15. Interpreting Nature to Improve an Economy

Let us consider some of the major problems in Economy and compare it with its closest concepts in agriculture:

1.      Employment and Unemployment in the Economy

There can be permanent or temporary workers in the agriculture. There can be workers in the preparation, production and distribution functions in the agriculture. While the permanent ones are the ones that are employed to monitor and cure the crops till harvesting, temporary workers are needed seasonally – while planting or while harvesting and distributing.  The temporary workers should be used for storage/maintenance & distribution, animal husbandry, plant and equipment maintenance etc., till they revert to the seasonal agricultural assignments. Thus there will be more constancy in the labour demand. Predictability is easy.

Reckless automation/mechanizations should be avoided – These things build profits at scale for host organizations but snatch away employment opportunities. To some degree this issue can be best tackled by a co-operative model implemented for farms where there will be harmony between men and machines – men belong to constituent unit of the co-operative structure and machines belong to the co-operative structure itself and can be rented out with operators when needed. It is better to balance it with sound principles.

The same principles should be used for the labour management in a national or regional economies. Please refer to my blog article - https://www.mayoan.com/economy/14.-some-labour-market-observations-and-ideas .

Understand the labour market and implement those principles that provide stability to the various job functions. You do this while building the job profiles of the various essential job roles needed in the economy. If necessary, understand the job roles that are to be newly created, improved and obsoleted and develop necessary implementation plans including imparting job-related trainings at scale and thus improve employability of the nation’s citizens. Also, focus on the product/produce flows (or input-work-output – chain of events)  to build co-operative, sustainable networks of organizations/institutions that ensure some degree of stability and ensure predictability.

2.      Interest Rates

This is an important monitory policy used to control money supply and borrowing costs. This operation should not alter the foundation layer of the economy agreed by experts as defined by employment rate, GDP and some securities promised by the constitution. (Please refer to my article at- https://www.mayoan.com/economy/13.-some-strategies-meant-for-a-pro-people-government). So, the government should ensure discipline and some basic sanity check in foreign exchange reserves, foreign trades, exchange rates and balance of payments before trying to adjust this. The target objectives for interest rate manipulations should be a SMART goal (SMART goals   are  Specific,  Measurable,  Achievable,  Relevant, and  Time-bound )  and not a moving target whose surrounding interpreted data is constantly mangled, not-useful and confusing. I vaguely remember, in high schools, we were taught partial differential equations to solve such complex systems with many significant parameters. So, we should use information technology to the right effect to identify the SMART goal and the necessary monitoring & controlling needed along with the recommendations on the corrective actions needed.

Simple – If the system is too complex and with lot of moving parts, don’t try to correct it randomly – try to identify the ‘ONE’ or ‘TWO’ things that yields maximum results while we keep other things constant. This will need a lot of R&D before we act.

This can be compared to the laying of fertilizers on the land. Too much or too little can cause problem. The target strength – high or low can alter the effect. Continuous use may spoil the soil and possibly poison it. And there should be a natural way to cleanse it out before the next crop cycle since the fertilizer needed for the next crop may be different.