Tuesday, June 16, 2020

You Can't Grow An Orange On A Laptop

After last night's pitifully mild eureka moment I thought I'd follow today by commenting on that LSE article a little bit more. It should then offer a nice segue into a post about housing. (I should really create tags for these posts so I can clump them all together).

The article stated;
If the Bank [of England] announces a further monetary policy stimulus of £200bn, that equates to £3000 for every person in the UK.
It then went on to state that this could be given to people in monthly instalments of £250 over a twelve month period.

I very much like the fairness of this idea. I also like the way it would stimulate the economy from the bottom up, and in proportion to the population of a given area. However, the obvious worry is inflation. Of course, you could argue that the Bank of England injecting money is inflationary anyway, but I would suspect that the unfairness of how it's generally injected now guards against this a little bit. If the money is just handed over to 'normal' people then all of a sudden those normal people buying bread, milk and everything else will be able to pay more for those things. Meaning prices will automatically rise. With the current way of doing things the majority remain just as poor as they were the day before though, so basic everyday commodities are kept in check.

This is why I'd probably be much more cautious were I to begin introducing something like this. I'd really trickle the money in. Ideally in quantities where the recipient barely notices the change in their bank balance. So as not to radically change spending habits. Then gradually over time build things up from there.

To be resourceful ...you need resources

This brings me on to the main point of this blog post. It's all well and good giving people more money, but if the real world situation doesn't change then inflation will just eat away that extra cash. People need actual resources. To be resourceful you need resources, and money isn't really a resource in the true sense. It's more just a way of measuring real world resources.

The most important resource in my opinion is space. Not outta space :) ..just normal regular space. To build or create something you need a space to do that in. To grow food you need space to plant things. To set up shop you need premises to do that. This is the major thing that people lack though, so to make the economy flourish we need to find a way to allow people the space to do these things.

I always compare it to online creativity. There is infinite online or digital space, and consequently we have a blossoming of digital produce. Just look at all the memes, music, YouTube videos, etc that get created on a daily basis. We have a super-abundance of digital produce. An enormous harvest.


Society has been given online/digital space and tools and it's been incredibly industrious and productive with them. Take blogs alone for instance. There are thousand of people going to the effort of doing what I'm doing right now. I'm ten a penny sadly (!) There's no shortage of it. You could read new blog posts every day and never run out.

Now imagine if people had the same opportunity to create when it came to producing food, clothing, furniture, etc. I'm sure if the opportunity was opened up we'd likewise have a super-abundance of produce. Especially when combined with the digital tools we have. Making things requires actual space though, you can't grow an orange on a laptop. You need real actual space and real actual resources ..and this is what most people do not have access to.

We need a way of giving people space - ideally rent free. If not, then super cheaply. After all, it's not like we don't have it. We have empty high streets galore (even more so after Covid). We have de-industrialised areas lying stagnant and derelict. Printing money alone will not link industrious and creative people with these spaces.

And when I say give people space I don't necessarily mean it has to be for a rigid 'specific reason' either. Or even to specifically make money, such as opening up a shop for example. I mean just allow people the space to do stuff, anything - create, play around, experiment. Whether for their own pleasure or need, or for some more ambitious reason. Exactly as we do with online space. Minecraft these derelict areas. Sure, some people will idly waste time, as happens online, but many will do things that make us infinitely richer. Mirroring the online wealth and abundance we produce.

QE + space = oranges

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