Rethinking Money and Finance: Economics, Morality and Common Sense

The economic activity of our society is destroying the viability of life on earth and enabling a minute minority to accumulate vast wealth and power while much of the population struggles with poverty or insecurity. We have an inhumane economic system which is rooted in ideas propagated either by those who stand to gain from the system or by well-meaning people who have been convinced that the current system represents centuries of evolutionary progress. There is nothing inevitable about the way a society chooses to organize its economic transactions. We need to free our minds from the prison cell of dogma to which we have consigned ourselves so that we can reform our economy before it is too late. This book is the fruit of a journey into the wonderland of economics and finance which began after the financial crisis of 2008. It explores the assumptions behind mainstream economic theory both as it is taught in academia and as it is practiced in government and business. It is rooted in the conviction that economic theory like political theory is a branch of moral philosophy rather than a science like physics or chemistry. It refuses to throw common sense out the window, but it bores into beliefs that are accepted as common sense to see what they really mean.