WHEN IS AN ECONOMIC SYSTEM TERMINALLY ILL ? A lot of commentators on economics fail to clearly indicate what is really wrong or what to do about it. Mostly we can read panic or, at best, disillusion between the lines. No one seems to know how to tinker with the machine to get it to run properly, for any significant length of time. Most will agree that the economic body is sick. Very sick. Even if the cure isnÎéÎ÷t evident, the symptoms are obvious. The question is whether the economic system is terminally ill, and if so when will it die ? That prognosis is avoided by nearly everyone. No one wants to think of the systemic demise and decay that are the logical prognosis based on the evident symptoms. There is a deep reluctance to declare the patient terminally ill. Subterfuge, evasion, outright deception, and all manner of crazy gestures of avoidance (even selling off a senate seat to make money) appear to lead away from the truth. It is as if the contention is being made that the doctors of economics cannot really know when the patient is terminally ill, and not simply in relapse, or malingering. What I can suggest is that we can know when an economic system is terminally ill. That is not as difficult as it seems. In essence we know what an economic system is terminally ill when it can no longer accomplish its primary task of providing for the real needs and reasonable wants of its members. Surely we can assess and quantify all of those factors, relatively easily. We can do short term and long term planning. It isnÎéÎ÷t that hard. If we need help there are thousands of economic planners who were churned out from Russian institutes of higher learning, who can project, quantify, and write plans in terms of needs and costs. We might easily have different ideas about what those needs are, but the basic science remains the same. Unfortunately in free enterprise there was no real perceived need for that type of economic planning. There was nothing to plan. It was all ÎéÎífreeÎéÎí. A ÎéÎífree for allÎéÎí. Well, we know that doesnÎéÎ÷t work very well, for anyone, except the opportunistic profiteer. Those latter will scavenge any remaining flesh from the dead corpse of the economic body, and still remain silent as to its demise, usually denying the fact as they devour the remains. We know that a major symptom of economic terminal illness is that there are more and more things that need to be done, to meet needs, but there appears to be absolutely no way to do them. No way to do them, that is, within the economic system. That being the case, we know that the system is terminally ill and will die. Prolonging its life, in that miserable condition, only compounds and increases the misery and suffering of those functioning within the system. So pulling the plug becomes a very real option. Without a different treatment protocol pulling the plug is the only option. Soviet, essentially Stalinist, communism reached that point and pulled their plug. The system died. The system that took its place is not the same system, in many respects, even if it is not western Capitalism either. So, pulling the plug, is not the end of the world, but it is excessively traumatic, and as was the case in the USSR, a lot of people suffered unnecessarily in the ÎéÎítransitionÎéÎí phase from a failed form of communism, with its failure somewhat accelerated, pushed to the wall by its Cold War opponents, and beaten while terminally ill. Well, thatÎéÎ÷s not a nice scenario. We donÎéÎ÷t usually beat terminally ill patients to death, even if we do consider pulling the plug. We usually see them as having some intrinsic value, rather than completely victimizing them on their death beds. If you donÎéÎ÷t pull the plug on a system, and if it is not being beaten to death while ill, that means that the system itself must be changed. It has to be treated according to a different, radical, protocol to cure it and save it from dying. It is no longer possible to accomplish what an economic system MUST be able to do WITHIN that system. Pulling the plug on it then stops the additional long term suffering that comes from spending trillions on what becomes a failing system of systemic life support, staving off the inevitable end but if we are good doctors of economic health we know that there are other modes of treatment that can preserve some of what is most valued as to the existing system. It wonÎéÎ÷t be quite the same. It will have to change how it does things, in order to continue to survive. It will have a different outlook after its close brush with death. (LetÎéÎ÷s not beat around the bush. I said ÎéÎíbrushÎéÎí with death.) The refusal of America to allow transplant of healthy organs from other donor systems has led to that terminal condition. The doctors and political relatives of the system have thus far refused willing donors from entering into the picture. Their offerings are not even allowed in the door. Of course, using some parts of the corpse, when life support is withdrawn, and building a viable economic organism remains another reasonable approach even if a bit Frankensteinian. Nevertheless, healthy organs from various species of communism and socialism were certainly available to America for transplantation. America refused those transplants. No one said that the whole system had to be murdered and replaced, but knowing that the system was starting to die was a good time to do some transplantation. Now, maybe it is not too late. Maybe transplantation is still an option. Maybe the system can receive a new heart. New lungs to give it a new voice, long silenced as to any critical and genuine appraisals of itself. A heart it most certainly needs. What else ? Well, the analogy only goes so far, but you get my drift. The existing system needs a heart. Its heart has already long gone into heart failure. Or maybe it was cut out, and that strange rhythm and pace, that beating within the system and so hauntingly audible outside of it, is in fact something artitificial. Other systems have ways to do what the system that is terminally ill cannot do That is the key point that we must consider. It is a pragmatic question, and it is not systemtically isolated or systemically limited. It considers all treatment options. It does not keep to a regimen that is clearly leading to systemic death.. The main point is that saving a terminally ill economic system requires introducing new ideas, the same as transplanting organs from donors saves a dying body, giving it a new chance at life. Maybe the system can be saved, but not as it is. It has decaying organs, dead organs, within it. It is becoming increasingly corrupted, toxic, deadly to itself. The system is poisoning itself the same way as a human body can poison itself when malfunctioning. It needs that new kidney, or liver. It needs those new ideas as to how to do what it cannot figure out how to do itself. It needs its poison removed from its bloodstream, or its money stream, in this case. So.... lots to do.... we could list thousands of mega projects in education, infrastructure, transportation, health care, housing, farming, energy production, and so forth. All very worth doing, to meet real human needs and reasonable wants. We have fewer trained, skilled workers in every field of endeavor than it would take, in several generations of man years, and woman years, to catch up on what ought to have already been done. So what is wrong ? Why is the system so terminally ill that it cannot do it ? Now, why cannot any of those projects get done ? Why cannot we do them now ? Because the economic system is terminally ill and that illness is stopping us from doing all those things that really should be done, and that are worth doing. A sick system that stops progress dead, is not worth maintaining in life support.You either do the transplantations of new ideas, from outside that system, or you pull the plug and bury it completely. Not much choice. If the doctors and the political relations meet and decide the system really has some chance of quality of life, then radical new treatments, including transplantation of radical new ideas, might save it. In fact we know those could, even if that means that the system might recover being quite different from how it was. That fear of it being so changed that it is difficult to recognize is definitely one reason why it is being kept terminally ill and not treated according to those radical and much needed protocols. Transplantation is not optional if the system is to live. In the long term there is no choice. Either pull the plug and let someone else take over completely, or transplant new ideas. ItÎéÎ÷s that simple. Cheers. Robert Morpheal This article may be copied, reproduced, distributed, anywhere, by any means, in any form, by anyone, and in fact anyone is encouraged to do so.