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ILLUSIONS OF ECONOMY
Economics is defined as an activity that is aimed at meeting the needs of people, and Illusion, as the result of an erroneous interpretation of reality, past or future. Two words, two concepts that seem to be far enough apart from each other, but they became the title of this article ...
An illusion is a delusion, deception or self-deception, which, due to the nature of a person, does not always bring BAD for himself and those around him. So, at the very beginning of goal-setting, setting an unrealistic goal, unrealistic timing of its achievement, overestimating one's strengths and capabilities, relying on favorable conditions, etc., is not always a mistake. It is this illusion, often defined as an ambitious plan or goal, that becomes the mobilizing reason for the creation of the future. A reasonable purposeful person, team or enterprise, having created such an illusion, will always find rational meaning, create new methods and technologies, obtain valuable intermediate results, correct their movement towards the goal, in the end, stop or change it, but always take a step forward. A significant part of what was created by man became possible due to the scale and controversial feasibility, read illusory, the initial goal: flying in the sky like a bird, swimming under water like a fish, flying into space like ... a MAN. Despite this role of illusion in the progressive development of mankind, it cannot be considered the rule, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, illusion is the source of subsequent disappointment.
Illusion, as an inadequate perception of reality, is not defined as a kind of deviation in a person's worldview, but a personal delusion is not considered dangerous for the person himself and for his environment. But in fact, it is the distorted perception of reality, the substitution of reality with fiction, fiction, visibility, imitation, a flawed copy, that becomes the reason for ignoring really existing objects, concepts and phenomena, their capabilities and their position. Who among us has not overestimated ourselves, abandoning the real today, for the sake of an invented image and an invented future life, which will NEVER be. How many resources are spent for the sake of the unrealizable, how many small but real joys of life are thrown into the furnace of a steam locomotive, the steam from which with zero efficiency escapes into the atmosphere, but a person obsessively pushes this colossus into an unrealizable future along the crooked rails of being changed in his head. The substitution, and often the scrapping of one's real life, for the sake of illusions, becomes the main problem of a modern person living in a world of temptations, where the hunt for his desires, motives and worldview is open.
The existence of illusions, their creation and advancement, has been and is taking place always and everywhere, where there is a relationship between people, each of which is very often in an invented image for himself and plays a certain role for others. So any woman, adding to herself, to an ordinary person, the appropriate outfit, heels, smell, jewelry, makeup, jewelry, a special look and a special position of the body, creates an image that makes her completely extraordinary and special, by virtue of which she gets control of actions another person - that man who needs just such an illusion. You will find examples of other "everyday" illusions yourself. But personal illusions that lead to the wanderings and disappointments of one person are not so terrible as large-scale illusions created to order for consumption by the masses of people. These "large" illusions are much more dangerous and sometimes tragic. Take, for example, the illusion of the people's chosenness or the exclusivity of the nation, which gave humanity the tragedy of fascism, which destroyed a huge number of completely innocent people, in this someone else's invention, people, and of course the fascists themselves, who threw their lives to defend the invented superiority. Fascism is a utopia, in which, first, you have to make yourself believe, then your fellow tribesmen, then other "inferior peoples", and in case of their disagreement, make them "believe" through the destruction of their majority, followed by the purge of their own their own ranks from the unworthy, who do not want to be beasts that eat people. Fascism is the most complete absurdity and emptiness, as well as the belief that "I" is the smartest, the most worthy, the most ...
Creation of favorable conditions for the existence of human illusions, a component of the modern world, by looking critically at which, one can distinguish reality from fiction, part of which is illusion from the economy: the illusion of prosperity, development, economic stability, security, security, welfare, equal opportunities and any other permanent or temporary illusions that lead us into an invented world of well-being and "real" meaning.
The market economy aims to sell what is produced and to produce what is sold. Maximum freedom of market relations allows the manufacturer and the seller to use any legal means of organizing sales and increasing the sales value, including through stimulating demand, including through building illusions for buyers. To create such illusions, more than half of the cost of the goods, which the buyer paid, can go away, that is, in fact, it turns out that the buyer himself hired specially trained expensive specialists and paid them to force him to buy this product, which he probably does not need, during in any case, for that kind of money. In the virtual space, such a share can reach 100%, which completely goes to the creator of both the virtual product and the illusion of its necessity.
Let's consider another version of the illusion from the economy - the money illusion. The money illusion is the perception by people of the nominal value of money as its real value, without taking into account the current purchasing power of money. People primarily operate with the denomination indicated on the bill rather than the amount of goods that can be exchanged for money at a given time. In a market economy, the purchasing power of money always falls due to the objective necessity of the current system, and most often the growth of wages does not keep pace with inflation, which leads to impoverishment of the population from year to year, although this situation is not the rule, but the money illusion from this is not disappears.
The illusion of an economic crisis, as a kind of misfortune or tragedy, often serves as an excuse for the "difficulties of the current period" in the economy, in economic policy. In fact, such an attitude to the economic crisis is counterproductive, depressing and often destructive for that part of the population that cannot or does not want to come to terms with the existing reality and reconcile the "scenario" of their life with this reality. A local or global economic crisis, in the current market economic system, is a constant phenomenon, like inflation or unemployment, and to the same extent regulated and predictable, and therefore simulated. The economic crisis is not something unique like the Big Bang. The economy is a product of humanity, which has a huge experience of life with it and in it, a lot of economic statistics, scientific research, etc. Organizing people's lives without economic crises does not seem to be something impossible, at least, having the tools of today, which are often used to create illusions.
Any economy, like life itself, is filled with illusions, which, like any other consumed product, should be in moderation. Economic illusions in a rapidly changing modern world are objective things and cannot, or rather should not be perceived as something bad. Illusion is always very beneficial for one of the parties, and often for both: "Ah, it's not difficult to deceive me, I myself am glad to be deceived (AS Pushkin is a great Russian poet)." Economic illusions, like political ones, are precisely the realities that should be considered as an obligatory component of the evolution of human society.
Modernity, in its noticeable part, is the involvement of everyone, including the interpreters themselves, into a kind of performance, where the promised positives, the declared goals and ways to achieve them are an illusion, but an illusion that is convenient, and often desired by the majority who are consumers, including grateful consumers of illusions. Through today's illusions, we go into the future, which is unknown to us, since our idea of it, and we in this, have already been convinced more than once - an illusion.
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2020.06
2021.10
Article in ORIGINAL language HERE
