Debt and Human Development
We talk about being indebted as if it were a purely negative thing, with the gap between income and aspiration normally held responsible. Yet one could equally say that people are getting a lot of credit! How can so much borrowing be warranted? The issues of debt or credit typically invoke such responses as: Financial institutions must be more tightly regulated! Neither a lender nor a borrower be! The fools have only themselves to blame!
Is this the whole story? What if this tremendous amount of borrowing is the not-yet-understood financial counterpart of a soul phenomenon: the problem of ‘creativity.’ We may not all use Gordon Brown’s ‘Golden Rule’ to measure our behaviour, but most people know that if one is borrowing money, it must be because of something in the future that will create a way to repay it - taking a college course, rather than simply funding consumption. Who decides this? Relational banking is now considered anachronistic. In the age of the credit search, it is the computer, not the person who says yes or no. The modern human being is left free to manage his own credit situation, for better or worse. Without some danger, no development! Is this the price of human creativity?
Monday, January 23, 2006
Accounting for One’s Actions
A Talking Economics Evening in Stroud – Monday 9th January 2006-01-10
Much use is made of the idea of accountability, normally understood as a kind of democratic answerability. But can the human being act in an accountable way without an external pressure acting on him? Is one person accountable to another, or to an interest group, such as share-holders, or to humanity at large? How can that be made real and what is the role of accounting in understanding what accountability entails? How is one to describe the reality of the potential in each human being to act in a way that is not only self-interested (and thereby overcome the prevailing anti-human perception that brings so many restrictive measures in its wake)? How can true and full accounting support and make objective this aim?
Such questions stand behind the subject, and in order to explore it in greater depth something needs to be said about the origin and development of accounting so that one can better see its relevance and purpose in present times. Its lifelessness may be akin to the lifelessness of the brain – best suited for making objective what it records. Just as the brain enables the human being to be individually self-conscious, so too accounting may act as a social brain, which allows human beings to become economically conscious, if they choose. Accounting is a universal language that enables human beings to communicate across cultural differences.
By forming companies which give the power neither to capital (which in reality should not be thought of so much as the interests of the shareholders, but as a purely abstract force), nor to a supervising board, the responsible human being is able to remain effective in his initiative. Through accounting he can share the narrative of that initiative (which represents the biography of a being, whose body is the company). Meeting with his financial backers and reporting, gives rise to a conversation that enables him to draw into a closer relationship with the intuition that guides the company. By becoming aware of the inherent wisdom that lies in accounting and describing the company in a new set of relationships, the potential is present to metamorphose current arrangements such that a corporate culture can arise whose behaviour does not engender the many and varied charges of anti-social behaviour.
A Talking Economics Evening in Stroud – Monday 9th January 2006-01-10
Much use is made of the idea of accountability, normally understood as a kind of democratic answerability. But can the human being act in an accountable way without an external pressure acting on him? Is one person accountable to another, or to an interest group, such as share-holders, or to humanity at large? How can that be made real and what is the role of accounting in understanding what accountability entails? How is one to describe the reality of the potential in each human being to act in a way that is not only self-interested (and thereby overcome the prevailing anti-human perception that brings so many restrictive measures in its wake)? How can true and full accounting support and make objective this aim?
Such questions stand behind the subject, and in order to explore it in greater depth something needs to be said about the origin and development of accounting so that one can better see its relevance and purpose in present times. Its lifelessness may be akin to the lifelessness of the brain – best suited for making objective what it records. Just as the brain enables the human being to be individually self-conscious, so too accounting may act as a social brain, which allows human beings to become economically conscious, if they choose. Accounting is a universal language that enables human beings to communicate across cultural differences.
By forming companies which give the power neither to capital (which in reality should not be thought of so much as the interests of the shareholders, but as a purely abstract force), nor to a supervising board, the responsible human being is able to remain effective in his initiative. Through accounting he can share the narrative of that initiative (which represents the biography of a being, whose body is the company). Meeting with his financial backers and reporting, gives rise to a conversation that enables him to draw into a closer relationship with the intuition that guides the company. By becoming aware of the inherent wisdom that lies in accounting and describing the company in a new set of relationships, the potential is present to metamorphose current arrangements such that a corporate culture can arise whose behaviour does not engender the many and varied charges of anti-social behaviour.
Accounting for One’s Action
In a dream … walking along a High Street, embedded in every shop-door, a flat-screen display showing the live accounts for the business inside. Discrete but clearly indicated, one column for income and expenditure, next to it the balance sheet–each moment: the life blood of the business made visible.
Is accounting really so far from daily life? What if we informed ourselves about the economic circumstances around us, rather than leaving it to happenstance or an invisible hand? The cost of living …, next year’s pay rise …, the price of housing …it’s all to be found in the numbers. A set of accounts tells a story; the business narrative; the book in which the economy becomes visible. Some prefer not to look, thinking that life is complicated enough already. Why lift the bonnet?
The dream continues … at the end of the High Street I come to a building, it looks like a transparent temple: as I draw nearer I see the glass walls flashing up hundreds of transactions between all the businesses and showing the dynamic movement between accounts. Inside a meeting going on. I realise this is a bank.
What is accounting really about? Hiding money from the taxman? Painting a rosy picture for your financial backers? Or could it be that it is only by accounting that we can become economically awake, individually and socially.
In a dream … walking along a High Street, embedded in every shop-door, a flat-screen display showing the live accounts for the business inside. Discrete but clearly indicated, one column for income and expenditure, next to it the balance sheet–each moment: the life blood of the business made visible.
Is accounting really so far from daily life? What if we informed ourselves about the economic circumstances around us, rather than leaving it to happenstance or an invisible hand? The cost of living …, next year’s pay rise …, the price of housing …it’s all to be found in the numbers. A set of accounts tells a story; the business narrative; the book in which the economy becomes visible. Some prefer not to look, thinking that life is complicated enough already. Why lift the bonnet?
The dream continues … at the end of the High Street I come to a building, it looks like a transparent temple: as I draw nearer I see the glass walls flashing up hundreds of transactions between all the businesses and showing the dynamic movement between accounts. Inside a meeting going on. I realise this is a bank.
What is accounting really about? Hiding money from the taxman? Painting a rosy picture for your financial backers? Or could it be that it is only by accounting that we can become economically awake, individually and socially.
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