Opinion - A Smart Economy

I've written elsewhere in brief how our national grid might ought to become a minimalist and a flexible structure that can take and leave local energy sources, that contribute to one stable energy pool with capacity for constant and directional power, locally. A smart economy might have a very similar framework.

Smart economics would then involve the distribution of goods beyond local and regional trading if those goods can not be produced at a high enough quality regionally. The goods that would be traded nationally and internationally would be only those required to maintain a constant supply for all of the world's people, that is, a constant supply of goods enabling each person to experience a high quality of life. All goods produced and traded under this revised smart trading plan would be made of fine ingredients and materials and be long-lasting, and of good design, whilst a limited number of goods, for instance, herbs and spices from India, would need to be traded internationally because of lack of those same quality goods elsewhere in the world, the majority of goods would be produced locally.

The result of this smart economy would be that all that is shipped and freighted is that which can not be grown or produced regionally and according to environmental not merely fiscal priorities.

Local economies would in turn be built to manage local resources strategically, allowing some resources to remain untouched, like fields and soils, for intervals, in order to conserve and rejuvenate ecosystems, and other resources to be utilized to capacity.

Locally, then, people with individual plots but working as a collective would become more and more practiced in conservation and rejuvenation of natural resources while, consequently, to protect what they have, realizing the potential for manufacture that doesn't harm their precious environment.

This would logically translate to conservation-minded attitudes in terms of international trade, as people would be rid of the dreaded habit of waste, and simultaneously able to acknowledge their true needs from the larger marketplace.

As we're still situated to the long view of Keynesian economics, combined with market liberalism, smart economics, like the above-mentioned scheme, can unfold naturally though it may involve the creation of initiatives that reflect the needs of the 21st century and the new minimalist framework.

Keynesianism, if studied in perpetuity, results in communities around the world each experiencing utopian living standards, and in accordance with social economics.

But many laws have led us toward, first, The Invisible Hand, of Adam Smith, and, second, the protectionism of John Maynard Keynes.

Legislation in England to control monopolies and restrictive practices were in force well before the Norman Conquest. The Domesday Book recorded that “foresteel” (i.e. forestalling, the practice of buying up goods before they reach market and then inflating the prices) was one of three forfeitures that King Edward the Confessor could carry out through England. But concern for fair prices also led to attempts to directly regulate the market. Under Henry III an act was passed in 1266 to fix bread and ale prices in correspondence with grain prices laid down by the assizes. Penalties for breach included amercements, pillory and tumbrel. A 14th century statute labelled forestallers as "oppressors of the poor and the community at large and enemies of the whole country." Under King Edward III the Statute of Labourers of 1349 fixed wages of artificers and workmen and decreed that foodstuffs should be sold at reasonable prices. On top of existing penalties, the statute stated that overcharging merchants must pay the injured party double the sum he received, an idea that has been replicated in punitive treble damages under US antitrust law. Also under Edward III, the following statutory provision outlawed trade combination.

In 1553 King Henry VIII reintroduced tariffs for foodstuffs, designed to stabilize prices, in the face of fluctuations in supply from overseas. So the legislation read here that whereas,

"it is very hard and difficult to put certain prices to any such things... [it is necessary because] prices of such victuals be many times enhanced and raised by the Greedy Covetousness and Appetites of the Owners of such Victuals, by occasion of ingrossing and regrating the same, more than upon any reasonable or just ground or cause, to the great damage and impoverishing of the King's subjects."Around this time organizations representing various tradesmen and handicrafts people, known as guilds had been developing, and enjoyed many concessions and exemptions from the laws against monopolies. The privileges conferred were not abolished until the Municipal Corporations Act 1835.

In parts of the globe, and in thinking circles, a smart economy has already become a code word. Tomorrow's smart economy still builds on the work of its predecessors but with common sense, humane legislation and commerce. It covets the The Invisible Hand and Keynesianism, according to their birthrights, adopts 21st century conservationism, and interestingly, based on this reading from Wikipedia, maybe there's still a place for, having looked a little further back, the practice of amercements and their extension, US antitrust law.

According to Wikipedia, “Amercements” are mentioned in the Magna Carta constituting the arbitrary practice:

"A free man shall not be amerced for a trivial offence except in accordance with the degree of the offence, and for a grave offence he shall be amerced in accordance with its gravity, yet saving his way of living; and a merchant in the same way, saving his stock-in- trade; and a villein shall be amerced in the same way, saving his means of livelihood--if they have fallen into our mercy: and none of the aforesaid amercements shall be imposed except by the oath of good men of the neighbourhood."

An interesting bit of civil law.

*To make the engine of a smart economy robust it would be helpful to continue to redistribute gold to developing nations via the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for their previous contributions to the world economy and modern economies. This way developing countries like Bolivia could, for instance, afford to develop an environmentally safe lithium batteries industry without hefty, outside business investments or development loans.

*The smart economy would preclude national and international entities, companies and individuals, from settling in and disrupting local and regional socioeconomics or operating in any way that would supplant local and regional socioeconomic gains and interests.

Competition law. (2013, February 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:16, February 10, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Competition_law&oldid=537485821