What is an economy?

Mar 18

Summary

In this episode, Carolina and Vidhya engage in dialogue with Justin Laing of Hillombo Consulting to understand the idea of an economy, which is foundational to building a solidarity economy. We delve into the way knowledge—or perhaps narrative—is produced within racial and gendered capitalism and the role evaluation plays for the owning and ruling class. We close with an invitation to imagine what knowledge work could look like, and what individual roles we each may play, in alternative economic structures.

If you would like to learn more about Justin, he can be found at www.hillombo.net, @hillombo on Instagram, and using his name on LinkedIn.

Episode 8 Transcript⁠

Notes

25:57: Members of the service industry work for a customer, usually providing intangible services such as transportation, healthcare, education, or hospitality and occasionally providing goods. The service industry is part of what industrialized capitalism refers to as the “tertiary sector” or “third tier” of the economy. Raw material extraction and manufacturing are the first and second tiers, respectively. It considers the knowledge economy part of the fourth sector or tier. See also Neoliberalism, the Knowledge Economy, and the Learner.

26:30: This year, The May 13 Group has been awarded philanthropic funding and received individual donations that it is using to pay the podcast’s producer, hosts, and guests for the work involved in potentially creating value for its efforts to build a solidarity economy. Justin is referring to the material relationship between himself as the guest and us as the hosts and producer. Its dynamics are shaped if not determined by the surrounding socio-economic structure that we are all participating in. The accountability dynamic between payer and individual payee is inherently asymmetrical.
1:06:31: “[T]he core functional process of capitalism is one of infinite growth that subsumes any attempts at resistance, escape, or socially progressive practice. Critique…is a part of capitalist processes, not an opposition to it.”
1:15:07: Quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi (ironically, it was actually by a trade union activist!)
1:17:13: In a market economy, private individuals own goods/ services, factories, and even land and labor. Prices are set by supply and demand, supposedly leading to efficiency. This system inherently favors those private owners. The drive for profit leads them to produce more than workers can collectively afford to buy, causing economic crashes and joblessness. While appearing to be a free market, without regulations on products, the environment, or working conditions, it forces workers to accept poor conditions at work and in their neighborhoods and/or low pay, creating inequality and instability.
1:18:12: A description of a speaker’s toast at a commemoration of the landing of the first settlers in New Zealand includes the first known use of the word “settlerism” and illustrates its structural meaning, wherein Pan-European diasporic identity is rooted in the standards of whiteness, in White supremacy, and in White nationalism—literal entitlement to land and labor:

[T]o the founders of the colony was due the praise of having added another jewel to the Queen’s crown. The thought was pregnant with reflection. What if New Zealand had not been saved? …. He would also pursue for a moment the sentiment of nationality…. [I]t was this feeling which had saved this Colony to Great Britain, it was this feeling which had saved the native race. He rejoiced in the feeling of brotherhood which was shown, by the intimate union of both races on the present occasion, because it afforded a proof that the settlers, when clothed with power, would use it towards the natives for good and not for evil. When he saw the natives not merely living among the Europeans, but living as settlers, driving carts, cultivating farms, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of settlerism, he considered the prosperity of New Zealand assured…. (New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 896, 4 March 1854; p. 3; emphasis added)