The Joyful Economy: Who and What?

So we’ve been talking about the economy a bit, and it’s been a depressing topic at times, but we passed through a pretty important concept on the way, which is that we collectively re-make our culture every day.
Our culture is the handed-down wisdom of what has worked for us in the past, (Although, it’s not necessarily ‘best practice’, only that it’s worked well enough that people adopted it for better or for worse), and using the past as a pattern, we make the world new every day.
This is an incredibly hopeful concept actually, because every day is therefore a day to make the culture start to change direction. And so, if we could really start making the culture of our economy change direction, then we have to know what a better direction might be. We have to ask this question:

What does a well-functioning economy look like?
and also: How do we make that happen?

The second question is of course much harder to answer than the first, and the first one is a very very hard question to begin with.

It’s a hard question, but as soon as you ask, ask 'What is good?' almost immediately two other questions pop up: 'Good for who?' and 'Good for doing what?' And these are kind of easier to answer!

And so tonight, what I’d like to do tonight is some brainstorming on these two questions:

Who is our economy for?
What do we want our economy to be good at doing?

Brainstorm 1: Who
First let’s make a bunch of lists together:
What are all the different kinds of people in the world?
—When you read ‘people’ what do you think of?
What are all the different kinds of relationships you have in your life?
—Get creative with describing them, even if you don’t have a name for it!
What are all the different kinds of jobs in the world?
—Not just paid jobs, all the jobs!
What are all the different social classifications of people?
What are all the typical economic classifications of people?

Card Writing:
Who is involved in our world economy?


Brainstorm 2: What
Okay, now let’s do some roleplay. Everyone should pick up a role from the floor and circulate the room talking to different people as the person in your role, using the questions below as your guide. You can spend as little or much time on each role as you like. You can circle the room just playing one role, or you can choose a new role for each converstion, choosing from the available roles in the pile.
What are my needs/demands/desires/wishlist if I have this economic role?
Where are our needs similar?
Where do our needs conflict?

Card Writing:
Answer as many of the questions below as you like. When you make the card please lable it in the top right corner with the letter in front of the question:
[G] What things do we want our economy to be good at doing?
[B] What things do we want our economy to be bad at doing?
[W] What things are necessary for our economy to work well?
[J] What things are necessary for our economy to be a joyful experience for everyone?