First draft just to put it out there …

Metaphysics may appear to be about as far as you can get from the world of recycling and industry. I want to argue here that in fact it is essential to get our metaphysics straight if we are going to have an appropriate response to developing a circular economy.

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Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which explores the underlying reality of everything – closely linked with ontology; and we will need to dip into epistemology – how we know anything.

Our understanding of what it is we are dealing with will radically shape the way we deal with it.

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Let’s start with one of the major features of our modern UK economy: the finance sector. My approach to this is probably profoundly shaped by my upbringing in the industrial North of England in the fifties and sixties. To me the world of work was engineering. That is simply what men did. That is what I saw. Factories, pit head gear, mill chimneys (although by that stage they were not actually in use) railway marshalling yards. For my class at school, our fathers and grandfathers and older brothers all worked in engineering and manufacture: Avros aircraft works; ICI paint division: Ferranti electronics. I therefore grew up with the idea that reality was very tangible.

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We have now largely left that world behind us. The services sector is now (pre Covid-19 that is) the largest sector in the UK economy accounting for more than three-quarters of GDP. The service industry in the U.K. comprises many industries, including finance and business services, consumer-focused industries, such as retail, food and beverage, and entertainment. Manufacturing and production contribute less than 21% of the GDP, and agriculture contributes less than 0.60%.

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This is reflected in the jobs taken up by the brightest and best of UK youth. When I read the LinkedIn profiles of the boys I taught at school I often have little idea what the job they are doing actually entails. Many of the job titles include the word ‘consultant’; even when they are only about 23. It is very rare for any of them to go into any form of manufacturing and hands on engineering.

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I see this as a major problem because of an underlying metaphysical issue: money is NOT real – a Motorcycle is. The only ‘reality’ possessed by money is granted to it by our collective beliefs. The motorcycle is real whether we believe in it or not. The most radical sceptic in the university epistemology seminar will look before they cross the road. They do not step out in front of the motorcycle because they are unsure of its existence. In doing this they clearly demonstrate they are not actually a sceptic at all; but some form of realist.

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The above figures indicate that the United Kingdom is built on an economic foundation where 75% of it could evaporate if people stop believing in it.

I’m no economist so I need to be careful with the next section. The British economy used to be based on the Gold Standard. Ie the money printed by the government was backed by actual gold in a vault somewhere. We parted company with this over a century ago. So what is our money based on now? That is far from a simple question to answer. Ultimately it comes down to the worth that people consider that various aspects of UK have, what they believe about the worth. Now some of this is very clear. If you can trace back the figures on a computer to a motorcycle built in the Triumph works then you are clearly dealing with something solid: the bike, the machinery on the production line, the building etc.

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A major concern I have about the current foundation of the economy is a the sneaking suspicion that there is plenty of that 75% of the economy which is NOT based on Manufacturing, production and agriculture which if traced through numerous sets of financial data held on a computers of the banks and big finance houses would never actually ‘touch the ground’ in anything tangible. It would go from one set of data to another set of data to another set of data.

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The more true this statement is, the more vulnerable is the UK economy; and hence the more vulnerable are the people of UK to suddenly having our security ripped away from us.

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As I write this we are just coming out of Covid-19 lockdown in May. The economy has been largely shut down for about 6 weeks. The Government is ‘massively in debt’ (whatever that concept means it cannot be good). We clearly need some radical, and probably rapid, rethinking as we move on into the future.

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I have a good enough feel for economics and politics to work out that a world made up of Nationalistic countries operating protectionist policies with closed borders is not likely to be one which works for the benefit of anyone. However I see no evidence that the pre Covid-19 world dominated by globalisation and neo-liberal economics has done much good either. The pandemic identified some very major fault lines. Many countries found themselves very exposed in a number of ways when global travel was restricted. The huge dependence on China is one factor of this which will need to be examined.

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Any such new models will look at one level more expensive. Our consumer electronics will probably be more expensive. Adjusting will require a significant shift in our whole understanding of most things. Such a shift will also require a  focus on repairability, circular economy and built to last. This would be looking at a shift from valuing the new, the latest, the digital – and throw away the old to an older pattern where our purchases were valued, repaired, kept for years and at the end of their life made into something else.

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The optimistic vision being outlined here is one which places the emphasis on a deep sense of wellbeing, locating people in communities – potentially a return to the old workplace communities I grew up with – a valuing of relationships over things, a joy at the simple things in life. This shift would also have a significant impact on the problems our current models are inflicting on the whole ecosystem of the planet.

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We had better continue to believe in money or the entire world economy will crash – and that benefits no one. But alongside this we would do well to shift our understanding to give far more value to the physical and ensure that the financial figures on the computers are never too far away from something as tangible as a Motorcycle.