When they hear the word "economy," they pull out their "culture" and "community"

Comment published on New York Times online blog, in response to op-ed essay by Times writer David Brooks, “It’s not the economy, stupid: How to conduct economic policy in an age of social collapse,” November 29, 2018:

It is true enough that most people’s having a paying job and even a marginally better income will not solve this country's major social problems. But it is another thing to suppose that they will be solved by religious and communitarian ethical and moral fixes. Thoreau's statement that "most people live lives of quiet desperation" is more true than ever, and this is a sociological and not merely psychological truth.  

We need to begin using the wealth that has been created to start building a post-scarcity society that will remain, as it must, fully modern. People don't need new cars, therapists, or a strong communitarian ethical sense (call this the “Gods and goods” approach to the good life) so much as the opportunity to create and live meaningful lives as much outside the labor/debt/capital system and the forms of social control, including auto-entrepreneurship, that are (inevitably) part of it.