Lucrum

Lucrum is a political economics essay written by Alexandros Economos in the year 4298. It would become the basis of the theory of popular economics.

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Wealth serves a wide multitude of common purposes, however, to speak of these is unnecessary. Wealth also holds a variety of less obvious purposes, which often go unnoticed and could be unintended. These less apparent, but more significant, purposes are to be referred to as functions for the duration of this letter.

             The first function of wealth is it’s function of social ordering. Wealth is a mechanism of determining, organizing, and perpetuating social hierarchies across Terra. To start, wealth sorts nations into hierarchies. In order to prove this, a correlation must be proved between a nation’s wealth and it’s status or power. This can be seen in the Terran Economic and Military Power Lists produced by the Zardic Institute of International Relations, in which all the nations of Terra are ranked according to economic strength and military power. Of the four nations ranked highest in the economic rankings (Dorvik, Istalia, Kazulia, and Vanuku), three (Kazulia, Vanuku, and Istalia) are also ranked highest in the military power rankings. For a nation to be wealthy is not necessarily for it to be powerful, however in all but a few instances the two variables, wealth and power, coincide with one another. Next, wealth’s function of social ordering occurs individually. A person’s social status and membership in a particular social class is almost entirely determined by wealth. All of society from top to bottom, nation to individual, is ordered, ranked, and organized by wealth.

             The second function of wealth is it’s ability to be both an individual and societal good. This quality intertwines the good of the many with the good of the one, and allows wealth to serve as an excellent device for the concealment of purposelessness in the individual. No man wants to be but a gear in the machine, but it is a fate that can be escaped only through paths of worse suffering. Therefore, wealth serves as a lubricant, constantly providing incentive for the individual to keep working toward a goal that is not his. That long strenuous hike toward nothingness, which goes by its ironically pleasant name, life, seems far less daunting when there are pleasurable and happy stops along the way, insignificant but achievable goals and false purposes, to sweeten the bitter taste of impermanence and irrelevance.

             The third, and most complex, function of wealth is its influence on human relationships. Wealth, particularly in a free market system, tends to divide society into various groups. The Metzists would argue that these two groups are the “haves” and the “have nots”, however this answer is to simple. Much more fitting is the categorization of society into three groups, the ambitious, the satisfied, and the indifferent. Those with enough wealth to satisfy their desires are satisfied, however not all wealthy people fall within this category. To be greedy is incompatible with being satisfied with one’s wealth. Those without enough wealth to satisfy their needs and desires, are divided into the two remaining categories. The ambitious desire and actively attempt to increase their wealth, and thus are active gears in the socioeconomic machine. The indifferent, often having once been ambitious but having become demoralized, simply remove themselves from the machine by dismissing their desire for wealth. Although it may sound immensely virtuous, life outside the simultaneously confining and protective walls of the machine is cold and unforgiving. A machine without gears and gears without a machine are equally useless, and when one considers the wasted productivity caused by their separation, indifference becomes not only an unwise choice, but a harmful one.

            To conclude, it is through these societal functions that wealth influences the world. Although the overt purposes of currency and wealth are important, it is necessary for policymakers to begin to consider these hidden functions when structuring economic policy. The only way for an individual to have purpose in this world is by serving as a gear in the greater socioeconomic machine. Therefore, it is necessary for economic policy to be inconsiderate of the interests of individuals or groups, and to be totally focused toward the advancement of a society as a whole. This strategy of popular economics is the pathway toward long term economic growth, and away from the closed mind economic policies of the present, which advance only the interests of particular individuals and groups and provide these small groups with merely temporary economic benefits.