Commerce and Exchange

It is through commerce and exchange that today’s economy has evolved. This economy is driven by humankind’s egoism, which strives to profit, even at the expense of others. One person may be a farmer, another may be a manufacturer, and by connecting, they both benefit. This is why we have built all our connections in parity with our egoistic nature. In the past, it involved the exchange of products without the use of money. Later, we learned to use coins of precious metals, and then paper notes that represented the financial value of the one who issued them.

Today the majority of money transfers are actually virtual. The transfer is made from one account to another via computer networks. The Information Technology Revolution has dramatically changed human relations, and the virtualization of relations is expressed through finance and money markets, as well.

It follows that the economy is a type of compromise between individual egos and the necessity to connect in order to be sustained by one another, by some sort of general consent. Clearly, the global economy has much to do with power games and politics, as well as with moral considerations, that are not taken into account in the paradigm of classical economics.

Instead, economics deals with contrasting elements and is not subject to the physical laws of Nature. Rather, it is our own creation, expressing one means we use to survive as a species, and how we approach certain relationships. This is of paramount importance, because instead of trying to force an outdated paradigm on ourselves, we could fashion a different one that expresses the change in human interaction that exists in today’s interconnected world, in the interdependence and reciprocity of economic and social ties, which are only tightening.