ECONOMICS IS NOT NATURAL SCIENCEIt is funny how trapped we can get by our preconceptions, by our mental framework. Rushkoff is saying we need to remove the glasses that tell us that our economic system is a "science" and therefore an inmutable force against which we futilely rage. Instead, put on the glasses that show us that the economy is in fact a human construct, a game with rules that we make up, and therefore a game that we can change when it harms us.
The marketplace in which most commerce takes place today is not a pre-existing condition of the universe. It's not nature. It's a game, with very particular rules, set in motion by real people with real purposes. That's why it's so amazing to me that scientists, and people calling themselves scientists, would propose to study the market as if it were some natural system — like the weather, or a coral reef.
It's not. It's a product not of nature but of engineering. And to treat the market as nature, as some product of purely evolutionary forces, is to deny ourselves access to its ongoing redesign. It's as if we woke up in a world where just one operating system was running on all our computers and, worse, we didn't realize that any other operating system ever did or could ever exist. We would simply accept Windows as a given circumstance, and look for ways to adjust our society to its needs rather than the other way around.
I like that viewpoint. I would like to see that explored in more depth.
If you read through Douglas Rushkoff's article he has some interesting thoughts but often he veers off into the bizarre. I wouldn't trust Rushkoff as a troop leader, but I would use him as a scout. I do think he has ranged the hills and dales of intellectual possibilities and found some interesting thoughts. But I wouldn't accept them "as is". His value is more for "what if". More sensible ideas are needed to help us move as a civilization into the unknown future.
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