The Collective Wave of Human Desire

Economic Desire and Demand

Buying and selling are rooted in desire.

• If you desire a product, then you buy it. If many people want it, then they buy all of it, leaving a scarcity which raises its price. We say it is a ‘hot’ item.
• If you do not desire a product, then you don’t buy it and it stays unsold. This leads to an oversupply which lowers its price. We say the market has a ‘cold’ reception to it.

The rise and fall of prices in an economy therefore reflect the changing desires of the people, manifesting as their demand. This is more obvious in democratic countries where prices can rise and fall dramatically.

Supereconomics deals with the changing waves of demand in order to match them with supply as quickly as possible.

• Today you might want ice cream.
• Tomorrow you might want hot coffee.

Economic systems must make sure that ice creams and hot coffees will be available and affordable when you desire them.

Waves of Desire and GDP Growth

The collective wave of desire of society is most easily seen in the following:

• stock and commodity prices
• foreign exchange rates
• cryptocurrencies (as long as they are market-driven)

We can say that:

• peaks in prices represent a time of high desire for that stock or product
• troughs are time of low desire*.

Sometimes you want a thing, sometimes you don’t. But normally, the number of your desires increase through time. This is unless you are going towards the end of your life, when the energy to achieve desires naturally wane. In a society, this collective desire-waning manifests as chronic deflation, as seen in Japan which has a declining population.

However, since the 2008 financial crisis, the global economy has not risen as fast as before even if the global population has kept on increasing.

For example, global GDP growth from 2009 to 2019* has only been 2.75%.

• High population growth Pakistan was at 4.1% GDP growth
• Low population growth Japan was at 0.25%

The minimum GDP growth after the Financial Crisis should have been 2.9%, and ideally a little under 3.4% which is the average from 1998 to 2008. This is to account for the higher oil prices from 2009.

This means that the collective desire of humans has not risen. This contradicts its natural behavior. Moreover, you’d expect that the global economy to be booming since oil prices are low at around $45 [September 2015].

Therefore, there must be something artificial that is hindering the natural desires of humans.

We can expect an unnatural suppression of desire in authoritarian countries like North Korea or Cuba. But the rest of the world is supposed be democratic. So what is unnaturally causing low economic growth globally?

The Ideas from Neoclassical Economics are Blocking The Natural Wave

The Marginal Revolution overturned Classical Economics (which Supereconomics is reviving), and introduced ideas that led to the following corrupted concepts from Neoclassical Economics:

• Profit Maximization and Equity Trading in Microeconomics
• Liquidity Preference in Macroeconomics

These ideas then created policies that were imposed on all, resulting in problems for all:

Even if an entrepreneur wants to borrow money to create a new product that satisfies the emerging needs of the people, he is subject to interest rates that is decreed by financial authorities.

Before the invention of open-market operations, interest rates were decided by the actual market. Each bank would have a different interest rate depending on its capital stock and the repayments of its borrowers.

For example, Adam Smith cites the Ayr Bank which lent at a low 5% interest when the prevailing rate was 6-8%. This caused businessmen to flock to it, causing the 1772 credit crunch *.

Classical Economics before the 1870’s did not have profit maximization as a doctrine. This is why Panics and Great Depressions did not happen. Instead, companies shut down naturally whenever:

• they could no longer sustain their operations
• they were bubbles themselves

For example:

• the too-big-to-fail mercantile companies like the East India Company naturally closed down without dragging ordinary British to unemployment or poverty
• the South Sea Bubble led to the crisis for private investors only

This is different nowadays when whole countries get dragged down by some isolated action such as the peddling of collateralized debt obligations by a few bankers. But in the 18th century, the national economy was affected by wars, such as the Seven Years’ War, and not by bankers.

So How Do We Get Rid of the Bad Ideas from Neoclassical Economics?

Since waves are continuous, they cannot be removed, but only ’toned down’.

Ideas on the other hand can be dislodged just like particles. Since particles are dislodged by other particles, then the bad ideas of profit maximization and equity trading can be pushed out by more sustainable ideas that are in line with Nature such as:

These ideas are part of the Four Laws of Value, which is the foundation of Supereconomics, and the concept of the society-organism, which is the foundation of Supersociology.

• Chapter 2 will give a basic overview of the society-organism
• Chapter 3 will explain the metaphysics of value
• Chapter 4 will explain the Four Laws