The Level of Economic competence

There is a naturally existing economic attribute that can provide for the wants and needs of people across all generations. The level of economics is higher or lower depending on its degree of success. Human behavior is the determinant for that success. In spite of the immensity of the importance of economic competence, there is no credible study of the subject. In fact the subject has not been academically identified. Nor has the superstitious reason for hiding it.

Economic competence can be defined as first doing no harm, while kindly providing for the general welfare of all people across all geographical, and generational borders. It is the antidote for the poison of WIP. (war, injustice, and poverty)

The level of economic competence is the degree to which we are able to protect, and provide for humanity. Competence, of course, is dependent on participation. Participation is the key to success, and academic study is an important tool to shatter the superstitious idea that humanity can prosper by destroying the environment that it shares.

The reason this subject is necessary is the commonly held superstitious notion that economics can expel some people, without harming the rest. Economics, first does no harm. Inflicting harm is not economic. Producing benefit is economic. The level of economic competence is the amount of that benefit. A question to ponder is, how can we measure economic competence?

Money is produced as a way to value goods and services. Actually, what gives money its value are the benefits produced by the goods and services that are for sale. If economics is to be economical, the marketplace should produce no harm, and it should be beneficial. If there is no way to provide goods and service to some people, the level of economic competence is negative, harmful, not economic. Where economic competence is low, people have an individual incentive to harm others in order to help themselves. Harmed people often behave in ways that are both personally and publicly harmful. The harm is multigenerational.

People are often educated, or trained to become effective at dehumanizing others so they can, comparatively speaking, get ahead. Getting ahead can come with a huge price to other people, and other generations. In many cases it lowers the level of competence with unkind or disruptive conflict by creating harm, and reducing benefit.

Education, should at the very least, be a study of how people serve and protect each other. It should address the harm we do to each other, and to other generations. It should address how, each moment can be used as a new opportunity to help humanity. It should address that the past contains the lessons for the future. Failing to learn those lessons is what perpetuates the superstitious notion that there is some awesome authority that can give people permission to behave unkindly, to purposely remain stupid, and to create the illusion that economic incompetence is a behavior over which people have no control.

Failure is an opportunity to learn. Individually people instinctively learn this lesson by observation, by trial and error, and by empathy. Nature provides a compass, and it provides an incentive. Socially, people do not learn the lesson, easily. There is a need for a tool that doesn’t demonize human weakness, and failure. Understanding weakness and failure are an integral part of future success. There should be no financial incentive to hide them, and none to project them on other people. Economics is how people are able to improve their environment by learning to cope with weakness and failure. Economics is not a contest between people. It is environmental improvement for all people. 

Economic competence can not be measured by demonizing the act of learning. Its results will not be credible if they are presented by people who rise to power by hiding mistakes. Economic knowledge is acquired by finding mistakes and learning from them. The superstitious notions surrounding the blackhole in economic education hide economic harm by blaming the people who are harmed. This superstitious culture has been inherited and passed on for generations. It is harmful, and unnecessary.

People, as a species, improve their lives by improving the environment they share. Improving the environment helps them become competent, kind, and satisfied. It helps future generations, who inherit far more than genes. They inherit possibility. Possibility is environmentally dependent.

Using hurtful superstitious notions as an excuse to destroy our shared environment can not end well for people as individuals, or for the whole of humanity. Economics cooperates with nature to serve human needs. Superstition allows ignorance to hide inadequacy, inhumanity, and incompetence. The time to turn history from its tragic cycle is approaching. As brothers’ and sisters’ keepers people need to identify harm, and eliminate it. They need to learn how to measure success. People have the inherited the ability to pass steadily increasing economic competence to coming generations. This an opportunity to enhance the single environment that all generations share, but there is good reason to be expeditious because opportunity slips through a tiny window in time.