GREAT is the God of National Output. In the 19th and 20th Centuries, the Great God of National Output thundered through the planet. Those who worshipped at the altar of this God believed that the maximisation of national output would maximise national wealth. Today, the High Priests of this religion are still gospelling this dogma. Ministers of Finance, economic departments, corporate heads, national leaders, central banks. But there are at least twelve shortcomings of this doctrine; this fundamentalism.

Output, yes! But what about equity? It is Karl Marx, and generations of his intellectual descendants, who critiqued the contradiction in the maxim of ‘more output more prosperity’. Output could be achieved inequitably; the value of output could be used to deracinate the vulnerable; to perpetuate the false ideology of the elite classes, and to maximise wealth for these elites and their handmaids, national governments. The best aspects of Socialism have challenged and ameliorated the worst excesses of the Maximum Output theory.
Output, yes! But at what cost to human wellbeing? Many nations have, at the altar of output maximisation, converted their nations into treadmill and sweatshop economies. More and more of the working family’s time is spent earning less and less value. The value of its labour is cut down by inflation, national debt, the devaluation of basic goods and services. Brazil, China, India are following this suit.
Output, yes! But what about opportunity costs? Many nations which show high annual growth rates destroy the inputs of output: The lands, peoples, communities; the economy of the ecology. The Trinidad and Tobago Government is currently purchasing a service from OAS of Brazil, for part of a highway system that does not justify its high social, economic, financial, and ecological costs.
Output, yes! But what about the choice of the services and goods feeding this output? GDP output in Afghanistan and Mexico is based on the trade in guns and narcotics. Must human communities sacrifice at the altar of violence, abuse, high death rates to achieve high output? Obesity, cancer, diabetes are all produced by goods and services which create high output.
Output, yes! But what about economic vulnerability? Reliance on the production of one or two high-valued products, for example, in the non-renewable fossil fuel sector, leaves nations vulnerable. Range, diversification, heterogeneity protect nations from the impacts of global instability: For example, war, recession, the ravages of climate change, fluctuations in food supplies and energy prices.
Output, yes! But what happens if the value of the output is wasted, soon exhausted, frittered away? Consumerism and waste are sinkholes into which acquired value soon disappear. The inordinate expectations of those whom we call the Middle-Class destroy morale and the gains of output.
Output, yes! But what about markets, and full market-value? Does the nation and its corporations have the capacity to generate markets abroad? Get the best prices? Enhance value-added? Much value, energy, is created in the local and local informal economies, but much is wasted through lack of reliable systems for sale, distribution, remuneration.
Output, yes! But what about its medium and long-term survivability? High output would be only of incidental value if your high-valued products are not patented; or their designs stolen, copied and manufactured more efficiently elsewhere; or manufacturing knowledge and skills not stored or transmitted effectively.
Output, yes! But what about innovation? What is high-value today might be low-value tomorrow. The ancient arrow is now the modern, intra-planetary ballistic missile.
Output, yes! But what about State and corporate corruption? The seeds of output could be wasted away through government and corporate corruption, excess, mismanagement, poor choices; and by a consequent alienation from duty and discipline in general. Some national budgets focus on short term political goals rather than long term economic development.
Output, yes! But what about the predatory practices of the global financial and corporate bodies? Governments which control or are allied to global financial institutions; those which own prestige currencies, earned as much by warmongering as by national output; used their leverage to punish Sovereign States. The IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank, can be used to punish nations in the throes of financial and economic crisis. In modern Greece, in the Soviet Union in the 1990s, in Britain in the 1970s, large global corporate entities moved in and gobbled up national assets in well-orchestrated fire-sales.
Output, yes! But what if your nation is a client State of the Euro-American war machine? Where you have to pay yearly tributes to the latest war efforts of the ‘International Community’? Where you are goaded to vote for ‘New World Order’ at the United Nations Security Council? Where your nation could be invaded and ravaged by the wars of these very coalition partners, if you become too economically or politically uppity? And your populace made to pay the cost of the reconstruction of this war?
Great is the God of National Output. You can attend liturgies at the Harvard, Chicago, London. Arthur Lok Jack schools of Economics or Business and celebrate it. But what are the opportunity costs of national output? This dogma is a curse on nations, human populations, and the planet everywhere. It falsifies the conception of economic growth; of progress and development. It reduces, vulgarises, national expectations. It portrays a primitive, oversimplified picture of national growth. It is a constraint to real growth.
WAYNE KUBLALSINGH