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What is an economic policy?

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

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What are the needs of the different members of our community that we wish to meet?

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What will we have to take as a minimum from the environment, in terms of renewable and non-renewable resources, and what will we have to import?

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How will we transform the basic elements (listed in the second question) into the different products and services (listed in the first question)?

Remarks

The approach we have presented is loosely related to economic planning. However, economic planning is usually associated with a socialist model of government (generally authoritarian), or a hybrid model in which it attempts to compensate for the inadequacies of the market economy.
The model of government presented in the book 'From Capital to Reason' differs completely from these two models. Economic policy as we present it is an approach that is more academic, sociological, than governmental; it aims more to highlight insufficiencies (unmet needs) and archaisms (excessive levies in relation to the result obtained, non-optimal transformation methods). It therefore refers to chapter 10 of this book 'The journal of strategic reflections' and more particularly to its last paragraph 'External effects on the ecosystem'.

The imports listed in the second question imply producing or taking more than what is necessary for the population in question, in order to be able to trade with the outside world.

The problem of wealth distribution

The inextricable problem of wealth distribution in our modern societies arises 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 an identified need of such an identified group'.
In other words, there is a market postulate which is: if the product is sold, it is because it is useful and therefore it was right to produce it, and if it is not useful, it is will not be sold, and therefore will no longer be manufactured. However, this postulate is simplistic because it makes the assumption, absolutely false in a society of abundance, that what we buy corresponds to the response to reasonable needs.
To simplify, a market economy produces on the one hand poor people who cannot decently satisfy their actual needs, and on the other hand irresponsible people who waste resources.

As soon as we consider the economy as a system of production of wealth, whose objective is growth, and not the satisfaction of identified needs, we create from scratch the problem of distribution, and the intense social conflicts which are linked to it, such as for example the problem of financing 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 an erroneous, dogmatic vision, outside of reality, of the notion of economic policy.

Go deeper

Read the second part from the book From capital to reason which sets out the organization of the proposed production.
See also chapter 17'The financing system' for the financing part.

Next to the book From capital to reason whose method has not yet been implemented on a large scale, the Lean production, as described in the book 'The machine that changed the world' is the closest method of production that has been successfully implemented on a significant scale. Its particularities are the emphasis placed on problem management, the revaluation of directly productive people and their training to enable them to become more versatile and sources of improvement, the reduction of stocks, production driven by orders, the stabilization of demand through a different commercial approach. This stability in turn allows for lifelong employment.
Warning: regarding Lean production, read the book 'The machine that changed the world' and nothing else, because the term has been misused by the myriad of consultants who claim to have it, up to the level of Wikipedia article which is one of the rare very bad articles on this remarkable platform.

 

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