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What is an economic policy?

An economic policy is the answer to the following three questions:

Notes

The approach we have presented is loosely similar to economic planning. However, economic planning is usually associated with a socialist (generally authoritarian) government model or a hybrid model in which it attempts to compensate for the shortcomings of the market economy.The government model presented in the book 'From Capital to Reason' is entirely different from these two models. The economic policy we present is a more academic, sociological, rather than governmental approach; it aims more to highlight the shortcomings (unmet needs) and archaisms (excessive extraction relative to the result achieved, non-optimal transformation methods). It thus refers to chapter 10 of this book 'The Journal of Strategic Reflections' and specifically to its last paragraph 'External effects on the ecosystem'.

The imports listed in the second question assume that more needs to be produced or extracted than is necessary for the population considered, in order to be able to trade with the outside.

The problem of the distribution of wealth

The inextricable problem of the distribution of wealth in our modern societies stems from the fact that goods and services are produced without knowing in advance their destination. More precisely, their purpose is 'to be sold' and not 'to satisfy such a need identified for such a group'.In other words, there is a market postulate: if a product is sold, it is because it is useful and therefore we were right to produce it, and if it is not useful, it will not be sold, and therefore will no longer be manufactured. However, this postulate is simplistic because it assumes, absolutely false in an abundance society, that what we buy corresponds to the answer to reasonable needs.To simplify, a market economy produces, on one side, poor people who cannot decently satisfy their actual needs, and, on the other side, irresponsible people who waste resources.

As soon as we consider the economy as a system for producing wealth, whose objective is growth rather than the satisfaction of identified needs, we create by our very thinking the problem of distribution, and the intense social conflicts that go with it, as for example the problem of the financing of pensions in France in 2023. However, this problem, which generates a high level of violence, conflict, dissatisfaction, and ultimately threatens national cohesion, does not exist in the real world: it is just a by-product of a wrong, dogmatic, out-of-reality vision of the concept of economic policy.

Go deeper

Read the second part of the book From Capital to Reason, which describes the proposed production organization.Also see chapter 17 'The funding system' for the funding part.

Next to the book From Capital to Reason, whose method has not yet been implemented on a large scale, Lean production, as described in the book 'The Machine That Changed the World', is the production method closest to the proposed one and has been successfully implemented on a significant scale. Its features are a focus on problem management, the revaluation of directly productive individuals and their training to become more versatile and improvement-oriented, reducing stocks, producing according to orders, and stabilizing demand through a different commercial approach. This stability, in turn, allows for lifelong employment.Caution: regarding Lean production, read the book 'The Machine That Changed the World' and nothing else, because the term has been distorted by the multitude of consultants who claim it, even to the level of the Wikipedia article, which is one of the very few poor articles on this otherwise remarkable platform.