Dollar Hegemony Against Sovereign Credit

Prior to the coming of capitalistic industrialization, the market played only a minor part in the economic life of societies. Even where marketplaces could be seen to be operating, they were peripheral to the main economic organization and activities of society. In many pre-industrial economies, markets met only twice a month. Polanyi argued that in modern market economies, the needs of the market determined social behavior, whereas in pre-industrial and primitive economies the needs of society determined market behavior. Polanyi reintroduced to economics the concepts of reciprocity and redistribution in human interaction, which were the original aims of trade. Reciprocity implies that people produce the goods and services they are best at and enjoy producing the most, and share them with others with joy. This is reciprocated by others who are good at and enjoy producing other goods and services. There is an unspoken agreement that all would produce that which they could do best and mutually share and share alike, not just sold to the highest bidder or, worse, to produce what they despise to meet the demands of the market. The idea of sweatshops is totally unnatural to human dignity and uneconomic to human welfare. With reciprocity, there is no need for layers of management, because workers happily practice their livelihoods and need no coercive supervision. Labor is not forced and workers do not merely sell their time in jobs they hate, unrelated to their inner callings. Prices are not fixed but vary according to what different buyers with different circumstances can afford or what the seller needs in return from different buyers. The law of one price is inhumane, unnatural, inflexible and unfair. All workers find their separate personal fulfillment in different productive livelihoods of their choosing, without distortion by the need for money. The motivation to produce and share is not personal profit, but personal fulfillment, and avoidance of public contempt, communal ostracism, and loss of social prestige and moral standing. This motivation, albeit distorted today by the dominance of money, is still fundamental in societies operating under finance capitalism. But in a money society, the emphasis is on accumulating the most financial wealth, which is accorded the highest social prestige. The annual report on the world's richest 100 as celebrities by Forbes is clear evidence of this anomaly. The opinions of figures such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are regularly sought by the media on matters beyond finance, as if the possession of money itself represents a diploma of wisdom. In the 1960s, wealth was an embarrassment among the flower children in the US. It was only in the 1980s that the age of greed emerged to embrace commercialism. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GF24Dj01.html

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