Economic Basics
November 22, 2024
“THE basic cause of the disintegration of what is left of civilization, is philosophic. The first essential for regeneration is an acceptance of the truth that the economic system exists to serve the individual; that the true purpose of production is consumption; that the benefits of technology should be passed to the individual in the form of greater leisure time in which he can devote himself to self-development. The policy of ‘full employment’ is rooted in the anti-Christian philosophy that the individual exists to serve the economic system, and that any policy which enables the individual to obtain greater access to the abundance of the universe with less work as generally understood, should be rejected on the basis that ‘something for nothing’ is bad for the individual. The philosophy underlying this viewpoint is that the individual cannot be trusted with freedom. The actual or potential abundance available for the individual is in fact ‘something for nothing.’ With the application of discovered truths to the abundance of the universe, the amount of human energy being applied to production, compared with other forms of energy, is but a decreasing fraction.”
—- The ‘Achilles Heal’ of the Conservative Movement, Eric D. Butler (1968)