Once upon a time, I was as an event videographer with just one client: the most prestigious economics think tank in Washington, D.C.
Which meant I got to be a fly on the wall for talks by Treasury Secretaries, Federal Reserve Chairmen, leaders of global financial institutions, and numerous experts on the Delphic details of monetary policy, currency fluctuations, and trade balances.
The one thing everyone at these talks had in common was that they all fervently believed in the inevitable triumph of global free market economics.
Well, I sure wish I could be a fly on their wall this week. I’ll bet dimes to donuts that their collective hair is on fire.
From a yogic perspective, the whole point of economics is to make it easy for people to acquire the necessities of material life so that everyone has time and energy to invest in their spiritual lives.
To this end, yoga philosophy offers us “spiritual economics.”
Spiritual economics is a combination of values and metaphysics in the form of a social structure that accommodates everyone according to their natural aptitudes (qualities) and inclinations (actions).
The key to its functionality is the division of social responsibility and personal opportunity into four general fields of work: the field of ideas, the field government, the field of resource management, and the field of artistry.
One distinctive feature of this structure is that each field of work has its own economic system.
Here’s how it works:
- The field of ideas, wherein we find intellectuals and academics, has a receptive economic system: people who work in this field are maintained by the other divisions of society through grants, honorariums, and practical gifts from students, patrons, and the government.
- The field of government operates on the basis of taxation; the government collects a flat tax on resource managers’ net profits and redistributes the tax revenue in accordance with everyone’s needs; socialism with private ownership.
- The field of resource management—farmers, business owners, and financial managers—is the source of society’s wealth. Within this field—and only within this field—business-to-business transactions and investments are conducted via principles of Capitalism.
- The economic system for the field of artistry, which includes everyone from ballet dancers to brick layers to software engineers, most closely resembles democratic socialism and ensures that everyone receives appropriate recognition—and compensation—for their work. Yoga means “union.” Literally: yoga is unionized
Spiritual economics doesn’t reject the idea of profit or material possessions; it attenuates profit potential for the sake of equitable wealth distribution (no billionaires), which provides everyone with a peaceful society that’s conducive to the cultivation of spiritual consciousness.
And it can work if virtuous heads of state (government) are guided by and accountable to possessors of wisdom (ideas), entrepreneurs (resource managers) pay their fair share of taxes, and employees (artistry) have the opportunity to choose the kind of work that fits their temperament.
Before the stock market crash in 1929, nobody imagined that the United States government would reform banking laws, create emergency relief, work relief, agricultural development, and union protection programs, provide aid to tenant farmers and migrant workers, or invent Social Security,
But that’s what happened.
Which tells us that another radical transformation of our socio-economic system is possible. And likely, given how history seems to be repeating itself.
It’s just a question of whether or not we can spiritualize our society’s culture enough to make spiritual economics a real possibility.
I think it’s worth trying.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k