The Imaginary Economy · A New Conception

The imaginary economy is that large fraction of the economic system which produces services with the only real utility of furnishing an income to those who provide them.

It is the spontaneous remedy to the fast productivity increase in the manufacturing sector, to which, due to the social inertias described in this book, the rise in the consumption of society is not equally rapid.

The divergence between technically feasible production and actual consumption has visibly reduced the number of blue-collar workers and peasants in the population and inflated, for compensatory purposes, a gigantic service sector which must be unproductive of material goods, brimming with employees, managers, consultants, supervisors and various employees with duties difficult to understand and explain.

Namely: the advance of automation in factories increases the number of forms and signatures needed to open an account in banks.

The fact is that this 'solution' generates problems in its turn, and brings out numerous absurdities and oddities in the economic system.

They have inspired several critical and satirical considerations but, so far, no clear explanation of what is taking place.

It is exposed here, leveraging on mechanisms well-known to sociologists, but completely neglected by economists, which provide the logical explanation of many of the absurdities which today have become frequent in everyday reality.

This book does not recommend "remedies" nor divulges moral proclamations, but what it brings to light concerns anyone interested in the economy, because it renders obsolete many of the conceptions and exhortations that today pass for sacrosanct among economists.