What is Fantasy Free?
Natures Gift to You
Nature provides all species with tools to survive. Most important of those tools is the ability to recognize opportunities and dangers almost instantaneously. Human beings have this tool also but are somewhat impaired when they try and use it. Human beings are unique. Through the use of their imaginations they can replace reality with something more pleasant. Survival is ruthless. Whatever is living stays alive by consuming other living things. The world is a giant game of dominance and subservience. Rather than stare these harsh realities in the face, imagination kicks in and replaces them with new notions that are more agreeable.
Whatever a human being sees or hears and then interprets what is encountered it passes through a prism of fantasy. Humans have the same gift as any other species except that fantasy must be dispensed with first. The gift of instant discernment is only present for humans when all is seen and experienced without fantasy or euphemisms.
Without the handicap that fantasies and euphemisms place on a person, any first impression is highly likely to be right on target.
Your Gift from Antiquity
The use of natural law is not part of traditional economics. In fantasy free economics natural law is an integral part of the study. What are the sources of natural law? Some natural law is passed down from generation to generation. A good example of that is the saying, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupt absolutely. People who have power are more corrupt than people with no power at all. A little power corrupts a little. Lots of power corrupts a lot.
Ancient scriptures such as the New Testament and Old Testament contain page after page of models of natural law. The natural law applies independently of any religious messages. The stories in these books are all natural law. Find a story in any of them that parallels a situation today and the outcomes will be parallel also. One reoccurring message in these books is that an act that has an immoral beginning will have a negative outcome. Remember the old communist saying, “The end justifies the means.” Natural law says the it is the means that determines the end. The old communist saying is not true and it has alway produced a disastrous outcome every time it has been tried.
Defining People and Institutions
How people and institutions are defined and how they function are not the same. Standard economics dogma treats both institutions and people as if they are exactly as they are officially defined. Fantasy Free Economics completely ignores official definitions and focuses completely on how the various entities function. The Federal Reserve Chairman is defined as an unbiased individual working tirelessly on behalf of the people of the United States. That is the traditional dogma. To Fantasy Free Economics, the Federal Reserve Chairman is the best politician among the nations economists. He is carrying out the agendas of the entities on which his power is dependent.
The president is assumed to be a stellar individual who makes every effort to do write by the citizens. He is deemed highly esteemed and worthy of respect. Fantasy Free Economics instead sees a sociopath trying to acquire more and more power. Fantasy Free Economics respects no one nor does it disrespect anyone. People and institutions are exactly as they function. Respect or disrespect is not relevant to studying people and institutions. They are simply what they do.
Accept Uncertainty
Fantasy Free Economics starts by accepting uncertainty as the way of the world. I am sorry but uncertainty cannot be disposed of. Insecurity is normal. Persons who live wisely can do smart things to minimize insecurity and uncertainty. Beyond a point, uncertainty and insecurity are always present. Risk is unavoidable.
We are all born facing unanswered questions. We know we are alive but we don’t know what life is. We all know we are going to die but we don’t know what death is either. It appears that everything we think takes place withing our heads but we really don’t know for sure. We can see hear and feel but that is because we we have facilities to interpret light ways and sound. How many other waves are there in the universe that we have no way of detecting? The list of unanswerable question could be endless. Fantasy Free Economics treats all of these uncertainties and doesn’t try to replace them with theories and notions which have no evidence. Uncertainty is accepted and no pretense is made that there is a such thing as certainty. The universe is simply accepted as it is without applying mental gymnastics to make it palatable to our sensibilities.
Fantasy free economics is relevant the aggregate or macro economics. Suppose there was a discipline where high level degrees were offered and honors were bestowed on those who said intelligent sounding words but still the discipline never solved a problem or offered a worthwhile trade off. Would it not make sense to question the basic assumptions on which that discipline was based?
There are a number of disciplines like that. Economics is one of them. Political science is another. Aggregate economics cannot be studied without looking at political science. Almost every aspect of macro economics is influenced by what goes on in government. The corrections I am offering with respect to economics also applies to the study of political science.
Erroneous Assumptions
There are reasons why economists are so seldom right about anything. Many of their assumptions are wrong. Their understanding of human nature is lacking. Fantasy Free Economics starts at the beginning while mainstream economists skip the most basic incentives human beings experience. The study of economics actually is the study of survival. Laws of dominance and subservience determine what people do with their time and energy. All else in economics is rooted in behaviors related to survival.
Standard economics dogma treats the individual as autonomous. All are assumed to be thinking independently. Representative government is seen as intact and operating flawlessly. None of these things are true. They are so untrue that acting on the basis that they are true guarantees failure. Failure is the most common outcome of economic models and theories. Take a fantasy free look.
The following quote is taken from the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence of the United States.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.“
This was a fine thing to say prior to writing the Declaration of Independence but it is not a law. It is largely treated like a law but it is a statement. It is true to the degree it works out to be verifiable in real life. Out of this and other writings come ideas that all men seek freedom. Is there any difference between the state of being free and having rights? Traditional economics dogma say the individual is a freedom seeking entity and is free from birth and from death. That sounds fine but is it true?
When a person is born a process of bargaining away freedom for comfort and security starts and continues through life. So a person engages in freedom for comfort deals throughout life. Freedom is more like collateral than it is a permanent way of existing.
Upon birth a human being enters a huge game of dominance and subservience and starts learning to how to play. It is a human instinct, just as it is in other animals to, try to live off the efforts of others before doing any work. This is clearly an adaption to make for efficient survival. Some people prove to be better at the dominance and subservience game than others. Once a person has moved as high as possible withing a group by dominating, that person trades his freedom for comfort and serves at that level. Serving at a high enough level can be quite rewarding. Once a person is well seated in a situation and the probability of surviving is about optimized the dominance and subservience game is put on hold. In mainstream economics, work is a first choice. In fantasy free economics, which is grounded in reality, work is always a second choice.
Living off the efforts of others is always the first choice. That is not always bad. More often than not, employers live off the efforts of others by paying employees. Slavery is not so good. Lobbying government is another way of living off the efforts of others. Stealing is another. The worlds most productive societies are arranged so that living off others is very difficult to do without paying them.
The Animal World
Economists normally don’t study the animal kingdom. Mankind is treated as a special entity bordering on Divinity. Laws of nature are deemed to apply only to lower animals. Fantasy Free Economics does not accept this limitation. Aggregations of human beings are studied exactly like all others would study packs of dogs herds or herds of horses.
How are People and Institutions Defined?
An Ivy League economist would treat the chairman of the Federal Reserve as a brilliant intellectual, full of honor whose only goal is to serve the country. Fantasy Free Economics defines people and institutions exactly as they function and ignores their official definition. While standard economics dogma says the Federal Reserve chairman is their on behalf of the citizens of the country and respects him as the countries most seller economist. That is not what he is. In truth, the chairman is the best politician among the countries economists. The Federal Reserve chairman is assumed to operating as an unbiased public servant. Nature provides only one universal incentive, self interest. Do public employees have an incentive to serve? No, the incentive to serve is purely imaginary. Self interest is part of nature. Service as a primary motive is a fantasy.
How it is that such smart people can be wrong day after day and year after year? One problem is that graduate level economics courses are economics in name only. What is really studied at these levels is actually accounting and has nothing to do with economics. Students leave college convinced that one number causes another, then go out into the real world and stumble all over themselves. Firm is the belief that if it is taught by a credentialed professor with a 165 IQ it is the gospel. Conventional economic thought assumes that decisions, both private and public are made in keeping with intellect. In the real world instinctive impulses drive most political decisions and contribute greatly to economic decisions. Leaders in government are even more controlled by instinctive drives than is the general population. People have an instinctive drive to serve a master and a bias toward giving government a significant role in allocating resources. Individuals are not capable of behaving in the ways necessary for a market economy to function efficiently. I am nothing close to an expert on human instinct but just recognizing that it is a constant influence, gives me a real edge in figuring out where the economy is headed. All of the esteemed who are oblivious to the relevance of instinctive behavior in economics are completely limited.
Today the public sector accounts for a huge portion economic activity. There is a huge misunderstanding concerning why government has grown so large. Of course, because of instinctive biases, growth of government is always hard to contain but there is more. After a long time there are dynamics in a democratic system that no one anticipated. Democracy provides a stage on which the 5% or so of the population with insatiable thirsts for power can compete. In the old days a person had to be born into royalty to be a king or a queen. Today the power hungry promise to have government do things for you that you can’t do for yourself. Politicians promise to use government to take resources from groups who have no political power and give the resources to constituents who support them. The competition for power is now so intense that you are even being promised things that government cannot do.
These are the types of dynamics that are determining economic outcomes in the modern world. What a person gets with an economics degree is an abridge version of the economic arena where the most significant influences are left out. A Federal Reserve Chairman can’t do anything right not because he isn’t smart but because he isn’t looking at anything that makes a difference.
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