New on Wordly Explorations: The market - a solution to what? Part 2

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Creative - of course you are

By Fred Shivvin

A pandemic is a lesson in living with reality. It will be a hard lesson, there will be grief and heartache.

For many across the world, the Covid-19 pandemic means financial and health insecurity. Fear of disease and death is compounded by loss of income or housing, and accompanied by unease about governments seeking only to seize more power.

For many of us in Australia right now, though, we are simply stuck at home. After the initial anxiety spike, the panic buying and the grief of ruined plans, we find ourselves facing a new reality of being in the one place, all the time, without our usual activities and distractions.

Those of us away from the 'front line' of Covid-19 have a sudden excess of time. It feels strange. 

I think this strange feeling is the lack of opportunity to consume.  

Snipped from the socials

Despite being relatively safe, having free time and a lack of opportunity to shop can pose a profound personal threat. It hits hard at our personal identity as a consumer. Some are struggling to cope, and calling for other people to put themselves at risk to allow them to buy things and services. They call it 'liberty'; I call it 'fear of facing who I am without shopping'.

But we could instead try to learn from this sense of threat to our personal identity based on what we buy.

We have a rare opportunity to reclaim our personal identity as creators. Making things is a fundamental human activity, but something few of us now do, apart from perhaps an occasional craft activity.

But, I don't just want us to reclaim this inherent aspect of our humanity. 

I want us to reclaim the concept of creativity itself.

Economist, a word that requires an adjective

By Mike Lundy

The journalist was interviewing the Prime Minister about a government proposal for boosting jobs. The proposal had no modelling, no risk analysis, no costings - no detail in fact. She asked him how he knew the program would work without any of this basic groundwork being completed.

She asked, 'Why should the Australian people trust your word?'

'Well’, he replied, 'because I am an economist, Leigh.'

In the political fog that makes it difficult to find facts and detail, this comment struck me as particularly alarming. I think the prime minister thought he was providing a genuine and satisfactory answer.

It's not any sort of answer actually. It just raises a whole lot of questions.

When a politician justifies their view by saying they are an economist, does that mean their views are correct? Why is economics a matter of 'trust'? What expertise are they claiming? What gives an economist authority to comment on the hugely complex economy of a developed industrial country? Why does the prime minister think that an individual economist can forecast the outcomes of fiscal policy, even without doing any modelling? (And I have to add, can the prime minister even claim to be an economist? Studying a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in geographic economics - a subfield of geography - and then never working in the field hardly makes one an economist. But then, that's probably the least pressing of the questions I have about this field.)

Let's start at the beginning: what is an economist anyway?

Cheap

By Mike Lundy

Here's a versatile adjective: cheap. Depending on its context, it can be positive or negative. 

In its positive meaning, it can be a compelling adjective: 'Buy this now! It's too cheap not to!' In our western retail stores, the signs screaming 'SALE' are so ubiquitous we hardly see the word, but once '50% OFF' is added, now that's definitely a bargain! 'Those t-shirts are so cheap; I think I'll get three!'

But in its negative meaning, cheap is a dismissive adjective: 'Let's get something else, that fabric looks a bit cheap'. It can also be a critical adjective: 'He's so cheap, he never pays his share', or 'Talk is cheap; I want to see action'.

Interesting. What does the dictionary have to say about the adjective cheap?

1. charging or obtainable at a low price; b: purchasable below the going price or the real value;
2. a. of inferior quality or worth; b: stingy; c: contemptible because of lack of any fine, lofty, or redeeming qualities
3. gained or done with little effort

So, when it's about the price we have to pay for something, cheap seems positive. Yet when cheap refers to the quality of a product or a person's behaviour, it's not good at all. The negative implication of cheap is that something important is missing, something that we expect to be present: quality, generosity or effort.

Why do we have a different connotation altogether when cheap refers to the amount of money we have to pay? If we look a bit closer, we will see that someone important is missing then too.