The Need for Change

I have always struggled to accept the notion that a downturn in the economy—what many call a “recession”—should force people to go hungry or lose their homes. It seems to defy my common sense: the Sun still shines as it did yesterday, the Earth hasn’t shrunk in size, and the land remains as fertile (if not more, given technological advances) as it was before the market took a plunge. Physically, we’re not any more deprived of energy, water, or space than we were last week. Yet, thousands—even millions—of people across the world can suddenly find themselves unable to afford food or pay rent. That contradiction troubles me deeply.

The part that’s hardest to swallow is that most people in financial distress aren’t lazy or indifferent. Many are willing—sometimes desperately so—to be employed. They want to put in effort, learn new skills, and do whatever it takes to secure their basic needs. But despite the willingness and, in many cases, the ability to contribute, the market doesn’t always reward or even enable their participation.

When an economic downturn hits, companies cut jobs in anticipation of lower profits. Entire industries contract, erasing opportunities for employment. Wages stagnate or decline. Suddenly, countless “willing workers” find themselves out of luck, not because the Earth can’t support them, but because the system that governs our access to resources isn’t functioning in their favor.

We like to imagine that “the market” is a perfectly rational mechanism, balancing supply and demand. In reality, it’s laden with speculation, fear, and power imbalances. A dip in investor confidence can trigger actual job losses, sparking a feedback loop where consumer spending plummets, businesses fold, and more people lose their jobs or see their hours cut.

This leads to a bizarre outcome: the resource itself—food, land, water, human labor—hasn’t vanished, but people’s ability to pay for it has collapsed. To put it differently, the real “shortage” is not in raw materials but in the money supply, credit systems, or investor confidence. And when those artificially constrained resources tighten, it’s everyday people who feel the sting first.

A recession isn’t just about the GDP dropping a few percentage points—it’s about families uprooted because they can’t pay rent, parents skipping meals so their children can eat, or patients avoiding healthcare visits because they can’t afford the bill. These aren’t isolated tragedies; they’re part of a global trend that repeats every few years under our current economic systems.

What’s infuriating is the knowledge that the physical means to sustain everyone remain largely unaffected. We don’t lose the Sun during a recession, nor do we magically run out of water. Instead, the system that translates these abundant resources into daily essentials—our economic and political frameworks—fails to distribute them fairly or effectively when times get tough.

This disconnect—between what we physically have and what our structures allow us to use—has long fueled my desire to imagine something better. It’s not that I deny the realities of recessions or the fact that markets can behave irrationally. Rather, I challenge the very premise that a market downturn must inevitably mean human suffering. Why should temporary monetary shortages or shifts in investor “sentiment” translate into empty plates and lost homes, especially when people are ready and able to contribute?

In this part of this book, The Need for Change, I want to explore how we got here, why so many of us feel powerless in the face of these crises, and whether there’s a more just, more resilient way to organize our society. I’ll trace the roots of these systemic failures and clarify why it’s not enough to rely on minor patches or short-term bailouts. Instead, we may need to reexamine the very foundations of what we consider “employment,” “wealth,” and “rights.”

By grounding this conversation in the paradox of abundance versus deprivation, I hope to show that our current problems aren’t due to a lack of resources; they stem from a system that arbitrarily denies access to them when certain economic indicators start flashing red. That realization is both disheartening and empowering: if the resources are still there, then it’s within our collective reach to distribute them more fairly, so long as we find the will and the means to change the rules we live by.