more money, it will focus to serve people based on their needs, what does it mean? It means Markets will change.

Markets change -
Admission at Harvard is an example of a High demand commodity. It weeds out applicants based on certain criteria to select students that it wants to give admission to. Similarly, when the new league of Unselfish Businesses face more demand compared to their supply capacity, they will use certain criteria’s to distribute goods, and we can be sure that this criteria will not be “Money” — this disrupts entire infamous “Demand-Supply Curve theory” of capitalistic economic system.. it marks the death of old & beginning of a new system.

Ofcourse this is an over simplified explanation of a complex economic model, but once we take this “PATH”, things will fall in place. The path is to slowly remove the existing faults to reach the vision. The system will evolve & evolve until it achieves liberation from money.

“Proper attention to the finishing, strengthening, of the means is what we need. With the means all right, the end must come. We forget that it is the cause that produces the effect; the effect cannot come by itself; and unless the causes are exact, proper, and powerful, the effect will not be produced. Once the ideal is chosen and the means determined, we may almost let go the ideal, because we are sure it will be there, when the means are perfected. When the cause is there, there is no more difficulty about the effect, the effect is bound to come. If we take care of the cause, the effect will take care of itself. The realization of the ideal is the effect. The means are the cause: attention to the means, therefore, is the great secret of life.” — Vivekananda